Malia Obama will attend Harvard

Malia Obama will attend Harvard – but will hold off until 2017 for 'gap year'

President’s eldest daughter intends to take a year off – which is encouraged by the university to allow new students to pursue outside work experiences

 Malia visited at least a dozen public and private colleges during her search, including Princeton and Columbia, where her parents earned undergraduate degrees. 

Barack Obama’s daughter Malia will take a year off after high school and attend Harvard University in 2017, the East Wing of the White House announced on Sunday.

The 17-year old is a senior at the elite Sidwell Friends School, in Washington, the same high school where the children and grandchildren of the Clintons, Roosevelts, Bidens and Gores have attended. Malia Obama graduates in June and will celebrate her 18th birthday on the Fourth of July.

The president recently said he declined an invitation to speak at the graduation ceremony. “I’m going to be wearing dark glasses, sobbing,” he told tal

k show host Ellen DeGeneres earlier this year. “I’m going to cry.”

Malia visited at least a dozen public and private colleges during her search, including Princeton and Columbia, where her parents earned undergraduate degrees.

Harvard encourages new admissions to take a “gap year” before or during their undergraduate years, so that the students can pursue work experiences outside of school. For the school’s most famous new freshman, the year off could mean less attention when she does start classes in 2017, and time to build her resume.

First lady Michelle Obama has said that Malia hopes to become a film-maker, and that she worked last summer in New York as an intern on the set of the HBO show Girls. She spent the previous summer as a production assistant for CBS, and held previous internships at the National Zoo in Washington.