2011 Rhodes Scholars Announced (news item)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
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<p>The</a> Rhodes Scholarships - Press Releases</p>

<p>The Rhodes Trust has just announced the 2011 American Rhodes Scholars. The Rhodes Scholarship is a highly prestigious international award for which 32 Americans are selected each year and are given two to three year scholarships to attend Oxford. </p>

<p>Two years ago, Princeton led the nation with three Rhodes. This year, Harvard, Stanford and the U. of Chicago each had three while Princeton and Yale came in second with two each. Dartmouth also represented the Ivies with a single scholar.</p>

<p>2011 American Rhodes Scholars </p>

<p>3---Harvard, Stanford, U. of Chicago
2---Princeton, Yale</p>

<p>Princeton's American Rhodes winners this year were Mark Jia '10 and Nicholas Di Berardino '11.</p>

<p>Mark Z. Jia '10, Waltham, Massachusetts, graduated from Princeton in June. He is now teaching American politics and constitutional history to aspiring diplomats at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. Mark was deputy national field director of Students for Obama, interned for the Alliance for Justice and in Senator Edward Kennedy’s Office, and is managing editor of Princeton’s progressive magazine. He is also president of the Princeton Chinese Student Association. Born in China, his dream is to one day participate in the constitution-drafting process for a democratizing China. Mark plans to do the M.Sc. in politics at Oxford.</p>

<p>Nicholas A. Di Berardino '11, Westport, is a senior at Princeton where he majors in music (composition). A campus leader in student government and a junior member of Phi Beta Kappa, Nick is an accomplished composer with many awards for his compositions. He has been a composer in residence at the Brevard Music Center and the European American Musical Alliance in Paris. He founded the Undergraduate Composer Collective at Princeton. While in high school, Nick founded a program to collect, refurbish and distribute used instruments and to provide instruction to needy students in Bridgeport. He plans to do the M.Phil. in music at Oxford.</p>

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<p>Continuing a recent trend, many of the scholarships are being awarded to students who have already finished their undergraduate work. In all, 10 of the 32 scholars have already graduated from college.</p>

<p>Harvard, Yale and Princeton are the three leading institutions for American Rhodes Scholarships. The U.S. Military Academy is fourth and Stanford follows just behind.</p>

<p>American Rhodes Scholars</p>

<p>331---Harvard</p>

<p>----gap----</p>

<p>221---Yale
195---Princeton</p>

<p>----gap----</p>

<p>87----U.S. Military Academy (West Point)
86----Stanford
61----Dartmouth
49----U. of Chicago
44----U.S. Naval Academy
43----U.S. Air Force Academy</p>

<p>Harvard's numbers are a little more complicated to unravel since they include all the Radcliffe winners even when Radcliffe was a separate institution. International Rhodes (i.e. scholars attending American universities who applied for and won Rhodes Scholarships from their home countries) also complicate the picture here. Harvard and Princeton have had more international Rhodes Scholars than any other school, but comparing the numbers becomes very difficult as they are not centrally reported.</p>

<p>On a per capita basis, Harvard is still far out in front with Princeton and Yale trailing.</p>

<p>American Rhodes Scholars
(per 1,000 graduates over the period of the scholarship)</p>

<p>2.77-----Harvard
2.34-----Princeton
2.30-----Yale</p>

<p>As I've noted before, some feel that the Rhodes scholarship is notoriously incestuous. Former scholars form the committees that pick future scholars so there tends to be a good deal of inbreeding. I believe that this helps explain why Harvard, Princeton and Yale have done so much better in this competition than other schools. Most other major scholarships, including the Marshall Scholarships, do not do this.</p>

<p>The remaining foreign Rhodes Scholars will be chosen within the next few weeks. Often, one or two of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars will actually be attending U.S. institutions. The official announcement of the Marshall Scholars won't occur until the beginning of December.</p>

