I could have been a Rhodes Scholar, except for my grades.
I didn't pass the scholarship exam for Oxford because of poor mathematics.
I flunked my exam for university two times before I was accepted by what was considered my city's worst university, Hangzhou Teachers University. I was studying to be a high school English teacher. In my university, I was elected student chairman and later became chairman of the city's Students Federation.
I didn't get into university, so I had to go to drama college!
I failed every class up until I dropped out freshman year.
In the end, I did end up repeating seventh grade.
I had planned to be a psychology major, but I bombed introductory psychology.
The first time a student realizes that a little learning is a dangerous thing is when he brings home a poor report card.
Yes, I was going to law school and it was closed in '69.
My mother died when I was 17, and I moved in with my dad to make a 12-month pig's ear of retaking my A-levels.
I took organic chemistry, and I got my first-ever F. I ended up going to summer school, and the whole time, I'm thinking, 'I am not good at sciences.'
I blew the college boards, and to ease the snub from Harvard made a tour of Europe.
I think failing the qualifying or the 11-plus actually hurt me more than I realised. After I'd become a professor of physics at the Open University, I suddenly thought, 'This is a bit silly.' So I suddenly became much more open about it. But I think probably I was hurt by the failure and didn't want to talk about it.
I got rejected from journalism school!
I got kicked out of high school, so I couldn't get into very many colleges.
I was pre-med for a semester, and then I got a C- in organic chemistry and was washed out of that program. Then I imagined I'd be a lawyer. I was gonna go to law school.
I was a bookworm who aced every test - until third grade, when my teacher handed out a pop quiz about Jesus and the Apostles.
My first degree came years before my second. I had wanted to be a physicist, but I flunked calculus.
