Nebesar '03 wins Gates Scholarship to Cambridge

Following in the footsteps of renowned economic theorist John Maynard Keynes, Gates Cambridge Scholarship recipient Adam Nebesar '03 will soon travel to Cambridge University to work on his master's degree.

"I always wanted to go to England and I didn't have a chance to go abroad in high school or college," said Nebesar, an economics major. "That's always been one of my regrets."

"Cambridge has a great economics program," he added.

The scholarship is sponsored by the Gates Cambridge Trust and offers three degree programs: a second bachelor's degree, a Ph.D and a one-year postgraduate course leading to a master's degree.

The trust provides funding for one to four years of study including Cambridge tuition, a stipend for living expenses and one return airfare, according to the program's website.

The Gates Fellowship was founded in October 2001 when Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, gave $260 million to Cambridge to create a scholarship like that of the Rhodes, according to the website.

The fellowship provides either a second bachelor's degree or a graduate degree to its beneficiaries. This is the second year the award has been given.

Unlike the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships, the Gates Cambridge Scholarship requires applicants to apply to Cambridge and the scholarship separately.

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Nebesar was accepted into Cambridge in December. However, because of the separate applications, he did not find out he was one of 150 finalists for the Gates scholarship until last month.

The finalists were invited down to Annapolis, Md., where interviews took place.

"After the interview, I didn't think I had made it," Nebesar said.

"They asked me this doozy of a question, I got really nervous and just muffed it," he said.

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Nebesar had written on his application that he had taken the course "The Just Society" at Princeton, and the judges chose to ask a difficult question about it.

"They asked me, if I had to teach that course to George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden, what book would I choose to emphasize and why," Nebesar said. "I replied, 'John Rawls, 'A Theory of Justice,' ' but I was so nervous I couldn't remember the name of the book."

"I had spent all that time reading the Wall Street Journal and newspapers to be on top of current events and they asked me a question like that," he said. "I was not prepared for it."

Despite his brief lapse of memory, Nebesar was one of 50 students offered the scholarship. He will undertake a one-year master of philosophy program in economics and is open to the idea of spending even more time at Cambridge, he said.

"I could never really get away while I was at Princeton because I was doing so much, but I think it could be a tremendous experience," he said.