Here's How Far The Trumps Really Got In School

When your family is American royalty like the Trumps, education at top schools is as much a part of the lifestyle as yacht parties and full-on sprints from the paparazzi. Nouveau riche or not, the Trump family is no different, boasting ivy league and almost-ivy league degrees up and down the family tree. Well, most of the family tree anyway.

While the Trump children's college educations have been fairly well documented, some unanswered questions still remain about Donald's time at the Wharton School and about Melania's formal education. Perhaps even more interesting is the educational history of Donald Trump's siblings, who range from a federal judge to an administrative assistant at Chase Bank. Not to mention Donald's father, Fred, who still laid the foundation for what would later be the Trump Organization. We took a look at Trumps past and present, and found out how far all of them made it in school.

Just like his famous father, Donald Trump Jr. attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, obtaining a bachelor's degree in finance and real estate in 2000, according to Quartz. While at Penn, Don Jr. had a reputation for drinking heavily and getting into fights. "To be fairly candid, I used to drink and party pretty hard," he told New York Magazine in 2004. A Vanity Fair story painted a slightly blunter picture of his behavior, quoting former Penn classmate Scott Melker as saying, "Every memory I have of him is of him stumbling around on campus falling over or passing out in public, with his arm in a sling from injuring himself while drinking."

Donald Jr.'s reported reputation with women was just as woeful. In a People feature on his time at Penn, a former partying buddy said, "Everyone was warned to stay away from Donnie Trump."

Like his sister Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump also opted to attend Georgetown University. But unlike her, he stayed the entire four years, earning a degree in management and finance in 2006. And while his academic and personal record there were not the stuff of media headlines, he has definitely put himself in the news with the school over the past few years.

In 2018, he took umbrage with Georgetown professor Dr. Carol Christine Fair, who tweeted that white conservative senators "deserve miserable deaths" for their actions during Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearing, as reported by Fox News. Eric responded, tweeting that Fair was "an absolute embarrassment to herself and this great institution."

In February 2020, Eric's return to campus for a roundtable with Turning Point USA executive director Charlie Kirk drew scores of student protestors donning orange shirts that read, "Unstoppable, Undeniable, Undocumented, Unafraid, #HomeIsHere." Though none of them turned violent, Eric still denounced the protestors and was quoted in The Hoya as saying, "When you see people dressed in orange jumpsuits like they came out of prison, no one is ever going to take them seriously."

Barron Trump first attended Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in New York. According to an excerpt of the book Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady in Politico, Donald Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen pulled several strings to get him in. In 2017, after his father moved into the White House, Barron finished the school year at Columbia, before moving to St. Andrew's in Maryland.

He started 9th grade in the fall of 2020, and despite his father's insistence to "OPEN THE SCHOOLS," St. Andrew's Episcopal School began the year offering virtual classes. "[The Montgomery County] directive aligns with our most current thinking about how to open school well in September while protecting the health of our students, families, and employees," head of school Robert Kosasky said in a letter to parents, as reported by CNN. 

On her now-defunct website MelaniaTrump.com, First Lady Melania Trump claimed to have obtained "a degree in design and architecture at University in Slovenia," according to Snopes. The problem is there is no University of Slovenia. Other reports have been shared about her having attended the University of Ljubljana instead, but there's no record of her graduation.

According to PolitiFact, Melania lied in a 2013 deposition about her also defunct caviar skin cream line, repeating the claim she'd gotten a degree. The program for the 2016 Republican National Convention similarly mentioned Melania having graduated from the University of Ljubljana, according to CBS News. CBS News discredited the claim and maintained she has no degree.

A GQ interview with Melania claimed she "applied to the school of architecture at the local university, successfully passing the notoriously difficult entrance exams," but does not mention her earning a diploma and instead notes she "effectively [dropped] out" after a year to focus on modeling.

Donald Trump's oldest brother, Fred Trump Jr., didn't go to the University of Pennsylvania's famous Wharton School. He actually graduated from Lehigh University in 1960, according to The Washington Post. He also had ambitions of being a TWA pilot, studying up on aviation books while his father berated him for trying to be a "chauffeur in the sky," according to the Washington Post story. Ultimately, he gave up on that dream, and opted instead to work in the family business.  

Notably, while Fred didn't go to Wharton School to study business, he was, however, friends with James Nolan, an admissions officer at Wharton, who was instrumental in getting Donald Trump into the University of Pennsylvania. "He called me and said, 'You remember my brother Donald?' Which I didn't," Nolan said in an interview with The Washington Post. "He said, 'He's at Fordham and he would like to transfer to Wharton. Will you interview him?'" Nolan agreed to the interview, which Donald attended with his father, Fred Trump Sr. The admissions officer gave him a rating that was "decent enough to support his candidacy," and Donald finished his college years at Penn.

Prior to his time in the Trump Organization, Donald Trump's youngest brother, Robert Trump, attended Boston University. There the economics major enrolled in the College of General Studies in 1968, and the College of Arts and Sciences in 1972. Robert was also captain and MVP of the men's soccer team in 1969, according to BU Today.

Sadly, Robert died in August 2020, inspiring President Donald Trump to say in a statement, "He was not just my brother, he was my best friend" (via The New York Times). Prior to his death, Robert had made news by filing a restraining order to stop the publication of niece Mary Trump's book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. "Her attempt to sensationalize and mischaracterize our family relationship after all of these years for her own financial gain is both a travesty and injustice to the memory of my late brother, Fred, and our beloved parents," he said in a statement to The New York Times.

Probably the least known of the Trump family is Elizabeth Trump Grau, Donald Trump's older sister who has somehow managed to keep a low profile during the family's height of fame. According to Business Insider, Elizabeth attended the Kew-Forest School in Queens, the same school President Trump went to. From there, she moved on to Southern Seminary College in Buena Vista, Va. It has since changed its name to Southern Virginia University.

In his book The Art of the Deal (via The New York Times), Donald Trump called Elizabeth "bright but less ambitious," which may explain why she didn't go much past being an administrative assistant at Chase Manhattan Bank, though some reports claim she worked as an executive. While working there, she met movie and TV producer James Grau, and they were married in New York in 1989. According to their wedding announcement in The New York Times, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry was Elizabeth's matron of honor and Grau's son James was best man. Donald Trump was listed as an usher.