He would barely qualify for a state directional school with those grades at that time. Had he not been the son of Joe Kennedy, his school counselors almost certainly would have tried to steer him towards manual labor.
What do you base that on? Do you have the historical college admission records from the other 109 kids in his class? All 110 kids in his class at Choate are likely to be Ivy League material. I base this off of their current stats posted at http://www.choate.edu/admission/25greatreasons.aspx
The most popular colleges from 2008-2012: Georgetown University, 48; New York University, 40; Yale University, 38; Boston University, 32; Columbia University, The George Washington University, 31; Boston College, 30; Wesleyan University, 29; Cornell University, 24; Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, 21; Brown University, Trinity College, 20.
I am not sure of how the grading system worked at his particular school at that particular time, but it would appear that JFK received numerous C's and D's during high school (see: scores in the 60s and 70s on page four).
Ah, I see now. Page 6 appears to be the results of an exam conducted by Harvard, and I had figured Page 4 was probably related (in which case who knows what a "good" score is).
Now, the other question, how much did academics matter in 1935?
While JFK's grades may have been unexpectedly poor in any case, readers should bear in mind that C and D had different meanings than today's due to grade inflation.
