The guessing game is finally over. Barron Trump is going to New York University where he will attend the Stern Undergraduate College—which the Daily Beast first reported in April was his top choice.
The 18-year-old Trump was seen Wednesday with a backpack, wearing a white polo shirt and Adidas sneakers, going to the NYU Dean’s office accompanied by Secret Service agents who will protect him while his father runs for president, the New York Post reported.
NYU is number 35 overall on the U.S. News & World Report ranking of best colleges and number 5 for its business programs.
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Donald Trump told the Daily Mail that while he considered other colleges, Barron ultimately liked NYU the most.
“It’s a very high quality place. He liked it. He liked the school,” Trump told the Daily Mail. “I went to Wharton, and that was certainly one that we were considering. We didn’t do that... We went for Stern.”
“He’s a very high aptitude child, but he’s no longer a child. He’s just passed into something beyond child-dom.”
He becomes the first Trump to attend a New York City college since his father enrolled at Fordham University in the Bronx in 1964 before transferring two years later to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Barron, a 6’7” teenager who largely steers clear of his father’s limelight, graduated in May from the Oxbridge Academy in Palm Beach, Florida.
Barron Trump graduated from his high school, Oxbridge Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida, in May at a ceremony attended by his mother and father.
Marco Bello/ReutersThe elder Trump, who has refused to release his own academic transcripts and threatened any schools that do so, had boasted for months about his son’s college prospects and toyed with the press about where he would enroll.
“He’s amazing actually in a certain way,” Trump, who is 6’3”, told Fox and Friends Weekend in June. “He’s tall, good-looking guy. He’s a very good student, and he’s applied to colleges and gets into everywhere he goes. He’s very sought-after from the standpoint he’s a very smart guy. He’s a very tall guy and he’s a great kid. He’s cool. He’s pretty cool, I’ll tell you.”
Many speculated that the youngest Trump would follow in his family’s Ivy League footsteps at UPenn, ranked number 6 in the most recent list from U.S. News & World Report. Trump graduated from Wharton in 1968 after transferring from Fordham, which was never his first choice. He hoped to attend the University of Southern California, where he planned to study film and become a movie producer, but his application was rejected. While he frequently mentions his degree from UPenn and pretended for years that he graduated number 1 in his Wharton class, he has rarely spoken about his years at Fordham, a Catholic college, ranked number 89 by U.S. News.
Both his parents watched Barron Trump graduate, along with his only surviving grandparent, Melania Trump’s father, Viktor Knavs.
Marco Bello/ReutersLike their father, three of Barron’s siblings—Don Jr., Ivanka and Tiffany—also graduated from UPenn. Eric, his third child, graduated from Georgetown University.
Barron’s mother, Melania, briefly attended the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia to study design but dropped out to pursue her modeling career in Europe.
For months, informed sources close to UPenn expected that Barron would ultimately select his father’s alma mater.
In recent days, however, Trump revealed that Barron had decided to go to school in New York state where there are more than 200 different colleges and universities. Last week, there were false social media posts of Barron sightings at Cornell University in Ithaca.
Last week, Melania Trump also marked her 28th anniversary as a New Yorker by posting an aerial photo of Manhattan.
“New York City captivated my heart the moment I arrived 28 years ago today,” the former first lady wrote in a cryptic post on X, formerly Twitter. “This electrifying town isn’t just my home; it’s a colorful canvas where dreams come alive. New York’s iconic skyline and vibrant culture inspire me every day.”
In June, Trump explained that his son’s final decision had been influenced by “rioting” on campuses after the Oct. 7th Hamas terror attack on Israel that killed 1,200.
“Colleges six months ago,” Trump said on Fox and Friends Weekend, “you look at a college and you want a certain college, and then you see all of these colleges are rioting. And maybe you want to go to a different kind of a college, because there’s plenty of colleges that we also like that are different and they don’t riot.”
At NYU, police arrested more than 120 protestors in May after tense confrontations between pro-Palestinian demonstrators who built an encampment and Jewish students.
Located in Manhattan, NYU calls itself “the largest private research university” in the US with more than 65,000 students including around 30,000 undergraduates.
This year, NYU received 118,000 applications and admitted 8 percent. Tuition runs $62,796 and total costs including food, housing and personal expenses are estimated at $99,366.
Famous NYU graduates include Lady Gaga, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Billy Crystal, Martin Scorsese and Rudy Giuliani. Ken Langone, the Home Depot co-founder and a Trump donor is honorary vice chair of the college’s board, while its trustees include Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo, who has been vocally pro-Trump.