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<p>This can’t be remotely significant. Women were first allowed to compete for Rhodes Scholarships in 1977, i.e., college class of 1978 (since at that point it was quite rare for people who had already graduated to win). The formal merger of Radcliffe and Harvard also occurred in 1977, although Radcliffe students had been getting Harvard degrees since the early '60s. Admissions had largely been coordinated for several years before the merger, and the Radcliffe dorms were incorporated into the Harvard house system by 1975. The one or two Rhodes scholars who technically may have been graduates of Radcliffe were Harvard students for all intents and purposes.</p>

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<p>A friend of mine is a Harvard grad who went to Law School at Yale. He was also a Rhodes candidate who ultimately got a Marshall Scholarship. (All this about 20 years ago.) He noted when he got to Yale at that time how little the University did to promote these kinds of scholarships relative to what Harvard did. Even then, Harvard had sort of a “machine” in place to find the best candidates, groom them, and coach them through the process. He was shocked by how “on their own” Yale candidates were and how little profile the scholarships had among undergrads.</p>

<p>I know Yale does more now than it used to help serious candidates; I suspect Princeton has picked up the pace as well.</p>

<p>This may partially explain Harvard’s extreme out-performance in the Rhodes.</p>

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<p>Thank you, JHS. It was a minor point but you are correct. I had thought (until checking more closely) that women were allowed to compete for the Rhodes significantly earlier than that.</p>

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<p>I didn’t think it was a big point, PtonGrad. It just brought me up short – sort of a “Huh?” reaction. </p>

<p>It was easy for me, because (a) my class was the first class in which women could apply for a Rhodes, and it was a big deal, and (b) I had a female cousin in the class of 1977 at Harvard, and for a bit a girlfriend in the class of 1978, and they were both very much at Harvard, not Radcliffe, including living in river houses. So I more or less lived that particular moment.</p>

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<p>Mark Jia is such an idiot, I can’t believe he won.
Sort of an embarrassment to Princeton really.</p>

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<p>^Wow. What a horrible thing to say. </p>

<p>Just joined CC today I see. Well most people on this forum are actually pretty respectful of each other. Why don’t you stick to the Yale forum?</p>

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<p>

UNC also produced two Rhodes Scholars this year (1 was a Canadian national) along with Princeton and Yale.
[UNC</a> News - Two UNC seniors named Rhodes Scholars](<a href=“http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/4122/75/]UNC”>http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/4122/75/)</p>

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I think you accidentally missed a number of schools here. UVA has 47 Rhodes Scholar, UNC has 47 Rhodes Scholars and Duke has 43 Rhodes Scholars to date after this year’s announcement so they all belong on this list.</p>

<p>[UNC</a> News - Two UNC seniors named Rhodes Scholars](<a href=“http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/4122/75/]UNC”>http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/4122/75/)
<a href=“http://www.cavalierdaily.com/2010/11/22/college-student-receives-2010-rhodes-scholarship/[/url]”>http://www.cavalierdaily.com/2010/11/22/college-student-receives-2010-rhodes-scholarship/&lt;/a&gt;
[Duke</a> Senior Receives Rhodes Scholarship](<a href=“http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2010/11/rhodes.html]Duke”>http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2010/11/rhodes.html)</p>

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This may be true for Harvard and Yale, but Princeton has lagged considerably behind its two peers in Rhodes Scholarship production in the past 15 years and so.</p>

<ol>
<li>Harvard: 50</li>
<li><p>Yale: 31</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford: 20</p></li>
<li><p>Chicago: 19</p></li>
<li><p>Princeton: 17</p></li>
<li><p>Duke: 16</p></li>
<li><p>MIT: 14</p></li>
<li><p>Brown, Wash U: 9</p></li>
<li><p>Columbia: 8</p></li>
<li><p>Dartmouth: 5 </p></li>
<li><p>Cornell: 5</p></li>
<li><p>UPenn: 4</p></li>
<li><p>Northwestern: 3</p></li>
<li><p>Caltech, JHU: 2</p></li>
</ol>

