Next for Malia Obama: Gap Year, Then Harvard

She'll be part of the class of 2021
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted May 1, 2016 10:31 AM CDT
Next for Malia Obama: Gap Year, Then Harvard
In a Thursday, April 7, 2016 file photo, President Barack Obama jokes with his daughter Malia Obama as they walk to board Air Force One.   (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

Malia Obama is Harvard-bound, but not immediately upon graduation from the Sidwell Friends School. As the statement released by the East Wing on Sunday puts it, "The President and Mrs. Obama announced today that their daughter Malia will attend Harvard University in the fall of 2017 as a member of the Class of 2021. Malia will take a gap year before beginning school." The New York Times notes that delaying school by a year might afford her a bit more privacy; a presidential historian tells the paper, "The kids can get to at least some level of irrelevance that they absolutely cannot get when they’re still in the White House."

The first lady has said Malia wants to be a filmmaker. Malia spent last summer in New York City interning on the set of HBO's Girls, starring Lena Dunham. She spent the summer of 2014 in California working as a production assistant on Extant, a now-canceled CBS sci-fi drama that starred Halle Berry. Malia has also had internships at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, reports the AP. Malia visited at least a dozen public and private colleges during her search, mostly on the East Coast. Six of the eight Ivies were among them, including her parents' alma maters: The president is a 1983 graduate of Columbia University, and Michelle Obama graduated from Princeton in 1985. Both earned law degrees at Harvard. (More Malia Obama stories.)

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