Which universities have produced the most Churchill Scholars?

College Search & Lists
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<p>[Winston</a> Churchill Foundation](<a href=“http://winstonchurchillfoundation.org/index.php?hide=1&section=Scholars&type=php&sort=I]Winston”>http://winstonchurchillfoundation.org/index.php?hide=1&section=Scholars&type=php&sort=I)</p>

<p>"The criteria for the selection of Churchill Scholars include:</p>

<p>Exceptional academic talent and outstanding achievement, especially in the major, as indicated by course grades. The Foundation does not require a minimum GPA, but recent Churchill Scholars have had a GPA of at least 3.7 and usually have 3.9 or above.</p>

<p>A capacity to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the sciences, engineering, or mathematics by pursuing original, creative work at an advanced level as demonstrated by awards, prizes, research, and letters of recommendation. Applicants in the sciences and engineering will demonstrate extensive laboratory experience, internships, or other related work, while applicants in mathematics will show substantial independent work or other projects.</p>

<p>Outstanding personal qualities. Understanding the time commitment required by research, the Churchill Foundation does not seek so-called “well rounded” applicants; instead, it seeks applicants with what we call interesting “jagged edges.” Nonetheless, it should be noted that successful applicants display a bewildering array of talents activities outside of academic pursuits, especially in music, athletics, social service, among other activities."</p>

<p>"At least fourteen Churchill Scholarships are offered annually. The Scholarship is tenable for nine, ten or twelve months, depending on the academic program.</p>

<p>The Churchill Scholarship is worth between $42,000 and $48,000, depending on the exchange rate. It covers all University and College tuition and fees (currently about $25,000). In addition, Churchill Scholars receive a living allowance of £10,000 if enrolled in a nine-month academic program, £11,000 if enrolled in a ten-month academic program, and £12,000 if enrolled in a full-year academic program. They receive an allowance of up to $1,000 for travel to and from the United Kingdom, as well as reimbursement of applications fees for a UK visa.</p>

<p>The Foundation also offers the possibility of a Special Research Grant of up to $2,000; this grant may cover travel for presentations at international conferences, short stays at another university or institute for special research, and other activities."</p>

<ol>
<li>Princeton: 38</li>
<li>Harvard: 37</li>
<li>Duke: 24</li>
<li>Cornell: 21</li>
<li>Illinois: 20</li>
<li>Yale: 20</li>
<li>Caltech: 19</li>
<li>Michigan State: 17</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd College: 15</li>
<li>UNC Chapel Hill: 14</li>
</ol>

<p>The University of Chicago and MIT have a shockingly poor performance with regards to students attaining the Churchill. Does anyone have an explanation for this?</p>

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<p>I can’t speak for MIT, but at least at UChicago, GPA standards are quite annoying. Even if one excels in their own specific field, they have to go through the Core, and having a 3.9 after their own major + Core classes is extremely difficult. I imagine a similar scenario exists at MIT, where there is a “hard science Core”.</p>

<p>So Chicago wins a lot of Fulbrights, in which GPA doesn’t matter too much, but doesn’t win a lot of Churchill scholarships. It does win quite a few Goldwaters though, which is surprising. Then again, American foundations are more likely to be aware of Chicago’s reputation as being an extremely hard place to get a high GPA.</p>

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<p>columbia has only one. It might have to do significantly with the interest of the student body and how aggressively the school tries to make students apply for this awards</p>

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<p>Rhodes, Marshall and Churchill scholars are very rare and do not determine the quality of a university whatsoever. Take Penn for example. It is one of the older and better universities in the US. Penn has produced 19 Rhodes scholars and 10 Marshall scholars. Given it relatively large undergraduate student body, those numbers are relatively low. Northwestern and Notre Dame also do relatively poorly on that front.</p>

<p>But all is relative. No university produces many winners in those awards to start with. Even Harvard does not produce more than 10 Scholars for all three awards combined. That’s less than 1% of the student body. </p>

<p>The only scholarship that is prestigious and given to enough students annually is the Fullbright. That metric is quasi-reliable, but not absolute.</p>

