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E-PrinceAs of Aug. 1, 2005, heading into my senior year at Princeton, I had decided not to apply for the Rhodes. I did not believe that students who were neither rising shapers of politics or science nor standout athletes stood ...(back to the article)
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Are Dean Ordiway and Prof. Katz leaving Princeton? That's what people are saying.
i wish i had read something like this my senior year :)--- '09
I loved this article- reminding us all to be generous and not condemnatory. I will try to remember the advice from Miller's advisors that it is "best to be generous and not condemnatory in one’s thoughts about the works and motivations of others, even if they represented the very things one hoped to set oneself against." I need to read more articles about such delightful optimism, persistence and wisdom.
given that Prof Katz is a young, fully tenured professor who sits on many powerful committees (and is also currently chair of linguistics), I can't imagine a single reason for him to leave.
We'll probably never see an eating club officer win a Rhodes again.
@not an idiot - Being chair of a lousy program in linguistics is an excellent reason to leave Princeton. Also, Prof. Katz and Dean Ordiway are friends and Ordiway and his assistant Traci have been fired under unclear circumstances. Ordiway and Katz aren't talking.
Katz is one of the coolest things about Princeton. I think I'll be significantly less happy here if he leaves. Oh well.
Congratulations on your Rhodes! One tires of all the Rhodies setting out to save Africa, or the ozone layer or some nearly-extinct South American tribe. We need to send more eggheads to Oxford! Bravo for the faculty who seek and groom students for the Rhodes and care about stuff like linguistics and Milton. Without them, the world looks like Facebook, reality tv and consulting.
"as have a few other inferior institutions like Harvard"--by this you indicate that both Harvard and Princeton are inferior institutions. Put a comma after "other" if you want to claim that Harvard is inferior to Princeton, a claim made amusing by its arrogance in light of the difficulty you have conveying your meaning in this very sentence.
I would encourage juniors to apply the Rhodes Scholarship next fall. You're going to have a huge leg up having gone to Princeton, because more than any other school, we've had the opportunity to develop deep faculty relationships that make for compelling recommendations. That advantage started freshman week.
The Rhodes looks for initiative and ambition "to fight the World's fight". Choose your faculty letters carefully - and consider letters from one or more classmates and from non-academic colleagues who know your accomplishments and goals for the future first-hand. I applied as a first year Yale law student. I got great support from Princeton institutionally, and Yale not so much. But it is really up to the applicant to make the winning case, which is always unique. It is the most open-minded selection process in existence, not just grades or varsity letters. True ambition and commitment to service can't be scripted. So I don't think the formal grooming process and elaborate mock interviews that some schools have help one bit.
If you are fortunate enough to be a finalist, get to know your fellow candidates while you wait together. There won't be any losers there. Learning about other very interesting people can be a great antidote for anxiety. Plus, I made some new friends who did not become classmates at Oxford.
Resist the temptation to compare Princeton numbers to Harvard or Yale. The selection process is decentralized and always on the look for small institutions, but there are no goals or quotas. We had no Rhodes Scholars my senior year ('76) and six the next year (when I won) which was the first competition to allow women applicants. 5 of the 6 were men, including 3 of the 4 elected from the mid-Atlantic region (which has since been split up). There are no patterns here. It's really on your own qualifications, the most important of which is ambition and confidence in a life plan that leaves the world a better place.