Similar to @DonnaL 's father’s story, my father entered Columbia at 16. Jewish kid from Queens; went to Newtown High. Won a Pulitzer Scholarship, one of ten awarded to very high-scoring city kids for college, with a higher amount if they go to Colulmbia. I found the Brooklyn Eagle article about him on line. 
He actually left partway through to join the army, came back and finished at an accelerated pace to still graduate at 21.
This might be my favorite CC thread. It puts so much in perspective while also being informative. Thanks those of you who contributed or participated.
All of those factors were after his Harvard years. They could not have been factors used by members of the Porcellian Final Club to effectively reject him as one could only be invited to join during one’s undergrad years at H.
While frequently gossiped about by many, especially political opponents.
What gave the “bootlegger” rumor some plausibility was the fact one source of his wealth in the '30s and later was from getting near-exclusive liquor importation and distribution agreements with several topflight overseas brands timed nearly perfectly with the end of Prohibition not too long after FDR became president. As a result, he ended up getting a cut out of each legally sold bottle once alcohol could be openly and legally imported, manufactured, and sold. Due to pent-up demand from the lifting of Prohibition, his near-perfect timing in entering the liquor importation and distribution business, and little practical competition at the beginning…it’s not too difficult to see how he ended up making a financial killing from the post-prohibition importation and distribution of overseas spirits.
@cobrat:
I wasn’t talking about Joseph Kennedy at Harvard, I was talking about him as a person later on. He likely was blackballed from the elite club because he was Irish Catholic, the elite back then were all WASP,they would have seen him as ‘not one of them’ for sure.
A friend of mine is from a fairly prominent family in our state. She told me that in the late 1930s he father became involved with a girl whom the family believed was not a suitable match. Fearing he might get married without permission, “They yanked him out of Mississippi State and sent him to Yale.”
These days there aren’t a lot of kids being yanked out of State U and sent to Yale.