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Winning those awards is an amazing distinction, but it is more a question of luck than ability.
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<p>Actually, I think it should be pointed out that it's also a matter of institutional support. Let's face it. Some schools (i.e. those very top universities) are very very efficient at producing lots of Rhodes (and presumably Marshall) Scholars. They have an entire system set up to churn out Scholars like clockwork. Other schools, not so much.</p>
<p>Here's what the last Cal Rhodes winner has to say about it.</p>
<p>*not only should more Berkeley students be applying for the Oxford education the Rhodes supports, but the institution should be more active in identifying potential selectees and guiding them through the process.</p>
<p>That neither of these things are happening to the extent hed recommend, Luthra says, is easily accounted for. Berkeley undergrads, he believes, tend to psych themselves out about their chances of winning a prize that they see as awarded more often to their private-college counterparts than to public-university students. Yet as a group, he insists, his peers are far more accomplished than they give themselves credit for with nothing to fear from competition with the Ivy League types who are selected for the Rhodes on what sometimes seems a revolving-door basis. (Harvard, for example, placed 5 students among the 32 selected nationwide this year; last year it placed 6.) </p>
<p>The second discouraging factor, according to Luthra, is that Berkeley faculty arent doing as much as they could to encourage qualified students to apply. </p>
<p>The fact that Berkeley has sent precisely three students to Oxford in just under 30 years, with long intervals between each winner, has a self-fulfilling aspect to it, Luthra believes. Theres a slippery slope of self-confidence, he says, that you encounter when someone hasnt won from here in two years, then three, then thirteen. I was talking to some juniors who I thought would make great candidates, and they believed no one from Berkeley had ever won! </p>
<p>...</p>
<p>The level of faculty awareness about the scholarship itself is tremendous, obviously, Luthra says, but its at the next level where a faculty member decides to actually nominate a student or two, or to approach qualified students and tell them about the scholarship that the steps arent being taken. They have a huge role to play, probably the biggest role in the process since so many students will never hear about the Rhodes in the first place if a faculty member doesnt tell them about it and encourage them to apply.</p>
<p>Getting to know students as individuals
Theres more to faculty involvement in Rhodes candidacies than that, of course including the writing of letters of recommendation , which to be effective must show a more detailed familiarity with a students academic skills than is acquired at the podium in a 600-seat lecture hall. But its a vitalpart of the process, and one that, according to Alicia Hayes, program coordinator of the Scholarship Connection Office, contributes more than Luthra acknowledges to the reluctance of Berkeley students to follow through on their impulse to apply for a Rhodes or other prestigious scholarship. </p>
<p>I dont think that our students here at Berkeley believe theres a bias against public universities, she says. Their fears stem instead from the requirement of getting recommendation letters from faculty members. I see that frequently; I think its the most challenging aspect of applying for these kinds of scholarships at a big campus like this.</p>
<p>One faculty member with extensive experience in the Rhodes application process agrees with Hayes. Steven Botterill, associate professor of Italian Studies, chaired the Rhodes/Mitchell/Marshall subcommittee this past year. At Ivy League colleges, with their smaller student bodies and more intimate faculty/student ratios, he observes, the process of grooming potential Rhodes Scholars begins early on in a students undergraduate career. By the time students at Berkeley make closer contact with faculty, its often their junior year and thats a bit late to be building the kind of close intellectual relationship with a faculty member that supports the recommendation the Rhodes committees want to see. Weve seen it year after year here: With the best will in the world, Berkeley faculty dont get to know students as individuals when theyre teaching large lower-division courses with 700 or 800 students.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2003/02/19_rhode.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2003/02/19_rhode.shtml</a></p>
<p>Here's what the campus newspaper of the University of Michigan (the Michigan Daily) had to say about it.</p>
<p>*The reason Harvard and Yale students regularly account for about 40 percent of Rhodes Scholarship winners isn't because their top students are substantially brighter than their peers at other prestigious colleges. </p>
<p>Harvard and Yale students fare better because their schools are better at identifying, recruiting and coaching students who are bright enough to win prestigious scholarships and awards. ...</p>
