Anonymous wrote:I did a quick Google when I looked at this and found the following passage on Harvard. It explains why you don't see Harvard grads on DCUM boosting or defending their school. It doesn't need defending. Its success speaks for itself. It seems most others here (including me occasionally) feel insecure enough about their alma maters standing to get into these tit for tats:

Harvard has more alumni, faculty, and researchers who are Nobel laureates (161) and Fields Medal winners (18) than any other university in the world and more alumni who are members of the U.S. Congress, MacArthur Fellows, Rhodes Scholars (375), and Marshall Scholars (252) than any other university in the United States.[18] Its alumni also include eight U.S. presidents and 188 living billionaires, the most of any university. Fourteen Turing Award laureates have been affiliated with Harvard. Students and alumni have also won ten Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes, and 108 Olympic medals (46 gold medals), and they have founded many notable companies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...from a much larger base of students. Funny that you don’t think that matters.

So the biggest schools should have more winners then, right? But they don't.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...from a much larger base of students. Funny that you don’t think that matters.

So the biggest schools should have more winners then, right? But they don't.

No they don't, but the comparison accounting for size puts the disparities on a per capita basis in even sharper contrast.

Harvard has produced 369 Rhodes Scholars (they had 6 in the most recent cycle), but it actually has only 6,755 undergraduates. Michigan, a very good school, has produced 27 Rhodes Scholars and has 29,821 undergraduates. If Michigan produced Rhodes Scholars at the same rate as Harvard, it would have produced 1,629 Rhodes Scholars. Given that there are only 32 Rhodes Scholars in the U.S. each year, that would be 51 years worth of Rhodes Scholars. On a per capita basis, Harvard has produce about 60X as many as Michigan.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...from a much larger base of students. Funny that you don’t think that matters.

So the biggest schools should have more winners then, right? But they don't.

Anonymous wrote:I’m shocked that UVA has so many. I went there an eon ago, and I didn’t hear anything about applying for a Rhodes or Truman or Marshall or any other of those scholarships. I graduated from UVA with a 4.0 and went to Yale for law school, so I think I would have been competitive if I had applied. But I didn’t know anything about hothouse scholarships until I got to Yale and my classmates were talking about them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just read a beautiful article by UVA's president about the selection of Eileen Ying '20 and the role of the Office of Citizen Scholar Development. I think that you will find a similar office at many of the Rhodes-heavy universities. Growing Rhodes scholars takes cultivation!

UMD does have an office that helps students to apply for national and international post-graduation fellowships, but perhaps it is newer? The only time that I have heard it mentioned was at my DC's Banneker Key luncheon. My general impression is that the top students are UMD are likely to want to go to med school or straight into a lucrative computer science career. The Rhodes Scholarship seems to be more for future Ph.D types, whether they are in the humanities or in engineering.

Some of the universities on the list benefit from having a truly geographically diverse student body. A HYPS school could have Rhodes winners representing the regions of Texas, California, Ontario, Bermuda, and South Africa, all in the same year! UMD is unlikely to have this sort of geographic diversity.

Here is the article from the UVA president: https://uvamagazine.org/articles/from_the_president_uvas_road_to_rhodes_and_why_it_matters

Nice attempt at an excuse for UMD. Why does MIT have so many Rhodes Scholars? Guessing they might also have a path to lucrative computer science careers. Right?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...from a much larger base of students. Funny that you don’t think that matters.

So the biggest schools should have more winners then, right? But they don't.

Anonymous wrote:We need the Top 15 Hothouse Scholarships rankings.

Anonymous wrote:UVA is definately one of the best schools in this nation and it does not often get the respect it deserves because it is a public. It sends students to the Rhodes every. single. year. which is really impressive if you're comparing it to the other hotshots on this list.