WASHINGTON — Soon Malia Obama will choose where to apply for college and which one to attend beginning in the fall of 2016, as her father’s presidency winds down.
She wants to be a filmmaker, President Barack Obama has said. Last summer, news media reported that his 16-year-old daughter toured two northern California rivals: Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.
Berkeley, the state’s flagship public university, is known as a liberal enclave, and it has a department of film and media.
Stanford, a private university in Palo Alto, is more conservative and has alumnae including first Chelsea Clinton and Supreme Court justices such as the retired Sandra Day O’Connor. Obama’s commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker, is from Stanford — and, like Michelle Obama and the Obama daughters, is also from Chicago.
At Stanford, students can major or minor in film and media studies.
The university has more NCAA championships than any other U.S. school. Malia Obama is known as an athlete, especially at tennis, so she might be a good fit in “Nerd Nation,” the unofficial nickname for the school’s sports fans.
Malia Obama’s college essay will come from a unique perspective. She’s lived in the White House since she was 10. She’s had a front-row seat to her father’s political campaigns. Her passport has been stamped around the world, and she’s met world figures such as Queen Elizabeth, Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani education advocate who won the Nobel Peace Prize (as Malia’s father did, in 2009).
Expectations for Malia Obama no doubt are high. Her parents are Harvard-educated lawyers with Ivy League undergraduate degrees, the president’s from Columbia and his wife’s from Princeton.
“Given the educational attainment of her parents, which is exceptional in itself, I can only assume she is going to be a bright and well-qualified student,” said David Hawkins, an official at the National Association for College Admission Counseling in Arlington, Va.
“When you add to that who she is, all of that makes her a desirable candidate for pretty much any college,” said Hawkins, whose 13,000-member organization is made up of college admissions officers and high school counselors, including Washington’s elite Sidwell Friends School, which Malia Obama attends.
Michelle Obama’s crusade “Reach Highe,” urges young people, especially the underprivileged, to continue their education after high school.
“You have to work your butts off,” she reminded high-schoolers attending an “immersion day” at Georgetown University in 2011.
In a speech Dec. 4 in Washington, Michelle Obama noted that students prepare for college “long before they even start high school.”
“Honestly, when Barack and I talk about this, we look at the college counseling many of the kids are getting today and we wonder how we ever managed to get ourselves into college,” she said.
On another occasion, she said she wants her daughters to study abroad someday but isn’t forcing it.
Jean Bailey, a Howard University education professor, is an Obama ally who has visited the White House for events. Her son, a child psychiatrist, was a Sidwell “lifer,” which means he attended the Quaker school from prekindergarten through high school.
Talking about Malia Obama, Bailey said: “She likes sports, and I think that may be one reason she may be leaning to Stanford.” The educator said Sidwell has sent some of its athletes to Stanford, including an African-American female soccer player who later completed medical school.
While other teenagers boast of college acceptance on social media, Malia Obama’s pick will make news around the world. And unlike her peers, she’ll have Secret Service agents with her when she hits campus.
Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, lives in the White House and takes an active role in the lives of Malia Obama and her sister, Sasha, 13, an eighth-grader at Sidwell.
Neither Michelle Obama’s office nor Sidwell officials would discuss Malia Obama’s college prospects, nor would officials for Stanford and Berkeley.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle and other Bay Area news media, Malia Obama visited Berkeley and Stanford in June while her father was in California to deliver a commencement address at the University of California, News media also took note in August when she wore a Stanford T-shirt.
Most college-bound U.S. students apply to a number of schools. From 1990 to 2012, 77 percent of students submitted three or more applications; 28 percent submitted seven or more, the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA said.
But Malia Obama, in light of her singularity, may have only a short list, Hawkins surmised.
A savvy viewpoint on the college experience of first daughters comes from Anita McBride, who was chief of staff to Laura Bush and inhabits the college application world herself since she has a 17-year-old son in prep school.
Since Sidwell has such a strong academic program and sends virtually all of its graduates on to college, McBride said she can’t imagine Malia Obama not getting into whichever college she wants.
Things were different for the twin daughters of George W. Bush, McBride noted, since Barbara Bush entered Yale and Jenna Bush entered the University of Texas at Austin in 2000 during their father’s first White House run.
Their college searches — and starts — were “so under the radar. No one was paying attention to them. They weren’t part of the campaign. They weren’t living in the White House,” said McBride, who is executive in residence at American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies.
Bob Morse, who compiles college rankings for U.S. News &World Report, said it would be surprising if a college admissions officer “read the words ‘Malia Obama’ and it wouldn’t ring a bell.”
“The question is — I’m just posing it — does somebody like Malia Obama or some other child from parents who are visible, a celebrity, a politician or a CEO, is their application going to be treated the same as any other student whose parent isn’t wealthy or powerful or influential?” Morse asked.
“I’m not an insider to know enough, but it would be surprising to me if they were treated the same way.”
The magazine said Princeton, Harvard and Yale were the country’s top national universities. It had Stanford in a fourth-place tie with the University of Chicago and Columbia. Berkeley was in the No. 20 spot.
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