<p>The University's Rhodes drought seems to have more to do with having too few applicants than having too many nominees. </p>
<p>Monts acknowledged that the University has a hard time recruiting Rhodes applicants compared with schools like Harvard and Yale. </p>
<p>"We just don't have the mechanisms that some of the smaller prestigious private schools have," Monts said. </p>
<p>At schools like Yale, students interact closely with faculty for their whole college career. Small classes - ones taught by professors, not graduate students - are a regular feature of a student's schedule from their first day on campus. This close contact allows Yale faculty to identify outstanding students early, refer them to the Yale office of International Education and Fellowship Programs and encourage then to apply. </p>
<p>The University of Michigan does not have a similar infrastructure. The first time most students hear about the scholarships from the University is when they receive a mass e-mail from Lester Monts' office - an impersonal message that is neither signed nor has a reply address. Not surprisingly, few students attend the informational sessions put on by the council and even fewer apply for University endorsement. </p>
<p>Furthermore, Monts said the University does not an internal recruitment mechanism like that of Yale or Harvard. Many students, especially underclassmen, aren't close enough to their professors to get noticed.</p>
<p>"Many times we don't really discover the genius of students until they are nominated by faculty," Monts said. "In a way, our students are on their own the first two years."</p>
<p>The University does not lack potential Rhodes Scholarship winners. Every year, University of Michigan graduates gain places in the most prestigious graduate and professional schools in the world. </p>
<p>The quality of students is high, but the University still doesn't win its share of Rhodes Scholarships. </p>
<p>LSA senior Dan Ray is one example of missed potential. Ray, who will be attending Harvard Law in the fall and who teaches LSAT courses, won the University's most competitive merit-based scholarship. But even though the University singled out Ray as one of its top four students by awarding him the Bentley Scholarship, they did not make a significant effort to encourage him to apply for a prestigious British scholarship. </p>
<p>Ray simply received the same mass e-mail that every other 3.7 GPA student at the University does. </p>
<p>The University's lack of Rhodes infrastructure is not insignificant. Applying for a Rhodes, Marshall or Mitchell scholarship is a lot of work. An applicant must secure numerous letters of recommendation and be prepared for intensive interviews if they are selected as a finalist. The University does provide mock interviews and help with letters of recommendation for the students it decides to endorse. But the preparation pales in comparison to a nominee from Yale. There, applicants are walked through the process by a few employees who work full-time coaching Yale students for prestigious British scholarships. By contrast, the University hasn't dedicated even one full-time employee to the undertaking.</p>
<p>Monts said the students nominated by the University should have no trouble winning prestigious awards. </p>
<p>"We get people to the national levels," Monts said. </p>
<p>"And after the national level, it is a crap shoot."</p>
<p>There is a bit of subjectivity to all highly competitive, interview-based awards. </p>
<p>But the reason the University does not win more Rhodes Scholarships is not because of the random nature of the process, as Monts suggests. </p>
<p>Rather it is because the University does not make a serious effort to tap its vast potential of competitive Rhodes applicants and fails to give them the support they need to win. *</p>
<p><a href="http://www.michigandaily.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticlePrinterFriendly&uStory_id=78998cfa-3f9a-4dbb-925c-9a47a33e4c3f%5B/url%5D">http://www.michigandaily.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticlePrinterFriendly&uStory_id=78998cfa-3f9a-4dbb-925c-9a47a33e4c3f</a></p>
<p>Think of it this way, Alexandre. Cal has about 23k undergrads. Michigan has about 25k. With that kind of size, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that each school could win at least 1 Rhodes a year. Yet the fact of the matter is, Cal hasn't won one since 2003, Michigan not since 2004 (and that was a Michigan graduate student who won). This year alone, Harvard won 10. That's right - * ten * Rhodes. Yes, the students at Harvard are indeed better than at Cal or Michigan, but come on, they're not THAT much better so as to explain that kind of difference in Scholarship wins. I don't ask for Cal or Michigan to match Harvard in terms of total wins (and certainly not in per-capita wins), but I think given their size, I think it's not unreasonable to expect each of them to produce 1 Rhodes a year. </p>
<p>So while I agree with you that luck has something to do with it, I think there are a lot of institutional factors at work also. I have seen some students who I think might have won the Rhodes, or at least have been strong contenders, if they had gone to another school. Heck, Alexandre, give your accomplishments, you might have won had you gone to another school.</p>