His brother John was a U.S. Senator and the family was attracting more public attention.[19] Ted joined The Owl final club in 1954[20] and was also chosen for the Hasty Pudding Club and the Pi Eta fraternity.[21] Kennedy was on athletic probation during his sophomore year, and he returned as a second-string two-way end for the Crimson football team during his junior year and barely missed earning his varsity letter.[22] Nevertheless, he received a recruiting feeler from Green Bay Packers head coach Lisle Blackbourn, who asked him about his interest in playing professional football.[23] Kennedy demurred, saying he had plans to attend law school and to “go into another contact sport, politics.”[24] In his senior season of 1955, Kennedy started at end for the Harvard football team and worked hard to improve his blocking and tackling to complement his 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m), 200 lb (91 kg) size.[18] In the season-ending Harvard-Yale game in the snow at the Yale Bowl on November 19 (which Yale won 21–7), Kennedy caught a pass to score Harvard’s only touchdown;[25] the team finished the season with a 3–4–1 record.[26] Academically, Kennedy received mediocre grades for his first three years, improved to a B average for his senior year, and finished barely in the top half of his class.[27] Kennedy graduated from Harvard at age 24 in 1956 with an AB in history and government.[27][28]
Due to his low grades, Kennedy was not accepted by Harvard Law School.[16] He instead followed his brother Bobby and enrolled in the University of Virginia School of Law in 1956.[2] That acceptance was controversial among faculty and alumni, who judged Kennedy’s past cheating episodes at Harvard to be incompatible with the University of Virginia’s honor code; it took a full faculty vote to admit him.[29] Kennedy also attended the Hague Academy of International Law during one summer.[30] At Virginia, Kennedy felt that he had to study “four times as hard and four times as long” as other students to keep up with them.[31] He received mostly C grades[31] and was in the middle of the class ranking, but was the winner of the prestigious William Minor Lile Moot Court Competition.[2][32] He was elected head of the Student Legal Forum and brought many prominent speakers to the campus via his family connections.[33] While there, his questionable automotive practices were curtailed when he was charged with reckless driving and driving without a license.[2] While attending law school, he was officially named as manager of his brother John’s 1958 Senate re-election campaign; Ted’s ability to connect with ordinary voters on the street helped bring a record-setting victory margin that gave credibility to John’s presidential aspirations.[34] Ted graduated from law school in 1959.[33]