Joshua Kendall is the author of First Dads: Parenting and Politics from George Washington to Barack Obama, which will be published by Grand Central on May 10.

When she applied to Harvard, Malia Obama was clearly ignoring the advice of her father, who told People last fall that he was trying to steer her away from “some name-brand, fancy school.” What she clearly wasn’t ignoring were the odds: Over the past 225 years, the numbers show that being that child of a president is a very, very good way to boost your shot at admission.

In that time there have been 44 presidents, eight of whom went to Harvard. But no fewer than 22 first children have attended “the world’s greatest university.” In this particular university sweepstakes—landing the children of the most powerful official on earth—Yale and Columbia both come in a distant second, with seven presidential kids each.


Why so many? More than half were Adamses and Roosevelts, the children of aristocratic American families with strong Harvard ties to start with. A few more were the children of Harvard alums, like Birchard Hayes—a Harvard Law grad like his father, Rutherford B. Hayes—and Caroline Kennedy, whose father John F. Kennedy received his Harvard diploma in 1940.

But other Harvard admittees testify to a certain amount of social mobility, and perhaps the power of the office. Herbert Hoover, a terrible student, attended the then-obscure (and brand-new) Stanford University; his sons both attended Harvard Business School. Abraham Lincoln had little formal education at all, but his son Robert Todd Lincoln, after failing his first entrance exam, got into Harvard on the second try, while his father was launching his first campaign for the White House.

For Malia, the story of first children at Harvard carries something of a warning: Getting in appears to be the easy part. It’s staying in that’s hard. The vast majority weren’t stellar students, and a few were even sanctioned for poor academic performance or rambunctious behavior. That’s a sharp contrast to their fathers, who nearly all had distinguished academic records. For example, John Adams was ranked third in the class of 1755 and John Quincy Adams, who certainly qualifies as the most erudite child of a president, if not also the most erudite president, finished second in the class of 1787. And John F. Kennedy turned his magna cum laude senior thesis, While England Slept, into his first book. Likewise, Obama edited the Harvard Law Review—an accomplishment that led to the contract for his mega-selling memoir, Dreams from My Father. In contrast to their ambitious fathers, the children of privilege didn’t appear quite so motivated to pay attention to their studies—giving Malia the chance to make a little history just by living up to the high bar set by her dad.

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The children of American’s most illustrious leaders have been eyeing Harvard—and vice versa—since the Founders. John Quincy Adams had three sons that donned the Crimson—George Washington, John Adams II and Charles Francis. He expected them to meet his academic standards, and whenever they strayed, this authoritarian dad pounced. When George Washington reported that he was reading the New Testament in Greek during his freshman year, Adams went ballistic. As Adams saw it, this text was relatively easy to translate, and his son was exhibiting “a propensity to skulk from real study and to idle many hours upon what was no study at all.” This paternal prodding often worked. At his graduation in the summer of 1821, George Washington snagged the prestigious literary award, the Boylston prize, besting Ralph Waldo Emerson.

That fall, when the John Quincy Adams, then secretary of state, learned that both John and Charles Francis were underperforming—John was 45th out of 85th in the junior class—he told them not to come home to Washington for the Christmas break. “I could feel nothing but sorrow and shame in your presence,” he wrote. But when John rose to 16th, Adams made a new demand, insisting that he would not attend graduation unless his son made it into the top five. In the end, John was expelled late in his senior year for participating in a campus-wide protest known as “the Great Rebellion” of 1823 and never received his diploma—at least not in his lifetime. Fifty years later, Harvard would award the family his belated A.B. Charles Francis stepped up his efforts and graduated on time in 1825. Four decades later, after serving as the ambassador to Britain, this Boston Brahmin was offered the Harvard presidency, but he turned it down.

Robert Todd Lincoln was the first presidential child who wasn’t a native New Englander to make the trek to Cambridge. He entered Harvard, where most students were fervent Republicans, in the fall of 1860 —and he immediately developed a reputation as a rule-breaker. In October, he was fined two dollars for “writing on settees on Mr. Bates’ room,” as noted in the faculty minutes. A month later, after Lincoln’s victory, the New York Times reported that “[he has] grown vastly in popularity with his fellow students and the townspeople generally.” But in mid-January of 1862, Lincoln received an urgent letter from Harvard President Cornelius Conway Felton reporting that his son “has seemed to be on intimate terms with some of the idlest persons in his class.” What’s more, asserted Felton, his academic performance was suffering. “In the department of chemistry, his failure has been complete.” However, Felton, was optimistic that “a word or two from you will set everything right.”

