Jenna Bush Hager has a tight bond with her twin sister, Barbara, but they seemed to have very different experiences growing up. The Today host told Hoda Kotb all about it during Friday’s (Nov. 29) broadcast when they were debating whether siblings should always be invited to the same events.
Bush Hager said that, as a twin, she could understand that kids don’t always get invited to the same events as their siblings.
“I will say, as a twin, not everything’s gonna always go perfectly for both,” she told Kotb. “I mean, my sister went to Yale, okay? I didn’t even apply to an Ivy League school.”
She continued, “And it wasn’t like my parents were like, ‘Let’s hope Jenna’s feelings weren’t hurt.’ That was life.”
Bush Hager added that her sister even won a math competition when they were growing up. “I couldn’t even add 3+3!” she said. “But I think you’ve just got to embrace each child. We were definitely invited to different things.” She explained that her mother also took them to events that they were interested in.
“Not everything was together,” Kotb said.
Bush Hager has spoken at length about her how her college experience differed from her sister’s. During a previous broadcast, she and Kotb were discussing how getting rejected from colleges is a “rite of passage” for teens.
“It happens to almost everybody – except for my sister, Barbara Bush,” she said. According to Bush Hager, her sister “got into every school she applied to.”
She also once admitted on the show that she tried riding her sister’s coattails to Stanford University, where she thought she would be accepted automatically because she thought they had a “twin policy.”
“If one twin gets in, they automatically let the other in because they don’t want to crush souls,” she told Kotb, per People.
But her father wasn’t on board with the plan. He was “the opposite of the college admissions scandal,” she joked. He reportedly discouraged her from applying, telling her, “‘No you’re not. Don’t ruin her chances!’”
Today with Hoda & Jenna airs on weekdays at 10/9c on NBC.