<p>Psh, Rhodes Scholar over 4.0 Harvard kid
Easy one.</p>
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<p>oh man they gave a kinesiology major a Rhodes scholarship? come on . . .</p>
<p>Is a 3.75 at Harvard more impressive than a 3.75 at FSU? Definitely…but the Rhodes scholarship criteria is much more than grades or test scores. Leadership, character, possessing a variety of talents, etc. are more important. Since highschool Myron’s has planned to become a doctor and open clinics to help children and needy people in the Bahamas, where he has family roots. Those things impress the Rhodes Scholarship committee much more than someone’s GPA…and is there any doubt that Myron would have had a 4.0 GPA if he didn’t play football which takes up a huge amount of time in addition to all of his charitable work? (And with respect to the Rice FB player you mentioned, I doubt those guys have mandatory 5 am workouts in the off-season like FSU, and that guy he was drafted in the 5th round, not the 2nd. Did Rice even win a game last year?)</p>
<p>There are plenty of athletes with very good grades, but Myron is different: ESPN’s recruiting services ranked him as the number one high school football prospect in the country, and his remarkable abilities earned him a staggering 83 scholarship offers from Division I institutions. He maintained a 4.0 grade point average and accumulated 21 advanced placement (AP) credits. Beyond the classroom, Myron played saxophone in the high school band, served as sports editor of the school newspaper and starred in the lead role in his high school’s production of Fiddler on the Roof. Friends and family often remark that athlete and scholar Myron Rolle was born to lead, but driven to serve. Myron’s philanthropic endeavors began at an early age when he volunteered for Habitat for Humanity in high school and helped build homes in Florida and West Virginia. Other philanthropic endeavors include:</p>
<p>Our Way to Health Program</p>
<p>Inspired by a newspaper story about the high rates of diabetes and obesity suffered by Native American children, Myron developed a program through his Foundation and in partnership with the Seminole Tribe of Florida to provide fitness training, health education and diabetes awareness to American Indian children. Originally implemented with fifth graders at a charter school in Okeechobee, Florida, the program caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Interior which recently expanded it to American Indian schools in New Mexico and Arizona.</p>
<p>The Myron L. Rolle Medical Clinic and Sports Complex</p>
<p>A capital campaign is currently underway to fund the development of a free health services clinic and sports complex in Exuma, Bahamas, Myron’s parents’ hometown and his “second home.” The facility will provide much-needed health services to residents of Exuma, as well as state-of-the-art wellness and training facilities for athletes and visitors. The project will be executed in conjunction with the Bahamas Ministry of Health and the Florida State University College of Medicine. Myron has already acquired five acres of land and met with an architect to develop plans for the facility, which he hopes will be completed within the next few years.</p>
<p>Myron Rolle Wellness and Leadership Academy</p>
<p>Myron strongly believes in developing and preparing our youth to become effective future leaders, which is why he partnered with the Florida Department of Children and Families and the Florida National Guard in 2009 to host the Myron Rolle Wellness and Leadership Academy for 100 foster children ages 12 to 14 in Starke, Florida. Through his Foundation, Myron plans to host similar camps in the future.</p>
<p>More from The New York Times (during Rolle’s junior year at FSU in 2008): </p>
<p>A native of Galloway, N.J., Rolle arrived at Florida State from the Hun School in Princeton as the country’s No. 1 football recruit. He has had an all-American-caliber junior season, but Rolle’s list of off-field accomplishments is as lengthy as it is daunting.
He graduated from Florida State in two and a half years with a degree in pre-med and a grade point average of 3.75. He is so studious that the Seminoles’ defensive coordinator, Mickey Andrews, publicly criticized him for studying too much last year, saying it affected Rolle’s preparation for football. Rolle said the criticism was a “little unfair.”</p>
<p>“I gave him the benefit of the doubt,” Rolle said of Andrews. “I don’t think he’s ever sat through an organic chemistry lecture and seen just how difficult it is. He’s been through a couple ballgames, but that’s a different arena right there.”</p>
<p>Outside of class, Rolle was awarded a $4,000 grant for cancer research over the summer, and also started a program to help educate Seminole Indian children in Okeechobee, Fla., about the importance of health and physical fitness. He belongs to a fraternity, helps tutor his teammates, has studied in London and has written for The New York Times.</p>
<p>Those around Rolle say that he always has a plan. When Rolle arrived at the Hun School for his junior season of high school, he told the athletic director Bill Quirk his plan. He wanted to play big-time college football, graduate in three years, become a high N.F.L. draft pick, become a doctor and open a clinic to help needy people in the Bahamas, where he has family roots.</p>
<p>Quirk has marveled at how Rolle has stuck to that plan, and considers Rolle a “once in a lifetime” student-athlete whose legacy resonates off the field as much as on it. He calls Rolle a role model for time management and remembers his spending hours tutoring his teammates.“He had this endless clock where he never seemed to run out of time for helping people out,” Quirk said. </p>
<p>Tim Logan, a professor and chemistry and biochemistry at Florida State, said he recalled having two football players in class in 14 years there. “The other one was a walk-on,” he said.</p>
<p>Logan said he did not know Rolle was in his class until Rolle approached him after class to see if a television station could tape one of his lectures for a segment it was doing on Rolle. Logan then winced, because he is a football fan and had made a few disparaging remarks about the team’s performance. He apologized, and Rolle politely said that the comments had been “killing me.” </p>
<p>Despite the digs, Rolle enjoyed Logan’s biochemistry class so much that he applied and was awarded a research grant to work with Logan over the summer. He spent three hours every morning studying the growth of proteins in different kinds of cancer. Rolle found himself so intrigued with the research that he occasionally went back at night, by himself, to do extra work.
