The White House has announced that Malia Obama will take a year off after high school and attend Harvard University in 2017.

Harvard encourages it’s students to take  year off between high school and university in order to travel or pursue other interests.  The student must not enrol in a program at another college that would grant that student a degree.

Malia 17,  is the eldest of the Obamas’ two daughters and is a senior at Sidwell Friends, an exclusive private school in the District of Columbia that  Chelsea Clinton also attended in the 1990s. Malia’s younger sister, Sasha, 14, is a freshman at Sidwell.

The Obama family is set for a major transistor this year as they prepare to leave the White house. The president has said however that he plans to stay in Washington for the next few years so that Sasha can finish high school there also.
Malia’s mother Michelle has said that her daughter 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-cancelled CBS sci-fi drama that starred Halle Berry. Malia has also had internships at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington.

Barack Obama may be the president of the United States but he is just like every other dad who is dreads the day their children leave th nest to attend college. He recently spoke to Ellen Degeneres about his feelings regarding Malia’s departure for college.

“Both of my daughters are wonderful people. Malia’s more than ready to leave but I’m not ready for her to leave,” Obama told DeGeneres. “She’s one of my best friends. It’s going to be hard for me not to have her around all the time, but she’s ready to go. She’s just a really smart, capable person and she’s ready to make her own way.”

Tissues please! That is so sweet!

Photos courtesy of Google Images.