Future of the fellowship program unclear

Ordiway, who oversees the University’s application process for some of the nation’s most selective postgraduate fellowship programs — including the Rhodes, Marshall, Gates and Truman scholarships — was fired last year, effective June 2010. Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel has not announced plans for the future of fellowship advising, saying in an e-mail that her office had “nothing to report at this time.”

“When we have something to report, we’ll report it,” she said.

Faculty members who play central roles in the application process as well as students who have applied for the fellowships said they were anxious about this uncertainty.

“A lot of us are concerned because Frank won’t be here, and … I have no idea what’s going to be done to replace him,” explained Wilson School professor Stan Katz, who chairs the University’s Truman Scholarship nomination committee.

Henry Barmeier ’10, the University’s sole recipient of the Rhodes Scholarship this year, said of Ordiway, “He has so much knowledge of the process that it’s hard to know how that kind of knowledge can be replaced in the short term.”

Classics professors Joshua Katz and Constanze Guthenke, both postgraduate fellowship advisers, noted in a joint statement that they “[did] not know how Princeton will henceforth be dealing with the Rhodes Scholarship, the Marshall Scholarship and the many other major fellowships that have been under the purview of Dean Ordiway.”

Joshua Katz will be on sabbatical for the 2010-11 academic year and will be replaced by a new fellowship adviser.

The Office of International Programs (OIP) and the residential colleges may each play a larger role in a redesigned advising system. Both are already involved in the application process: OIP currently handles applications for the Fulbright Program, while the residential college deans began writing institutional letters of recommendation for Rhodes Scholarship applicants this year.

Barmeier said that Wilson College Dean Lisa Herschbach wrote his institutional endorsement letter, which he said was “an important part of the whole package,” but only a small component of the institutional support he received. “As a percentage of everything that went into it,” he noted, “it was fairly small.”

Barmeier also explained that shifting more responsibility for the advising system to the residential colleges would “definitely bring juniors and seniors back to their colleges.” This, he added, would be consistent with the University’s goal of increasing the role of residential colleges in student life.

Mark Jia ’10, who was one of this year’s finalists for a Rhodes Scholarship, said that, while the residential colleges could play a larger role in the future, there is “something to be said for retaining a central coordinating position as well.”

Both Barmeier and Jia were wary of increasing OIP’s role in fellowship advising.

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“I’m not sure what sort of role West College envisions for [OIP], but my sense is that it’s also a very busy office,” Jia said.

Barmeier added that some fellowship application deadlines coincide with hectic periods for students interested in studying abroad. “Something’s going to fall through the cracks.”

The current road to the Rhodes

The students interviewed for this article had few complaints about the current advising system.

Jia commended the faculty advisers for their dedication and guidance. “When I first sent [Joshua Katz] my personal statement draft, he responded with an e-mail that was just about as long as my personal statement itself, offering line-by-line edits of my entire draft.”

Jia also found it “admirable” that faculty members are so willing to support University students. “You have to realize that Professor Katz and Professor Guthenke volunteer to do this. They are not paid or compensated in any way,” he said. “They love the work that they do, but they regularly put in hundreds of hours into this process.”

He noted that Ordiway organized two mock interviews for him and gave him “a very comprehensive sense of what types of interview questions [he] should expect.”

“I can’t overstate how good he was at this,” Jia added. “I could tell even then that this was the product of so many years of accumulated experience.”

Barmeier added that Ordiway’s connections on campus made him an effective adviser.

“He can … call up faculty members and people he knows and get together a committee for a mock interview,” Barmeier explained, “and someone who doesn’t have that kind of clout probably wouldn’t be able to pull that off.”

Advising Elsewhere

At princeton, the application process for fellowships usually begins in the spring semester of junior year, well ahead of deadlines in the early fall. Applicants begin to write their personal statements and solicit letters of recommendation during the summer, all while meeting and communicating with their advisers.

The Rhodes Scholarship funds two years of postgraduate study at the University of Oxford, while the Marshall Scholarship pays for two years of graduate study at any U.K. institution. The Gates Scholarship provides for a postgraduate education at the University of Cambridge, while the Truman Scholarship, which students apply for as juniors, supplies $30,000 to each winner to help fund a graduate education geared toward a career in public service.

While redesigning its fellowship application process, the University could draw on those at institutions that have produced numerous winners.

In the past 10 years, there have been a total of 13 American Rhodes Scholars from Princeton, compared to 35 from Harvard, 21 from Yale, 15 from Stanford and 14 from the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Though Princeton’s fellowship advising system is less comprehensive than the one at the U.S. Military Academy, it is currently more centralized than the system at Harvard and offers fewer specialized advisers than those at Yale and Stanford.

West Point introduces students to the Rhodes Scholarship with an informational session in the fall of freshman year, Cadet Elizabeth Betterbed, one of the academy’s two Rhodes Scholars this year, said in an e-mail.

Applicants complete the internal application in the fall of junior year, and selected students immediately begin a formal training process, which includes guest speakers and conferences, Betterbed said. Students interested in applying are encouraged to spend part of the summer completing academic internships in addition to military training, she added.

Selected West Point students apply for the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships, as well as one other fellowship of their choice, during their senior fall, and they are each assigned a mentor to assist them in the process, Betterbed said.

“A group of cadets applying for scholarships met weekly to discuss current events and hot issues,” she said. “Of our six-person group, four will be studying at Oxford next year. This was very helpful and made the application process fun and enjoyable.”

The processes at other universities with high numbers of scholarship winners are more similar to the process at Princeton.

“Stanford does not have the collegiate system that is found in some of the Ivy schools, so we spent quite a bit of time on outreach and identification of students who might be interested in the awards,” John Pearson, director of the Bechtel International Center at Stanford, said in an e-mail.

“We do offer individual advising, but applicants are not obliged to take us up on this offer,” Pearson explained.

The nature of Pearson’s work at Stanford exemplifies another clear difference from Princeton’s approach. He focuses specifically on U.K. and Ireland fellowships, and there is also a full-time scholarship adviser.

Yale also has a U.K. fellowships adviser, who guides students through the process of applying for the Rhodes, Marshall and other scholarships.

Besides the “one point person,” help is also provided by “faculty members, deans [and] friends … [who] all helped review materials, prepare for interviews, etc. These additional people are basically recruited by the applicant, not assigned by the school,” said Geoffrey Shaw, a Yale senior who was a Rhodes Scholarship recipient this year.

“Harvard’s fellowships advising process … involves two major institutions: the fellowships people in the Office of Career Services and the fellowships advisors in the residential houses,” Eva Lam, one of five Rhodes Scholarship winners from Harvard, said in an e-mail. Harvard’s house system is similar to Princeton’s residential colleges, though Harvard students enter the houses as sophomores while Princeton students start in residential colleges their freshman year.

While assistance comes from both offices, “from the perspective of an applicant, most of the advising comes from the House fellowships advisors,” Lam said, though she added that the amount of guidance received is completely in the hands of the applicant. “Harvard made no attempt to micromanage my application or tell me how to present myself,” Lam explained.

Darryl Finkton, another of Harvard’s scholarship recipients, said in an e-mail that while he completed most of the application process independently, he also participated in a mock interview organized by his house in preparation for final interviews.