To follow up on Stanford’s domination of Cal in Big Game, Stanford students also picked up three of the 32 Rhodes Scholarships available to American citizens and another Stanford student won a Mitchell Scholarship. The three Rhodes winners were Fagan Harris ’09 (above middle), who spent the past year studying in Ireland on a Mitchell Scholarship, and current students Fatima Sabar ’11 (not pictured) and Varun Sivaram ’11 (above left). Former ASSU President David Gobaud ’10 (above right, seen with Energy Secretary Steven Chu) was the only Stanford student to win the Mitchell this year.
Based on their bios, we can see that the Stanford Rhodes winners cross a wide spectrum of interests. Fagan Harris, who was ASSU Vice-President from 2008-2009, is focused on on education and juvenile criminal justice and will be doing a D.Phil (roughly equivalent to an American PhD) in education, following the M.A. from Limerick College that he will complete this year as part of his Mitchell Scholarship. Fatima Sabar is a biology major who is focusing on global health, working on a thesis on designing affordable medical products. She plans to pursue an M.Sc. in global health science at Oxford. Varun Sivaram is a double major in engineering physics and international relations and plans to pursue a D.Phil in solar energy materials at Oxford. He also won the Truman Scholarship last year. David Gobaud majored in computer science, but also focused on campus politics and organized a coalition that raised over $450,000 for relief in Haiti. Most recently, he has been an intern at the White House Council of Economic Advisers; he plans to study Human Rights in Criminal Justice at Queen’s College in Belfast in Northern Ireland.
The Rhodes Scholarship provides funding for 2-3 years of study at any one of Oxford’s colleges. This year, with three winners, Stanford was tied for first with Harvard College and the University of Chicago and beat out Princeton (2) and Yale (2). Based on the latest results, Stanford remains 5th in total winners. With 86 winners Stanford falls behind Harvard (331), Yale (221), Princeton (195), and the United States Military Academy at West Point (87).
Congratulations to all of the winners and best of luck in your future endeavors!