<p>As you can see, there is a clear separation between Harvard, Yale and the next 5 schools including Princeton. The historical total is very controversial since the fellowships were allocated in a manner that benefited certain states while hurt other IN ADDITION to the fact that HYP are the oldest Ivies and have had a giant headstart in churning out Rhodes winners.</p>

<p>The Rhodes folks themselves say this:

So yes, looking at more recent years is important. Even the experts in this area (that is to say, the Rhodes folks themselves) say as much.</p>

<p>I don’t mean to put down Princeton in any manner because it is a fine institution and one of the best schools in the U.S. I just wanted to correct PtonGrad2000’s statement that the Rhodes Committee is incestuous in a manner that benefits Harvard, Yale and Princeton equally when in reality the former two seem to be far and away the greatest benefactors of this alleged practice.</p>

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<p>I can’t stand Princeton, so don’t take this as a defense of Old Nassau or anything. But unlike Duke, at least Princeton does not buy its future Rhodes Scholars with merit $$$.</p>

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<p>Don’t they teach you not to PLAGIARIZE at Duke?</p>

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<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065930925-post39.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065930925-post39.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Well, not as much as you’re just trying to promote Duke “in any manner.”</p>

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It’s College Confidential, relax.</p>

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Every non-Ivy League school besides Stanford and MIT gives out merit scholarships. There’s nothing wrong with this practice. Besides, HYP usually tries to adjust its financial aid packages to give prospective students as much money as possible when they are made aware that they have also been offered full ride merit scholarships elsewhere, so a financial difference isn’t usually the only reason a cross admit chooses Chicago or Duke.</p>

<p>You do realize that HYP are the best schools in the country because they are wealthy right? Your silly accusation of Duke “buying future Rhodes Scholars with $$$” is akin to me saying that Harvard buys students with its massive endowment, which gives them access to unbeatable resources and opportunities. Students usually go for the best value.</p>

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Uh, notice how I celebrated the accomplishments of UVA and UNC as well. Nice try.</p>

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<p>This is what I’d expect an internet plagiarist to say.</p>

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<p>It’s wrong if it comes at the expense of need-based aid.</p>

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<p>It may not be the only reason, but it’s almost always the main one.</p>

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<p>Yes.</p>

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<p>Need-based FA =/= Merit-based FA</p>

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<p>That’s why I said that the main (if not the only) reason a student would choose Duke over HYP is merit $$$.</p>

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<p>You were attempting to be subtle. But you failed.</p>

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<p>It seems that it’s often difficult to post anything on CC without starting a fight. That was certainly not what I intended and I hope this thread doesn’t become an argument over the merits of Duke, one of the great schools in the country.</p>

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<p>Certainly great for UNC but, as I noted above, I was confining the counting to just U.S. Scholars since the reporting of foreign Rhodes is not centralized and easy to find. Not all of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars have been chosen and there may be more who attend U.S. schools.</p>

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<p>You’re right in part. I left UVA and Brown off the list in the range I was showing. I arbitrarily stopped the listing before getting to MIT, Duke and UNC but I’m happy to add them. Here’s the corrected list. Remember that this is for American Scholars only which is why the numbers for Duke and UNC are lower than yours.</p>

<p>American Rhodes Scholars</p>

<p>331—Harvard</p>

<p>----gap----</p>

<p>221—Yale
195—Princeton</p>

<p>----gap----</p>

<p>87----U.S. Military Academy (West Point)
86----Stanford</p>

<p>61----Dartmouth</p>

<p>49----U. of Chicago
47----U. of Virginia
46----Brown
44----U.S. Naval Academy
43----U.S. Air Force Academy
42----U. of North Carolina
40----Duke, MIT</p>

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<p>Lesdia, I’m afraid that you misunderstand the meaning of the statement from the Rhodes committee. The advantage to which they are referring (and which no longer exists) benefited schools drawing their students from a few sparsely populated states. Since the scholarships were awarded by state rather than on the basis of population, the students from those schools tended to have an enormous advantage in applying for the scholarship. As a student at the University of Montana or the University of Idaho, your chances were improved because you were competing against so many fewer applicants than if you were applying from a home state with a large population. That advantage was eliminated when the program was changed so that the scholarship ‘regions’ with their Scholar allotments had roughly equal populations. The old system actually disfavored students from heavily populated states in the northeast who found themselves competing against each other in large numbers. In other words, there was no advantage under the old system for schools like Harvard, Princeton and Yale and the historical statistics are both comparable and meaningful especially as among those three.</p>

