Malia Obama to take gap year before Harvard

    Now 17, the older daughter of President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, is graduating from Sidwell Friends School in Washington this spring and will enroll at Harvard University in the fall of 2017. A terse announcement of her plans was made on the White House website May 1.
    As a college student of legal age, a president’s daughter would be subject to media scrutiny -- and at a time when students are enjoying the newfound freedom of adulthood. It happened in 1998, when President Bill Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, was a student at Stanford University, and the Chicago Tribune ran an article about her boyfriend. In 2001, Jenna and Barbara Bush, the 19-year-old twin daughters of President George W. Bush, were the focus of national news coverage after they were cited for underage drinking. Barbara Bush was then a student at Yale University, and Jenna Bush, who had been cited for drinking previously, was a student at University of Texas.
    By the time Malia Obama enrolls at Harvard, her father will no longer be president. While media coverage will doubtless continue, it may not be as intense.
    Harvard also encourages its students to take a gap year, and annually 80 to 110 students defer entrance to the school, according to the university’s website. Three Harvard academics described their concerns about the intense pressure placed on students.
    After years of working for top grades, “it is common to encounter even the most successful students, who have won all the ‘prizes,’ stepping back and wondering if it was all worth it,” wrote William Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions and financial aid, Marlyn E. McGrath, director of admissions, and Charles Ducey, adjunct lecturer in psychology in Harvard’s graduate school of education, in an article on Harvard.edu.
    The president's younger daughter, Sasha Obama, 14, also attends Sidwell Friends School. President Obama's undergraduate diploma is from Columbia University; his law school degree is from Harvard. Michelle Obama earned an undergraduate diploma from Princeton University and a law degree from Harvard. 

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