Washington DC, February 27: Michael Cohen, President Donald J. Trump's former personal lawyer,... [+]

 J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE / AP

Yesterday, as part of his testimony to Congress, Michael Cohen revealed that, under the direction of President Trump, he had sent letters to Trump’s high schools, colleges and the College Board (creator of the SAT), threatening them with legal action and jail time if they ever released Trump’s academic records. Cohen provided a record of one such letter sent to the president of Fordham University, which Trump attended for two years before transferring to complete his undergraduate degree at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Trump’s high school has confirmed receiving an identical letter, while the University of Pennsylvania and the College Board declined to comment. It’s worth mentioning that letters like this are entirely unnecessary—under FERPA, disclosing academic records without the student’s written permission is pretty much the most illegal thing you can do with those records. Still, there are a few reasons why it makes sense that Trump would have been so concerned about his transcripts and standardized test scores being released.

1 — Trump Criticized Obama’s Academic Record, But His Is Similar

Trump and Obama actually had very similar undergraduate experiences. Both went to less-competitive but still prestigious schools (Fordham and Occidental) for their first two years, then transferred to and received their bachelor’s degrees from Ivy League schools (Columbia and Penn, respectively). Neither of them graduated with honors, although the way that many schools determine honors can often make it difficult for transfer students to receive them. Moreover, both Trump and Obama seem to have "kept their heads down"—Trump publicly criticized Obama for not being remembered by many of his Columbia classmates, although the same is true of him and Wharton. Although Obama then went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard Law, while Trump did not go to grad school. Trump has a reputation for projection, so it’s reasonable to think that his vocal criticisms of Obama’s presumed academic record are more similar to his own record than he’d admit. For one thing, he questions how Obama could have gained admission into an Ivy League school, when his own admission to Penn was due in large part to personal family connections.

2 — Trump Lied About Graduating “First In His Class”

Trump has repeatedly claimed (and allowed media outlets to report on his behalf) that he graduated ‘first in his class’ from the Wharton School at Penn. In fact, he wasn’t close—Trump graduated without honors. Some schools base honors on GPA percentile, but Wharton bases them simply on GPA, which means that in order to graduate without honors, his GPA had to have been less than a 3.40—or else that he was sanctioned for academic integrity or student conduct violations. What’s interesting about this is that it’s not the GPA itself, but the lie, that Trump may have been concerned about. Trump’s college GPA wasn’t a big deal until he made it a big deal by speculating about Obama’s GPA, lying about his own records and threatening his schools if they released them.

3 — Trump Thinks Grades Are More Important Than They Actually Are

While researching this article, I fell down a rabbit hole of articles, blog posts, and forum threads arguing about the academic records of various presidents. There are a lot of these posts and articles, and a lot of people doing deep dives into decades-old honors policies and yearbooks. As someone who works in education consulting, coaching high school and college students on how to make the most of their education and prepare for the real world, it’s disheartening to see so much speculation about academic records of public figures who have surely built reputations that are far more important than their college careers. A lot of this speculation was based on Trump’s own claims—both about his own records and Obama’s—and to me, it’s disheartening that a 72-year-old man is still worrying about his high school and college grades and comparing them to others’. One of the founding principles of my company (and what helped me get into Yale) is that grades are far less important to future success, including admission to Ivy League schools, than people think they are. It’s similar to Trump’s obsession with his own IQ—it’s a metric that is largely meaningless, can be self-reported with no real way of fact-checking it and can be used to dismiss other people without engaging with their ideas directly. At the end of the day, GPA is far less important for future success—and important for a much smaller time in a person’s life—than their strength of character, honesty and work ethic.