Will Smith is an American actor, producer, and rapper. Will Smith was raised in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and also spent time in Germantown in Northwest Philadelphia. His mother, Caroline, was a school administrator who worked for the Philadelphia school board.

It is untrue, though widely reported, that Will Smith turned down a scholarship to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He never applied to the school, although he was admitted to a pre-engineering program there.

According to Will Smith, "My mother, who worked for the School Board of Philadelphia, had a friend who was the admissions officer at MIT. I had pretty high SAT scores and they needed black kids, so I probably could have gotten in. But I had no intention of going to college."