What We Know About Barron Trump and Oxbridge Academy Ahead of His Graduation Day

It’s been a hectic week for Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron Trump, who was slated to make his first foray into politics later this year as a delegate at the Republican National Convention but had it walked back Friday—just a week before his highly anticipated high school graduation.

Little is known about the younger Trump’s time at Oxbridge Academy, with his three years there largely shrouded in secrecy as his parents kept him out of the public eye, but there have been glimpses into what his education was like behind the doors of the West Palm Beach, Florida, private school.

Nearly a dozen recent graduates, students, and their parents declined interview requests about Barron’s time at Oxbridge, which charges $41,500 a year for high schoolers not on scholarship. More than a dozen others did not respond to calls, texts, direct messages, and emails.

Barron was just 10 when he moved into the White House in 2017, transferring from the prestigious Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in New York City to the St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland, bringing U.S. Secret Service agents along with him.

With his 18th birthday having passed in March, and his entrance into the political arena briefly teased, Barron has started receiving media attention similar to that of his half-siblings, who’ve worked alongside Trump during his reign over Republican politics.

All eyes are expected be on Barron’s graduation ceremony Friday, which is slated to commence at 10 a.m. with his dad—who successfully motioned to have the day off from his New York hush money trial—in attendance.

Trump likely won’t be celebrating late into the evening—or even much of the afternoon—with his son on graduation day, however. Instead, he’ll have to hop on a plane to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he’s slated to headline a 5 p.m. fundraising dinner. With flight times from South Florida to the twin cities taking approximately four hours on commercial airliners, and there being a single hour time difference, Trump will realistically need to be airborne by 2 p.m. at the latest if he wishes make the dinner on time.

Assuming Barron doesn’t want to spend his graduation night kicking it with House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) and other Minnesota Republicans, the teenager appears poised to spend the evening alongside his fellow Oxbridge grads.

Oxbridge has shared that its graduates are slated to attend some of the nation’s most prestigious universities, like Brown University and Howard University. Among the institutions attended by last year’s grads included Northwestern, UCLA, Boston University, Cornell, and Vanderbilt.

Loved ones have indicated Barron will attend college, but where he goes is anyone’s guess. Rumors have swirled that he’ll attend the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, like his father, or possibly attend New York University, down the road from his childhood home atop Trump Tower in Manhattan.

While Oxbridge’s social media regularly shares photos of its approximately 500 students, just one of its posts appears to include Barron. His absence makes it unclear if he’s participated in the school’s educational trips around the globe this school year, which included visits to Thailand, Washington, and Cambridge University in England.

The former president’s son appears to have snuck into a single photo posted from its prom in April, pictured above, which showed a stoic Barron amid a sea of smiling students at the $170-a-ticket, Monte Carlo-themed event. He can be seen directly under the “A” of a Monte Carlo poster that was hanging on a wall at the Wyndham Grand Jupiter, 20 minutes north of Mar-a-Lago.

While that snap captured Barron’s face, other photos of him next to his dad have made one thing abundantly clear—he’s one lofty teenager, towering at 6 feet, 7 inches tall.

Trump spoke glowingly about Barron in a radio interview Friday—a break in the secrecy that usually surrounds his youngest son. He said he “does like politics” and occasionally offers him some advice.

“It’s sort of funny. He’ll tell me sometimes, ‘Dad, this is what you have to do,’” Trump told on Kayal and Company on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, a Philadelphia-based radio station.

“He’s a little on the tall side, I will tell you, he’s a tall one, but he is a good-looking guy,” Trump added. “And he’s really been a great student.”

That’s some of the most in-depth comments the Trump family has made about Barron since 2020, when his mom, Melania, revealed that he’s fluent in English and Slovenian, her native language. She told People at the time that Barron would call and speak to his grandmother exclusively in Slovenian, but that there was no question he should be using English in public.

“My opinion is that more languages you speak, better it is, but when you come to America, you speak English,” she said.

There has been no word on what type of grades Barron has had throughout school, but the Trump family has shared that their son loves soccer and that he was frustrated during COVID-19’s peak that he couldn’t get out to play more.

Barron played for D.C. United’s under-12 and Arlington Soccer Association’s under-14 teams while he was in Washington, where he also met soccer star Wayne Rooney in the White House and was gifted a 2018 World Cup souvenir ball that his dad had received from Vladimir Putin.

While he’s clearly a soccer lover, an online roster for Oxbridge does not list Barron as a player on the high school team in any of his years there.

Oxbridge was established in 2011 by the youngest of the billionaire Koch brothers, William I. Koch. He’s not one of the Republican megadonors that have brought the family equal fame and infamy, depending whom you ask, but he’s arguably just as conservative, hosting Florida fundraisers for Trump in the past.

He poured more than $75 million into building the school, the Oxbridge Academy of the Palm Beaches, in hopes of creating a school that would be “student-first” and bring together gifted children from all different socioeconomic backgrounds.

The school has been a boon for producing graduates that attend top universities, but, prior to Barron, it’s yet to boast a truly notable alumnus—unless you count Travis Homer, a University of Miami standout who’s now listed as the No. 4 running back on the Chicago Bears’ depth chart.

Oxbridge has remained a tiny school, even by private school standards in South Florida, but it hasn’t been without its controversy. Its football program was gutted in 2016 after Koch cleaned house at the school’s athletic department, alleging those running it were a “power elites group” who “ran the asylum” and were overspending at every opportunity, he told The New York Times. After a deluge of transfers, the program was scrapped entirely in 2018 and wasn’t revived until last year.

Also in 2016, the former head of school, Robert C. Parsons, was suspended and eventually dismissed due to sexual harassment claims. He had been making an annual salary of about $600,000 to run the school, the Times reported.

Things have appeared to have gone more smoothly in recent years. Free of public scandal and leadership issues, Koch’s schools opened its doors to Barron and his secret service protection once Trump moved out of the White House in 2021. The school’s Director of Advancement, Scott Siegfried, said in 2020 that they looked “forward to welcoming him into our school and community.” He later told the Palm Beach Post that it’s the first time the school had ever needed to coordinate with the Secret Service, which he called “terrific.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.

Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now.