<p>idad, it is no doubt true that a Rhodes may not be the best for someone who is fully committed to a research career, especially in a discipline where Oxford is not the best. I've heard of other potentially strong candidates that did not enter the fray for similar reasons. </p>
<p>Of course, the problem is that, even at 21, a lot of grads who think they know what they want to do in research are wrong - the rate of career switching from one research field to another, from research to something else, and so forth is very high. A Rhodes offers a way to think and learn for two years.</p>
<p>Regarding the student you are helping, perhaps she can diffuse some of the resistance by talking more about the Marshall. Surely some U in the UK is good enough in the field? Then, once she gains their support for the Marshall, the same recs are used for the Rhodes....</p>
<p>One final point to think about is that these days the Rhodes is clearly looking for something more than academic excellence, as you know. For example, most winners this year (although there are interesting exceptions such as a grad from Caltech), at least according to the Rhodes bios, have significant international experience, mostly in developing country settings or issues that relate to them, or they have significant US NGO or poverty oriented non-profit experience. This is consistent with the Rhodes charter.</p>
<p>But I agree that all too frequently, local faculty, especially in the sciences, can be pretty narrow minded. It is too bad.</p>
<p>Beckie80,</p>
<p>This is a question that I've thought a lot about since I started college at Chicago two years ago. When I first decided to attend, I was excited about many of the things you mentioned in your original post. I wanted to go to a school with a strong student body where I could discuss academics with my friends. I wanted a school that took undergraduate teaching seriously, and I wanted to continue to participate in extracurriculars that I had started in high school. I think the college at Chicago offers a perfect environment for people like me, who are serious about academics and enjoy learning for its own sake. Of course there are schools that are similar to Chicago in certain ways, but it's hard to find a school as academically intense as U Chicago. While there are many schools with similar culture, I don't think that any school has quite the same culture as U Chicago.</p>
<p>I also think the University offers much more than just its unique culture. When you go to Chicago, you'll have more academic opportunities than you would have at other schools. As a math major, for example, I can participate in the Directed Reading Program, a free extracurricular program that pairs undergraduates with graduate student mentors to read about advanced math topics and discuss them one-on-one. When I got involved in this program, I realized that there are academic subjects that you simply can't study elsewhere as an undergraduate. Although Chicago is not the only university in the country where people study algebraic K-theory and abstract homotopy theory, it's one of very few, and I believe it's the only school where students have enough access to faculty and graduate students to learn these subjects as undergraduates.</p>
<p>My point is that Chicago has an academic climate that is unique among American colleges, but it also offers more academic opportunities than other schools. For me, this was the real advantage of choosing Chicago for college.</p>