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<p>The reason MIT does not produce many Churchill scholars is because very few MIT students apply. MIT and Cambridge formed a joint venture called the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) in 2000. Part of the Institute is an exchange program under which Cambridge students can study for a year at MIT and vice versa. Therefore If MIT students want to study at Cambridge they don’t need to apply for a special scholarship. They also have more choices of Cambridge Colleges such as King’s College (as opposed to Churchill Scholars who have to stay at Churchill College). It is the only program of its kind in the US where students can spend an entire year at Cambridge rather than just a semester. 14 MIT departments and 10 Cambridge departments participate. Interestingly, there are far more Cambridge applicants to MIT than vice-versa so it is not very hard for an MIT student to join the program if he wants to. Around 20 MIT students per year join the program more than the entire number of Churchill Scholars.</p>

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<p>I strongly believe that fellowships are a good marker of how much an undergraduate prepares its students at least in some form. It doesn’t mean that those who dont perform well are terrible. It just means those who do well are good at training their students. Winning churchhill fellowships show how strong a science or engineering at the undergraduate level is, because you need significant research and scholarship to win this award</p>

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<p>

Of course you would dismiss the importance of arguably the three most prestigious fellowships in the country Alexandre. These statistics don’t really help bolster your one-track mind agenda to make the University of Michigan be seen on par with the non-HYP Ivies and other elite private schools do they? Of course you would bring up the Fullbright as a so-called “reliable” metric just because Michigan has performed relatively well compared to the top private schools in this regard.</p>

<p>The rarer the fellowship, the more institutional pride it brings when a student attains it. The fact that Harvard has had 2-3 Rhodes winners on an annual basis for the past several decades is nothing short of miraculous. There’s a reason why its the best college in the world.</p>

<p>No offense to the Fullbright but it quite frankly is not that prestigious of a fellowship and pretty easy to win. The University of Minnesota had 14 Fullbright winners this past year for crying out loud. It is not nearly in the same league as a fellowship like the Rhodes, the Marshall or the Truman.</p>

<p>Most students at elite universties would choose any banking or consulting and even TFA over doing the Fullbright. The fact that you even bring this statistic up is laughable. Only like 30 Duke students even bother to apply for this fellowship now and the number is even less in other schools. Students at elite universities are gunning for bigger and better prizes.</p>

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<p>“Of course you would dismiss the importance of arguably the three most prestigious fellowships in the country Alexandre.”</p>

<p>I did not dismiss the impostance of the Rhodes or Marshall awards. They are two of the most distinguished awards handed out to students annually. I also don’t believe that the Churchill is one of the 3 most prestigious awards. I merely stated that the Rhodes scholarship is not an accurate indicator of insitutional excellence.</p>

<p>“These statistics don’t really help bolster your one-track mind agenda to make the University of Michigan be seen on par with the non-HYP Ivies and other elite private schools do they? Of course you would bring up the Fullbright as a so-called “reliable” metric just because Michigan has performed relatively well compared to the top private schools in this regard.”</p>

<p>Michigan does well with the Rhodes scholarships as well. Michigan (with 25 recipients) has produced as many Rhodes scholars as Cal (22), Columbia (27), Cornell (27), Emory (17), Johns Hopkins (18), Northwestern (15), Penn (19), Texas-Austin (27), Vanderbilt (26), WUSTL (25) and Wisconsin-Madison (29). I don’t know why my defending Michigan has anything to do with some secret agenda. I am not biased in favor of Michigan. My opinion about Michigan was formed before I enrolled there as a student and has not changed since. You don’t see me starting threads on the general forum that promote Michigan (like many other posters do to bolster the image of their schools) in any way do you? </p>

<p>“The rarer the fellowship, the more institutional pride it brings when a student attains it. The fact that Harvard has had 2-3 Rhodes winners on an annual basis for the past several decades is nothing short of miraculous. There’s a reason why its the best college in the world.”</p>

