It takes time, teamwork to mold a Rhodes Scholar

CHAPEL HILL -- At a reception for Rhodes scholarship finalists the night before their interviews, Aisha Ihab Saad worked the room with the confidence of someone who had been there before.

She had, in a way.

The UNC-Chapel Hill senior had already done a walk-through at a cocktail party at UNC-CH that simulated the Rhodes reception. She had chatted up campus administrators, worked on her eye contact and polished her ability to shake hands while holding a beverage.

"The practice did help," Saad recalled this week. "A lot of people were doing it for the first time, and the nervousness was clear."

For Saad, 21, who grew up in Greenville and whose parents now live in Cary, the preparation paid off. She was one of 32 American college students recently selected for the prestigious scholarship. After graduating next year, she will spend at least two years doing fully funded graduate study at Oxford University in England.

The mock reception -- along with a practice interview that patterned the real thing right down to the furniture arrangement -- is one small way to give students with stellar academic credentials an edge or remove a stumbling block. It illustrates the lengths to which a university will go to prepare top scholars for their shot at the big time. The creation of a Rhodes Scholar is a community effort that leans heavily on a support system of professors and academic advisers.

The payoff is significant. The student gets a huge career boost, and the university gets to brag. Rhodes Scholars are routinely trumpeted in alumni magazines and recruitment literature. UNC-CH has eight in the last seven years and 43 overall; Duke has 42 to its credit.

Like many Rhodes Scholars, Saad didn't arrive on campus with that particular award in her sights. She learned of it at an information session put on by UNC's Office of Distinguished Scholarships. Plenty of students are interested, and George Lensing, who directs the office, made clear that the Rhodes is a rare achievement.

"He emphasizes that it's grueling and really slim odds that anyone makes it to the end, so do it as a personal experience," Saad recalled. "So I went in with that mentality."

A student must first be recommended by his or her university, and then must go through the Rhodes organization's application process. At both points, a brief personal statement is the key that opens the door.

Crafting a statement

The statement must be succinct, direct, personal and professional, exploring both a student's background and influences as well as very specific academic aspirations.

Considering Saad's resume -- a Morehead-Cain Scholar fluent in Arabic and Spanish who has penned an honors thesis on the negotiation of land rights among the 10 nations that share the Nile River basin, interned in Peru and Egypt and hiked the Himalayas and the Rockies -- brevity was a challenge.

The personal statements are capped at 1,000 words.

Saad started writing hers in May. Twenty-five drafts later, she finished in September.

"I have them saved, each one, on my computer," she recalled. "You're weighing every word, every statement."

The finished product opens with a description of dozens of yellow-spined National Geographic magazines lining the family room of her childhood home in Cairo. The magazines contained maps of exotic places suggesting worldly adventures she might take one day.

Later in the statement, she discusses a summer interning in a Cairo hospital, another internship at the Peruvian health ministry, and time spent earlier this year in Bhopal, India, examining efforts to clean up contaminated slums. She closes by specifying what she wants to study at Oxford -- a master's degree in nature, society and environmental policy -- and under whose tutelage.