Nonetheless, one professor of his says he was "dumbfounded" to learn that Bush had been in his U.S. history senior seminar in 1968.

After his senior year, according to the Washington Post, Bush was denied admittance to the University of Texas law school, despite his in-state status.

His SAT scores--566 verbal and 640 math--were certainly good enough to merit admission to Yale even without his father's weight behind him, Chauncey says.

But Bush seemed alienated by the intellectual atmosphere of Yale.

"The thing that was most troubling to George was the culture shock from Texas to New Haven," Chauncey says.

Whereas his father had grown up in Connecticut, George W. Bush spent his years before prep school in Midland, Texas. He spoke with a Texas drawl and sported cowboy boots at a school where the shoe of choice was penny loafers.

"If you saw him walking down the street, you wouldn't have had a clue that his father was a congressman or that he went to prep school," Deeter says. "He had a real strong identification with growing up in Texas."

Bush's Yale education was as much a question of learning how to navigate a new culture as it was of hitting the books, and he found his refuge in athletics and his fraternity.