Fact Check

Donald Trump's Harvard Rejection Letter

An image purportedly showing the rejection letter Donald Trump received from Harvard University is not real.

Published Aug. 18, 2016

Claim:
An image shows the rejection letter Donald Trump received from Harvard University.

On 18 August 2016, an image purportedly showing the rejection letter Donald Trump received from Harvard University in 1964 began to appear (again) on social media:

donald trump

The letter displayed above was originally posted to the web site The Tab as an April Fool's Day joke. While the web site did not specifically state that this was an April Fool's Day joke, the web ended their article with instructions to "Check the date."  (The "letter" was published on 1 April 2016.)

While it isn't entirely clear why the hoax letter started recirculating in August 2016, it may have to do with the fact that the Harvard Republican Club recently announced that they were not endorsing Trump for president.

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.