Bishop '06, Vali '05 win Marshall

Allison Bishop '06 and Yousefi Vali '05 are among this year's 43 recipients of the Marshall Scholarship, one of the most coveted postgraduate fellowships in the country.

Bishop and Vali bring the number of Princeton winners to 112 since the award's inception in 1954 — second only to Harvard's 239 winners — according to the Marshall Commission.

Bishop, a mathematics major, nearly didn't answer her cell phone when she received a call while at dinner on Nassau Street Nov. 10. But when she picked up, thinking it was probably a wrong number, an officer from the British Consulate in Chicago told her that she had won the scholarship.

"I was naturally very excited," Bishop said in an email Friday.

Her parents' response: "That's great, dear. So does this mean for sure we won't have to pay for any of your grad school?"

Vali, the other winner, will use the fellowship to study Islamic Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Vali, who hails from Jefferson City, Mo., and majored in Near Eastern Studies, is currently on a Fulbright grant in Syria and could not be reached for comment.

The annual scholarship, instituted in recognition of the post-World War II reconstruction plan named after former U.S. Secretary of State and General George C. Marshall, provides funding for about 40 American college graduates to study for two years at a British university in a subject of their choice. The winners were announced Monday.

Bishop, originally from Omaha, Neb., is a mathematics major pursuing a certificate in women's studies. She plans to use her scholarship to earn a Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics at the Univeristy of Cambridge.

A winner of the Goldwater Scholarship, given for achievement in math or science, and member of the Chapel Choir, Bishop hopes to earn a doctorate in mathematics and become a professor and researcher.

Over the past two summers, she has conducted research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and at the National Security Agency, the U.S. government's signals intelligence agency. She has also participated in the program for women mathematicians at the Institute for Advanced Study here in Princeton.

Application process

Bishop applied to the Marshall because she decided over the summer that she wanted to attend the Cambridge math program.

"It's a great math program and would give me a chance to study a wide range of mathematical topics before having to choose my specialty and start Ph.D. research," she said.

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"I also just loved the idea of studying in England, since my sister lives there and it will be an exciting change of scenery."

To get funding for the one-year program, she first thought of applying for the Gates and Churchill scholarships, and not the Marshall, which requires two years. But two weeks before the deadline to apply for University endorsement, she said she "decided to give the application a try."

Soon after submitting the application, Bishop was invited to interview in Chicago. It was her first time visiting the city, and she got lost on the way to the interview. After someone pointed her in the right direction, she arrived at the hotel in time for her interview.

Twenty-five minutes later, it was over. "It felt like a whirlwind," she said, "with not enough time to really get nervous if I'd tried."

The interviewers asked her a "huge variety of questions, some of I which I felt I responded well to and others to which I immediately admitted I had no idea what they were talking about," she said.

Back on campus, Bishop resolved to wait patiently and see. She didn't know at the time whether she had won, but said, "The whole trip was actually a fun experience for me."