Bill Gates never attended any of the classes he signed up for at Harvard — but got A's anyway

AP

Bill Gates may be smarter than any of us imagined.

On Tuesday, Bill Gates did his fourth Ask Me Anything on Reddit. It was filled with interesting details about life in the next 20 years and how he likes to spend his money.

One Redditor asked Gates what his fondest memory was from Harvard. Interestingly, Gates explained that he never actually attended a single class he signed up for, but “almost always” received A’s anyways.

“I decided that I would be different and never attend any class I was signed up for, but always attend a class I wasn't signed up for,” Gates said in his AMA. “This worked out in a funny way when the final exam for a Combinatorics class (which I signed up for) was given at the same table as my Brain studies class (which I attended and did not sign up for).

"My friends from Brain studies thought it was very strange that I sat on the wrong side of the table and took the Combinatorics exam even when I was the most vocal student in the Brain class," he added.

As for how he managed to maintain his grade point average while attending completely different classes, Gates said he simply “studied super hard” during Harvard’s reading period, the time when students prepare for their exams.

Of course, it didn’t always go smoothly.

“The big exception was organic chemistry where the promised video tapes of the lectures sometimes had no sound or no video,” Gates said on Reddit. “That spooked me and I ended up getting a C+ in the course!”

Gates later dropped out of Harvard and went on to found Microsoft, one of the most successful companies in the world, and become the wealthiest man on the planet worth over $76 billion.

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