“Myron has such a tremendous mind and intellect that it’s exciting to think about what he could do if he didn’t have all the distractions of football,” Logan said. </p>
<p>Along with extra research, Rolle is particularly proud of the project called Our Way to Health that he created to educate fifth-grade students at Pemayetv Emahakv Charter School, for Seminole Indians in Okeechobee.</p>
<p>The project was hatched when a group of Seminole students visited Florida State on a field trip to the state capitol in Tallahassee. Rolle spoke to them and was touched by the demeanor of the children. He approached a professor, Sally Karioth, about the project and started it with funding from Florida State. </p>
<p>Rolle’s program has been instituted in fifth-grade classes, which compete in teams in everything from physical fitness to “Jeopardy”-style questions about diabetes and heart disease. The winning team was introduced on the field between quarters at Florida State’s game against Virginia Tech this year.</p>
<p>Rolle spent a week in Orlando last summer with tribe leaders, and he has twice taken the six-hour drive to Okeechobee to monitor the program’s progress. Karioth has a pile of thank-you letters written to her and Rolle from the students. They include everything from the confession of a converted Miami Hurricanes fan to the lyrics of an educational rap song a student wrote about the signs of a heart attack.</p>
<p>“That was the first time I got to feel I had changed the life of someone,” Rolle said.
On the field this year, Rolle’s play has improved to the point that Andrews said that Rolle was having as good a season as any safety who had played at the university. That is especially high praise considering Florida State’s history of success. Rolle has had the full support of the coaching staff to risk missing all or some of the game against Maryland on Saturday to be interviewed for the Rhodes Scholarship.</p>
<p>“In my 55 years coaching, I’ve never had one quite like him,” Coach Bobby Bowden said.</p>
<p>I didn’t know the Rhodes Scholarship had an AA component. Why the British gotta be so damn liberal.</p>
<p>Rolle seems like a good guy, surely a very liberal one, and very smart for a black guy. I wonder how he got along with all his dumbass teammates. </p>
<p>FSU abused his academic abilities. When ESPN reported on the academic scandal at FSU, FSU repeatedly used Rolle as a red herring. It was disgusting. </p>
<p>After everything, I think he deserved the scholarship.</p>
<p>You might be interested in knowing that Myron does not have much time at Oxford for socializing. He’s there with both his brother and a trainer (!! Wonder who pays for that?) and spends much of his non-class time in training. I have this from a close observer. </p>
<p>He’s in a one year masters program, and one year is minimum residency for the Rhodes. He’s already signalled that he’s in the NFL draft this year. And although if he wants a degree from Oxford, he needs to take exams in June, no one will force him to complete a degree. If he does well in the draft, he may just bag the degree and focus on training for the fall. After all, not earning a degree hardly handicapped Bill Clinton. No one called him a “failed Rhodes Scholar” or a “Rhodes Scholar without a degree”. In fact, not completing is fairly common among certain groups, including military academy grads, who often are given only one year for a Rhodes.</p>
<p>“Wonder who pays for that?”</p>
<p>Just because he is black doesn’t mean his family is poor.</p>
<p>Cornnolio,</p>
<p>What makes you think his family would pay these expenses? </p>
<p>What does skin color have to do with it?</p>
<p>You are racist, clueless, dense or all of the previous.</p>
<p>all of you need to quit being jealous. You all wish you were a beast on the grid iron like he was, you all wish you were as smart as he was, you all wish you could manage your time like he does. quit hating</p>
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<p>Harvard is pretty grade-inflated, you know.</p>
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<p>Not nearly enough to render the original comment unfounded. The average GPA at Harvard is well above the national average because the students are well above the national average in factors relevant to one’s GPA.</p>
<p>I’m having trouble reconciling the OP’s elitism with their awful spelling and grammar. Revealing cognitive dissonance?</p>
<p>OP, I understand what you’re trying to say, and to be honest if I had competed for the same scholarship against Rolle I might have been frustrated. That being said, I still think Rolle is a good role model, and if he managed to complete all the pre-med requirements AND be an impactful D1 football player, then I am impressed.</p>
<p>Also…if there were, as you so eloquently stated, “millions of academically superior” applicants, whih I assume you feel were more deserving of the scholarship, then I wouldn’t say the scholarship is overrated.</p>
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<p>this isn’t impressive at all! this is like what, maybe a few intro science classes?</p>
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<p>You cannot respond effectively to his/her arguments and so you insult his/her spelling and grammar, which are tolerable and do not detract from his/her arguments. It is clear that you did not even bother to consider whether they were reasonable or compelling.</p>
<p>The OP’s arguments are weak because he neglects to consider that Rhodes Scholars are selected by “district,” and therefore Rolle may have been the most compelling candidate to emerge from his district.</p>
<p>OP needs to stop being so arrogant.</p>
<p>kwu,</p>
<p>I’m perfectly willing to engage in intelligent debate. Let me know when one comes along.</p>
<p>If I were Oxford, I’d far rather have winners like Rolle than losers like the OP.</p>
<p>^ Except that if you were at Oxford, you would have seen little of Rolle. My D is in the same program at Oxford as Rolle, and has seen very little of him. I don’t intend this as a negative comment on him. Perhaps its even very positive, because it shows his focus.</p>
<p>It’s common knowledge, as well as openly acknowledged, that the Rhodes Scholarship “fancies” those with athletic strengths.</p>
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<p>Please show source for the 21 AP credits. There is no way he got 21 AP credits at that high school.</p>