Rhodes Scholarships Won by 5 at Stanford

By Oliver Staley - Nov 20, 2011 7:50 PM GMT+0700

Stanford University students won five Rhodes Scholarships, while Harvard, Brown and Princeton students took four each as the 32 U.S. recipients of one of the world’s most prestigious academic awards were named today.

The University of Washington had two Scholars and California State University Long Beach and Bard College had their first ever recipients, according to a statement from the Office of the American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust.

The Rhodes Scholarships were established in 1902 in the will of Cecil Rhodes, a British mine operator and explorer who founded what is now the Johannesburg-based De Beers Group. Rhodes Scholarships fund two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in the U.K. Scholars are chosen from more than 1,500 applicants.

Past winners include former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, and Rachel Maddow, host of the similarly named MSNBC news show.

Among this year’s winners were Ronan Farrow, Bard’s youngest graduate ever at 15 in 2004, who grew up with 14 adopted siblings from seven countries speaking six languages, the Rhodes Trust said. Bard is located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

This year for the fourth time since 1976, there were more female U.S. Scholars than male, 17 to 15, the Trust said.

The total value of a scholarship is about $50,000 a year, the Trust said.

Before this year, 332 students from Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had been named Rhodes Scholars, the most from any U.S. university.

With today’s results, 3,260 Americans representing 314 colleges and universities have received Rhodes Scholarships, the Trust said.

Scholars are nominated by their universities and finalists are interviewed. This year, Rhodes finalist Patrick Witt, a quarterback on Yale’s football team, chose not to interview because it conflicted with yesterday’s game against Harvard.

To contact the reporter on this story: Oliver Staley in New York at ostaley@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Kaufman at jkaufman17@bloomberg.net