How Rhodes Scholars Think (HRST) is a project that takes a different approach to understanding the lives of Rhodes Scholars.  Instead of focusing on academic and career achievements, the project concentrates on the scholars’ attitudes, behavior and experiences from childhood to their young adult years that eventually culminated in winning a Rhodes Scholarship.  By that time, they had already developed and demonstrated a direction in life that combined their strengths and interests with a concern for others.  Through compelling anecdotes, HRST hopes to provide lessons (in parenting and character development) about forming a life worth living beyond the self and dedicated to making a meaningful contribution to the world.

While the project moves forward, this site is host to some conversations with Rhodes Scholars about their lives.

Feel free to leave a comment or send an email to rhodes [at] mailcan [dot] com.

Tricia Foo-Ying

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About the Rhodes Scholarship
The Rhodes Scholarship is widely considered one of the world’s most prestigious fellowships. It is a postgraduate award for study at the University of Oxford in England. Applicants must be at least 18 but not yet 24 years old.

In the American Rhodes Trust brochure, the scholarship is “to aid in the promotion of international understanding and peace” and should be seen as “a long-term investment in youth” who “offer the promise of effective service to the world in the decades ahead.”

Only students from the following countries are accepted:  Australia, Bermuda, Canada, the Caribbean Commonwealth, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Kenya, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa and its neighbors (Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Swaziland), the United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

When Cecil J. Rhodes, a British-born South African financier and politician who founded the diamond company DeBeers, died in 1902, his will established a trust to facilitate the scholarships. His will listed four standards by which potential scholars should be judged:

  1. Literary and scholastic attainments
  2. Energy to use one’s talents to the full; as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports
  3. Truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness, and fellowship
  4. Moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one’s fellow beings

In the 105 years of the fellowship’s history, there have been over 7,000 scholars with over 4,400 still living.