Malia Obama to Attend Harvard University in Fall 2017

Photo via AP

Malia Obama, daughter of President Barack Obama, will attend Harvard University in the fall of 2017.

Though she graduates from Sidwell Friends, an exclusive private school in Washington, D.C., this June, the 17-year-old will take a gap year before shipping up to Cambridge.

‘‘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,’’ First Lady Michelle Obama’s office said in a statement Sunday morning. ‘‘Malia will take a gap year before beginning school.’’

President Obama began his undergraduate career at Occidental College in Los Angeles before transferring and completing his bachelor’s degree at Columbia University. He enrolled at Harvard Law School in the fall of 1988, where he became the first black president of the school’s prestigious Harvard Law Review. Michelle, meanwhile, graduated from Princeton University in 1985 before continuing her studies at Harvard Law.

The First Lady has indicated that Malia wants to be a filmmaker. Malia, who turns 18 on the Fourth of July, boasts a resume that includes internships on the set of Lena Dunham’s Girls and at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, as well as a production assistant gig on Extant, a since-cancelled CBS sci-fi drama.

The Associated Press reports that Malia visited at least a dozen public and private schools, including six of the eight colleges that comprise the Ivy League. Her college search brought her to New England on several occasions, with stops at Brown, Yale, Wesleyan, and Tufts.