What Is Melania Trump's IQ?
She speaks six languages, but does that mean anything?
instagram It’s hard to follow in the footsteps of such an intelligent First Lady as Michelle Obama. With degrees from both Princeton and Harvard, Obama touted her educational roots by starting the Let’s Move! campaign, aimed at preventing childhood obesity, as well as using her time in the White House to advocate for military families, arts and art education, and women’s issues.
And it's especially hard for some to imagine current First Lady Melania Trump could ever hold a candle to her predecessor, seeing as how she hasn’t been seen in public much.
Though she started the “Be Best” campaign, which — no, it’s not in an effort to improve grammar for Americans — focuses on youth well-being, including cyberbullying and drug use, many see that as a bit laughable considering her husband’s presidential Twitter history.
But what is Melania Trump’s IQ?
We know that as a child, she was artistic and created clothing for her dolls. She later would sketch clothing designs and her seamstress mother would make the clothes. When she attended the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, she majored in architecture and design, which require a lot of math and the ability think abstractly.
She originally claimed to have a degree, though the White House website now says that she “paused her studies to advance her modeling career in Milan and Paris.”
Being a model comes with the (incorrect) stereotype that you aren’t quite that intelligent, but the fact that she attended college to begin with should be an indicator that she isn’t lacking in that department. Because being beautiful doesn’t equate to a lower IQ.
In an interview with DuJour magazine, Melania herself said, “I’m not only a beauty, I’m smart. I have brains. I’m intelligent” when the topic of public scrutiny regarding her appearance was brought up.
People are quick to judge and dismiss her based on her looks alone, but they don’t give her a chance. And according to a former college professor, Blaz Matija Vogelnik, her IQ is “very high” because she had the “ability to pass a stringent entry test required of all potential students.”
Photo: DuJour Magazine
But does that alone define intelligence?
Perhaps we should also consider that she speaks six language: Slovenian, French, Serbian, German, Italian and English — and that people who are bilingual are usually smarter than those who only speak one language. Though, that alone doesn’t mean she has a high IQ.
In fact, some might claim she isn’t as intelligent as she claims, especially considering that she has been accused of plagiarism twice now.
Her 2016 Republican National Convention speech was compared to Michelle Obama’s “One Nation” speech from the 2008 Democratic Convention, which sounded very similar.
An analysis of these speeches concluded that Obama uses longer, more complex sentences, and are aimed at “an audience with a higher level of education.” Trump, however, used shorter sentences that were easier to understand, but with a richer vocabulary. But this could be a result of English not being her first language.
She was accused again of plagiarism when she started the “Be Best” campaign, with people noticing that the graphics and texts from the booklet she distributed bore a crazily similar resemblance to those from the booklet handed out by the Obamas.
There’s also the question of how she obtained her “Einstein visa,” which allowed her to permanently settle in the United States.
This “elite” EB-1 program is usually reserved for people with “extraordinary ability,” like international business executives, Oscar-winning actors, and academic researchers.
According to The Independent, when she got a green card in 2001, “her credentials included runway shows in Europe, a Camel cigarette billboard ad in Times Square and — in her biggest job at the time: a spot in the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, which featured her on the beach in a string bikini, hugging a six-foot inflatable whale.”
If Trump were to take the immigration screening test proposed by her husband, it’s very likely that she would fail. Plus, the Trump administration is trying to restrict the H-1B visa, which is exactly how she entered the United States.
Though there is no information on exactly what her IQ actually is, we can only assume that Trump at least has average intelligence since she’s keen on design and language.
Samantha Maffucci is an associate editor for YourTango who focuses on trending news and entertainment.