Miller '06 wins Rhodes Scholarship

English major and aspiring novelist Jeff Miller '06 is the University's sole Rhodes Scholar this year, one of 32 in the country.

Miller learned the news in dramatic — and excruciating — fashion. Lined up this past Saturday with ten other candidates in the chambers of a judge who serves as the Rhodes committee chair for the southwestern United States, Miller awaited the names of the two winners.

The chair announced the first name, which wasn't Miller's, and only after a long, nerve-wracking pause, did he give Miller the honor as well.

"It was kind of surreal," Miller recounted in an interview Sunday evening. "I had to remind myself my name is Jeff Miller."

"To be honest, I really don't know why I won as opposed to the West Point cadet, the Olympian, the girl who's going to graduate at the top of her class," Miller said. "It is an honor in and of itself to be considered in the same group as these other people. They were some of the most amazing, impressive people I've ever met in my life."

Miller said his parents were just as overwhelmed as he was upon learning the news. When he called to tell his mother, who was in a nearby department store, she sobbed so loudly that a manager tried to console her, thinking someone in her family had died.

Rhodes Scholars study a subject of their choice at University of Oxford for two or three years, free of charge. This year, 903 Americans applied for the scholarship, which is considered one of the most prestigious academic honors in the world.

Miller will spend his first year studying English literature from 1550 to 1780 with a focus on author John Milton and the literature of the Restoration period.

After earning his master of studies in English, he plans to work toward a doctorate. After that, he hopes to pursue his longtime dream of a career as a novelist and English professor.

University English professor Deborah Nord, who had Miller in one of her ENG 331: 19th-Century Fiction precepts, said literature really is Miller's calling.

"He was just a freshman, and he was better read that anyone else in the class," she said. "He wrote papers that were the kinds of things seniors write — or the things you hope seniors write. He has a real feel for literature, which is something I don't encounter that often, especially in freshmen."

Daunted by the scholarship's selectivity, Miller said he almost didn't apply to the University for an endorsement, which is required to advance to the next stage in the selection process.

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"I thought it was something beyond your wildest dreams," Miller said. "People like Bill Clinton and Bill Bradley win the Rhodes Scholarship, not people like me. I applied assuming I was not even going to be endorsed by Princeton."

But Joshua Katz, faculty adviser to the University Rhodes Scholarship endorsement committee, said he viewed Miller as a promising candidate.

"He interviewed extremely well — that's not to say anything bad about his application as such," Katz said. "He wrote a very free essay which made a big impression on me and apparently made a big impression on [the Rhodes committee]."

With Princeton's endorsement, Miller advanced to the final stage, where he competed against 10 other candidates from the district that includes his hometown of Plano, Texas. He and Lakshmi Krishnan from Wake Forest University won the scholarship.

Miller said the committee chair's message for the two Rhodes Scholars was moving. " 'To be a Rhodes Scholar is a responsibility,' " Miller said he remembers the Rhodes committee chair saying. "Every day he asks himself, 'What am I doing to justify having been a Rhodes Scholar?' That's been the feeling [for me]."

Last year, no Princeton students won Rhodes Scholarships. The classes of 2003 and 2004 each had one Rhodes Scholar, and the Class of 2002 boasted two.