President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama announced Sunday morning their eldest daughter Malia will attend Harvard University in the fall of 2017.
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Though “gap” years between the end of high school and the beginning of college have never been as fashionable in the United States as they are in Europe, “Malia Obama has made the gap year relevant and cool”, said Sara Harberson, founder of private college admissions counseling service Admissions Revolution. President Barack Obama said during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend. Malia is set to graduate in June and turn 18 in July. Perhaps by her senior year, Ms. Obama will be able to explain to her parents what the school’s Sensory Ethnography Lab means when it describes itself as “an experimental laboratory…that promotes innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography”.
Obama has said he is dreading the day when Malia leaves for college.
Nationally, numbers aren’t easy to come by, but locally, statistics don’t suggest a gap-year boom.
But in 2017 President Obama will have been out of office for a year.
The details of the daughters’ activities are a secret, so The White House was not forthcoming with more comments on either her choice of college or her “gap year”.
Taking a “gap year” like this can be pricey, but there are ways to do it on the cheap, according to Bull. She cites as an example one student she helped to plan such a year, who served half the time as a counselor at a wilderness education program in the U.S. and the other half as an attendant at a fly fishing lodge in New Zealand, in exchange for room and board.
Global Citizen Year, an organization Falik founded and leads in support of the gap year concept, identifies high potential students and provides financial aid to those whose families can’t pay; 80% of each year’s class has received need-based financial aid. “The likelihood of being enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program declined with each successive delay group from 30 percent among those who delayed a year to 8 percent of those who delayed 10 or more years”, the study reads.
George W. Bush’s twin daughters began college just months before their father’s election in 2000 – with Jenna Bush Hager attending the University of Texas and Barbara Pierce Bush attending Yale University, her father’s school.
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Malia could choose to gain valuable work experience in any number of sectors by interning with any companies she chooses and getting a potential head start on a successful future.
Beyond this, stress among college students is alarmingly high and rising each year with the majority of students feeling consistently anxious, overwhelmed and hopeless.
Last October, the presidential daughter was pounded with social media backlash over leaked photos of her partying and playing beer pong with students at Brown University. “You’re mature, you make better decisions about things as simple as going to class”. But she’s ready to go.
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Before he goes to law school, Baxley is taking a Gap Year to study human rights law in Uganda through an internship program.
