Both Obamas are Harvard Law School graduates with undergraduate degrees from Ivy League schools; Columbia for the president and Princeton for the first lady.
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Malia Obama, 17, will join the Harvard University class of 2021 after taking a gap year, the White House announced Sunday.
The high school senior at Sidwell Friends School will take a gap year after she graduates, according to a statement from the East Wing.
Malia’s college application process and decision have always been the subject of rumors. Michelle Obama previously told PEOPLE in 2012 that her daughter has an “interest in filmmaking”. The now-canceled series was produced by Steven Spielberg, a prominent donor to Obama’s presidential campaigns. Schools visits included Brown; University of California, Berkeley; Stanford; New York University; Barnard, Tufts; Yale; Wesleyan; and the University of Pennsylvania.
The president is a 1983 graduate of Columbia. “Malia’s more than ready to leave but I’m not ready for her to leave”, Obama told DeGeneres.
“The one thing I’ve been telling my daughters is that I don’t want them to choose a name”, Michelle Obama told Seventeen magazine earlier this year. She has interned on the set of HBO’s “Girls” and on a now-canceled network TV sci-fi drama that starred Halle Berry.
The White House did not elaborate on Malia’s gap year; Malia is still figuring out what she wants to do.
They’re also used to having heads of state and other powerbrokers passing through campus, giving talks at the John F. Kennedy School of Government or fielding questions at the Law School.
The older Obama daughter was 10 when he took the highest office in the land. She was reportedly seen wearing a Harvard shirt during her school’s college signing day, setting off a flurry of excitement from the Harvard community.
Obama recently said he turned down an invitation to speak at Malia’s high school graduation because his emotions would get the best of him. “The older they got, the less excited they were about living in a museu, and they just wanted to live in a regular home”, she said.
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But there is one rite of passage for every newly minted adult that the first lady is certain Malia will pass: doing her own laundry.
