Chelsea Clinton Chooses Stanford President Shrugs Off Distance To California
It was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Clinton administration. But with a one-sentence statement released on White House letterhead Wednesday, the mystery was no more:
Chelsea’s going to Stanford.
Yes, the first daughter is going far, far away from Mom, Dad and Socks, leaving the most imposing address in the land for what likely will be a dorm room at the campus in Palo Alto, Calif.
She’s also shunning her parents’ chosen professions, law and politics. At this point, anyway, Chelsea has her eye on medical school.
The first daughter - who loves ballet, excels academically and on a recent trip with her mother to Africa revealed herself to be a thoughtful, articulate teenager with actual opinions on world affairs - had her pick of the most prestigious schools in America.
Stanford University is a prestigious choice, to be sure. But in selecting the West Coast school, Chelsea rejected the likes of Harvard, Princeton and Brown along with her parents’ alma maters - Georgetown University, a few measly miles from the White House, and Wellesley, just up the Eastern Seaboard. She also turned her back on Yale University, where her parents met in law school.
Chelsea’s parents, who have been treating the departure of their only hild with some trepidation, expressed satisfaction with her decision to go 2,700 miles from their current home.
“She had wonderful choices and she made her own decision, and her mother and I are proud of her and we support her,” President Clinton said. “She didn’t have a bad choice. She just picked the decision she thought was best for her.”
As for the distance, the president said: “Well, the planes run out there and the phones work out there. And the e-mail works out there. So we’ll be all right.”
“I’m just grateful this day has come,” said first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. She has been questioned almost daily about Chelsea’s decision, which had to be postmarked by the end of April.
“I think she wanted to branch out and be her own person … make her own mark in the world,” the first lady said.
Chelsea, 17, will be among an estimated 1,600 other freshmen who will enroll at the Northern California campus in September. Her parents will get a bill for $29,085 for tuition, room and board, and freshman orientation.
Chelsea first toured Stanford last September with her mother, when they joined a regular tour of parents strolling along the main quadrangle, a palm-studded plaza squared by the sandstone arches that shelter the original classroom buildings.