Re: Grades and Patronage (#49217)
by Ralph E. Luker on December 21, 2004 at 9:49 AM

Good question, which may be impossible of a completely satisfying answer, but there are suggestive clues. At Morehouse, King's grades averaged no better than about a C+. That, despite the fact that his father was a member of the college's board of trustees and a well known figure in the college community. King's application to attend Yale Divinity School was rejected. At Crozer, a much less competitive school, King's grades averaged about an A- and he graduated with two awards from the faculty: one as "the outstanding member of his class" and the other of $1,200 toward graduate study. No one has done a comparative transcript study. I'm not sure that one coud be done and I'm not sure that King graduated with the highest average in his class, but he would have been close to it. At Boston, where too many graduate students were admitted to allow careful attention by professors, King had a record comparable to that at Crozer -- except for a crisis semester, in which he had a couple of academic disasters, including failing a language exam.