No one knows how the overwhelmed Civil War president responded, but Lincoln probably talked to Robert upon his return to Washington for the winter break later that month, as his grades soon picked up. Even so, Robert never really mended his wayward ways. In the fall of 1862, he was twice caught smoking publicly in Harvard Square—a major transgression at the time. That December, Felton’s successor, Thomas Hill, wrote Lincoln to ask the president to “impress upon [Robert] the necessity not only of attention to matters of decorum, but of giving heed to the private admonitions of his instructors.” After receiving his degree in 1864, Robert stayed in Cambridge to begin Harvard Law School. But he dropped out after a semester when Lincoln appointed him an army captain, and he went on to serve on the staff of General Ulysses S. Grant.

While Lincoln was prevented from attending his son’s Harvard graduation due to his pressing presidential duties, that was not the case with his successor, Rutherford B. Hayes. A few months after his March 1877 inauguration, Hayes returned to his alma mater to pick up an honorary L.L.D. on the same day that his son, Birchard, received his law degree. After the ceremony, President Hayes was the guest of honor at a dinner hosted by the long-serving Harvard president, Charles Eliot. When asked to give a speech, the humble Hayes said just a few words to the assembled graduates: “This is your day; I may not; I ought not to take up any particle of this valuable time.”

For both the Oyster Bay and Hyde Park Roosevelts, Harvard would be an expected destination. A member of the Porcellian Club, the university’s oldest final club, who received his degree in 1880, Theodore Roosevelt insisted on sending his four sons—Theodore Jr., Kermit, Archibald and Quentin there. Ted Jr.’s four years in Cambridge coincided with the four years of his father’s second term. In 1905, while playing on the freshman football team, Ted Jr. suffered a series of serious injuries, including a deep cut above one of his eyes. The resulting publicity enabled the president to permanently clean up the sport by enforcing new rules, such as the forward pass, and outlawing brutal acts such as kneeing opponents.

In the spring of 1909, Kermit was still just a freshman but he left college after one year to join the retiring president on an African safari, promising his father that he would take an accelerated course of study upon his return. And Kermit ended up needing just two and a half years to obtain his degree. Unlike his brothers Archibald was a bit priggish during his Harvard years and had few friends. When fellow students smuggled women or liquor into the dorm, he tended to rat on them. After finishing Harvard in 1917, Archibald immediately went to France to fight in the Great War. That spring, TR’s favorite son, Quentin, dropped out after two years to become a pilot. Shot down by the Germans in July of 1918, Quentin was award a posthumous degree the following year—when he would have graduated with his class.

While FDR, a member of Harvard’s class of 1904, was only an average student, he emerged as a big man on campus due to all his extra curricular activities; he edited the Crimson, helped found the Political Society and was elected chairman of the Class Day Committee. However, unlike his fifth cousin Theodore, he was denied admission to the Porcellian Club, which he later described as one of the greatest disappointments of his life.

In contrast, FDR’s four sons were all playboys who liked to party and had trouble getting the “Gentlemen C’s” he expected. Three made it to Harvard, where one was kicked out. (The fourth, Elliott, dropped out of Princeton during his Freshman year.) FDR’s eldest son, James, began in the fall of 1926 when FDR was still recovering from polio. A month into his freshman year, he wrote his father, “Things seem to be going fairly well, although I find the work just as hard as it was at Groton and of course much harder to study because of the many distractions and interruptions.” James complained that “German … is a continuous struggle and a bore because the instructor is a perfect ham” (in contrast to his English instructor whom he dubbed a “wow”). James ended up flunking that German class, got put on academic probation and never recovered. He ended up a few credits short and never got his sheepskin. He had hoped to go on to Harvard Law School, but without his undergraduate degree, he was not allowed to enroll. And though he managed to follow his father to Columbia Law, he dropped out after a year.

While FDR’s two youngest sons, Franklin Jr. and John, both graduated—the former in 1937, the latter in 1938—both repeatedly made headlines for their scandals. Franklin Jr. had a nasty habit of smashing up his car and injuring others in the process. In 1935, the Associated Press reported that Franklin Jr.’s “accident and speeding record since his advent to Harvard in 1933 resembles the French war debt.” In the summer of his senior year, John traveled to Cannes where he started a small international kerfuffle by throwing a glass of champagne in the face of the town’s mayor.

While the affable FDR did his best to help his Harvard boys out of all their scrapes, he was forced to wax philosophical. “One of the worst things in the world is being the child of a president,” he told an aide in 1934. “It’s a terrible life they lead.” FDR was convinced that all the press attention combined with the public’s high expectations was bound to have a detrimental impact.

That might be true, but some of the first children who went to Harvard did manage to avoid making news, or flunking out. Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., who finished up at the beginning of his father’s second term, Francis Cleveland and Caroline Kennedy all graduated without incident, to name a few.

Perhaps FDR’s dire dictum is one reason why Malia Obama chose to take a gap year: When she enters Harvard, she will no longer be a child of the sitting president, and the media scrutiny will likely be less severe. Perhaps this will help her have a more successful Harvard tenure than most of her predecessors—if she can avoid writing on settees failing German and crashing her car all over Cambridge.