Amid U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to cut or withhold funding from many elite universities in early 2025, rumors spread online that his youngest son, Barron Trump, had been rejected from a few of those institutions: Harvard, Stanford and Columbia.
Social media users posted the allegations on Facebook, X, Threads, Bluesky and TikTok. Many posts used the same language: "Want to understand the feud between
Holy shit ~ the real reason #Trump is going after Harvard:
Guess what colleges didn't accept Barron Trump?
#Harvard
#Stanford
#CoulumbiaAny college Trump is attacking ~ are the ones that with all of his money they said "No endowment will let him in."
#SheShed
[image or embed]— Cathy ?✌?? (@coco9591.bsky.social) April 18, 2025 at 4:37 PM
One Democratic senator, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, implied that the president may be freezing funds to Harvard because of a personal quest for revenge, writing on X and Threads above an Esquire story about Harvard's feud with Trump: "Can't help but wonder how many Trumps got rejected by Harvard."
However, there is no evidence that these universities rejected Barron Trump, a New York University student. Stanford, Harvard and Columbia did not immediately return requests to confirm or debunk that they rejected admission to the 19-year-old; this story will be updated if they respond.
As first reported by USA Today, the first lady's office categorically denied that Barron Trump even applied to Harvard.
"Barron did not apply to Harvard, and any assertion that he, or that anyone on his behalf, applied is completely false," said Nick Clemens, spokesperson for the Office of the First Lady, in an email to Snopes. (USA Today reported receiving the same statement.)
Google searches for "Barron Trump Harvard rejection," "Barron Trump Stanford rejection" and "Barron Trump Columbia rejection" returned no results showing evidence that these universities rejected him as of this writing. Similarly, Google searches for "Barron Trump applied to Harvard," "Barron Trump applied to Columbia" and "Barron Trump applied to Stanford" returned no relevant results as of this writing.
A search of the president's Truth Social posts also found no mention of "Barron" in conjunction with any university; searches for "Harvard," "Columbia" and "Stanford" also found no posts which mentioned Barron Trump or any of the Trump children as of this writing.
Barron Trump broke from his family's tradition when he decided to attend NYU; in the past, the president's children have gone to either the University of Pennsylvania or Georgetown University, or both.
While reports do not appear to show the Trump administration targeting Georgetown's funding, he and his allies reportedly targeted Georgetown Law in other ways. He has also, in fact, frozen funding to the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater, citing the school's policy on transgender athletes. Thus, universities that have accepted Trump family members are not exempt from the president's funding cuts, suggesting that alleged retaliation against the universities that supposedly rejected Barron Trump is not necessarily driving his decisions.