<p>There is, however, some bias in this process. The Rhodes committee, for obvious reasons, does not wish to make this a topic of discussion but I believe that their recent change to a rotating grouping of states within districts was intended to address this and break the power of some of the older, more biased, selection committees. Some selection committees (particularly the Chicago-based District 10 committee) seem always to select Ivy League graduates despite their relatively low representation in those geographical regions. Other districts seem never to select an Ivy League student. It would be very interesting to know the alma maters of the members of each selection committee. In the case of the District 10 committee I think it would be quite revealing.</p>

<p>You refer to the “head start” that some of the nation’s older schools allegedly had. The Rhodes Scholarship was initiated at the beginning of the 20th century. Most of the schools we are discussing (not just Harvard, Princeton and Yale) were founded in the 19th century. By the time the scholarship appeared all were well-established. I think there were other reasons for the bias. This is not likely to be one of them.</p>

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<p>To be fair, Chicago (est. 1890) and Stanford (est. 1891) had been founded for less than a generation at that time, so I doubt that they were “well-established.” Duke (est. 1838) and Cornell (est. 1865) had been around longer, so they did have more time to “catch up.”</p>

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<p>Actually, at the beginning of the 20th Century, Chicago and Stanford (and Cornell) were all very well established. Chicago, Stanford, and Cornell were all among the 15 founding members of the Association of American Universities (and Chicago one of the five conveners), something that at the time pretty much identified what the leading American universities were. Cornell, as the first co-ed, racially (and economically) integrated research university, and also the place where “majors” were first introduced, was probably the most admired and imitated university of that time, at least outside the South, and it was really the model for the whole generation of new universities that followed it, including Stanford, Chicago, Johns Hopkins . . . and ultimately everyone.</p>

<p>Although Duke traces its history back to 1838, when it was “Brown’s Schoolhouse”, it didn’t become a full university (and didn’t become “Duke”) until the 1920s. It took until the 1960s for it to begin to emerge as a national university.</p>

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<p>Here’s a quirky twist to the Princeton Rhodes story. There is an article in today’s Daily Princetonian addressing the issue that no Princeton woman has won a Rhodes since 2003, even though women are awarded about 44% of Rhodes scholarships nationally:</p>

<p>[No</a> women named Rhodes scholars at U. since 2003 - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/11/23/26991/]No”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/11/23/26991/)</p>

<p>I did a little digging on the rhodes organization website and collected the following data:
Since 2003,</p>

<p>Harvard has had 23 Rhodes winners, 9 of whom have been women (42%)</p>

<p>Yale has had 16 winners, 7 of whom were women (45%)</p>

<p>Princeton has had 10 winners, none of whom were women (0%)</p>

<p>What do you think is going on at Princeton? Just an 8 year fluke, or something systematic and institutional?</p>

<p>I didn’t tab the data from other schools, but both Stanford and Chicago had a lot of winners over this period, and many of them were women, too.</p>

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<p>One more Rhodes Scholar for Princeton this year.</p>

<p>“Khameer Kidia ’11 has been named one of Zimbabwe’s two Rhodes Scholars, he confirmed Monday morning. He is a French major and has also been admitted to the Humanities and Medicine Program at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. . . . (continued)”</p>

<p>[Web</a> Update: Kidia '11 wins Zimbabwean Rhodes - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/12/13/27197/]Web”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/12/13/27197/)</p>

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<p>With the announcement that senior Khameer Kidia '11 has won a Rhodes Scholarship, Princeton’s total for the year is now three. Some international scholars still remain to be announced. In the last twenty years, Princeton has averaged about 1 international Rhodes Scholar every two years.</p>