Ben Shapiro is an American media host, author, journalist, and conservative political commentator who isn’t afraid to share his controversial opinions with the world. His seemingly superior intelligence is a large part of his persona, but did he have the stats and scores in school to back this up?
Ben Shapiro is an undeniably intelligent political commentator who skipped both third and ninth grades and graduated from high school at just 16 years old before graduating from university at 20 years old. According to the internet, his LSAT score was 176 but this has not been officially confirmed.
Today he is a somewhat divisive political figure, but once upon a time, he was just a schoolboy who was at the mercy of bullies. Let’s find out all about Ben’s early education, his time at university, and what his thoughts are on topics such as standardized tests.
Ben Shapiro’s Early Education
Ben’s entrance to education was at Burbank’s Edison Elementary School. He did well at school and skipped the third grade, before heading to Maimonides Hebrew Academy to complete the fifth and sixth grades.
He transferred schools again and attended Walter Reed Junior High School for the remainder of his junior high where he was placed in the Individualized Honors Program (IHP) special academic class. Ben then moved on to Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles, which is a Modern Orthodox Jewish college preparatory school.
Ben skipped the ninth grade, and because of his younger age — and smaller stature — he was a prime target for bullies. He describes his three-year high school experience as “rough” and “not a lot of fun for me.”
Ben says of his high school experience “I skipped two grades. By the time I hit sophomore year of high school, I was half a foot shorter and 40 pounds lighter than the other kids. The other kids had been in classes together for years; I was a newcomer. That meant being physically shoved into trash cans and lockers.”
He painfully recalls one of the bullyings he endured “On one overnight trip, some of my classmates handcuffed me to a metal-framed bed and then hit me repeatedly on the rear with a belt. I pretended to sleep through it, and rather unconvincingly.”
Ben Shapiro’s University Education
Ben graduated from high school in the year 2000 when he was 16 years old. He went straight to college at the University of California and graduated summa cum laude with a political science Bachelor of Arts degree.
Thankfully, his time at college was a little easier than his time at high school. Ben says that “When I got to college, I was so happy. When I was in college I lived at home, so that meant I wasn’t with the other students full time…I would go to class, I’d learn stuff, and then I’d leave, and then I’d go write essays and read, and then I’d go back to school and it was great.”
He continues “I got along with people in college because nobody in college cares how old you are, really. I loved college, I thought college was great. And then when I went to law school, law school was great too. High school was the worst of it, for sure”
When he graduated at the age of 20, he enrolled at Harvard Law School where he once again flourished academically. He graduated cum laude with a Juris Doctor from the college in 2007 and began formally practicing law thereafter.
Ben Shapiro’s Thoughts on Standardized Tests
As is the case with most subjects, Ben has interesting views on education — to say the least. He is known for expressing his oftentimes explosive views and opinions on his social media platform of choice: Twitter.
In response to an article about a student with a below-average GPA of 0.13 ranking near the top half of his class, Ben tweeted “The soft bigotry of low expectations has real-life consequences. Stop pretending that standardized testing is the problem. It clearly is not.”
When Jamaal Bowman tweeted “Standardized testing is a pillar of systemic racism”, Ben quote tweeted that “Standardized testing was created by Asians in order to promote Asian supremacy, which is why Asians routinely outscore all other racial groups on American standardized tests. This must be stopped, obviously.”