<p>2-3 Rhodes per year…out of 1,600 graduates? That’s exactly what I am talking about lesdiablesbleus. Once you get past HYP, no university produces more than 1 Rhodes scholar annually. I did some desktop research just now, trying to determine the top 25 research universities in the nation based the number of Rhodes Scholars and on Fullbright Scholars over a certain period of time. I have found data for Rhodes scholars since 1902 and for Fullbright scholars since 1993.</p>

<p>RHODES SCHOLARS (average number of annual recipients since 1902):

  1. Harvard University (3)
  2. Yale University (2)
  3. Princeton University (1.7)
  4. Stanford University (0.76)
  5. Dartmouth College (0.55)
  6. Brigham Young University (0.40)
  7. Brown University (0.40)
  8. University of Chicago (0.40)
  9. University of Virginia (0.40)
  10. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (0.38)
  11. Duke University (0.36)
  12. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (0.36)
  13. University of Wisconsin-Madison (0.27)
  14. Columbia University (0.25)
  15. Cornell University (0.25)
  16. University of Montana (0.25)
  17. University of Texas-Austin (0.25)
  18. University of Oklahoma (0.24)
  19. Vanderbilt University (0.24)
  20. University of Kansas (0.23)
  21. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (0.23)
  22. University of Mississippi (0.23)
  23. Washington University-St Louis (0.23)
  24. University of Arizona (0.22)
  25. University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (0.22)
  26. West Virginia University (0.22)</p>

<p><a href=“Office of the American Secretary | The Rhodes Scholarships”>http://www.rhodesscholar.org/assets/PDF/2010/Institutions_for_Website_6_29_10.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>To recap, one of the top 10 (BYU) and six more (Montana, Arizona, Mississippi, Kansas, Oklahoma and West Virginia) of the top 25 leaders in Rhodes Scholarship recipients attended universities that are not ranked anywhere near the top 50 universities in the nation according to any respected ranking source and with the exception of HYP, no university has produced more than 1 Rhodes recipient annually. Heck, all but 5 universities have produced less than 0.5 Rhodes scholars annually.</p>

<p>FULLBRIGHT SCHOLARS (average number of annual recipients since 1993):

  1. Harvard University (25)
  2. Yale University 23)
  3. University of California-Berkeley (22)
  4. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (20)
  5. Columbia University (18)
  6. Stanford University (18)
  7. Princeton University 17)
  8. University of Wisconsin-Madison (16)
  9. University of California-Los Angeles (15)
  10. University of Chicago (15)
  11. Duke University (14)
  12. University of Texas-Austin (13)
  13. Cornell University (12)
  14. Northwestern University (12)
  15. Pennsylvania State University (12)
  16. University of Pennsylvania (12)
  17. Indiana University-Bloomington (11)
  18. Boston College (10)
  19. Tufts University (10)
  20. Johns Hopkins University (8)
  21. New York University (8)
  22. University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (8)
  23. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (8)
  24. University of Washington (8)
  25. Washington University-St Louis (8)</p>

<p><a href=“http://us.fulbrightonline.org/program_universities_us.php[/url]”>http://us.fulbrightonline.org/program_universities_us.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>To recap, every single one of the 25 leaders in the production of Fullbright Scholarship reciptients is among the top 50 universities in the nation and all of them have produced, on average, 10 or more recipients annually.</p>

<p>Personally, I don’t think either award proves anything, but if I were to rely on an award as being somewhat (and very loosely) indicative of a university’s academic prowess, I would be inclined to glance over the Fullbright list than the Rhodes list.</p>

<p>“No offense to the Fullbright but it quite frankly is not that prestigious of a fellowship and pretty easy to win. The University of Minnesota had 14 Fullbright winners this past year for crying out loud. It is not nearly in the same league as a fellowship like the Rhodes, the Marshall or the Truman.”</p>

<p>And yet:</p>

<p>1) Harvard, Yale and Cal lead the nation in the number of Fullbright scholars
2) More Fullbright scholars (40 to be exact) have gone on to win the Nobel Prize than the recipients of any other scholarship program </p>

<p>“Most students at elite universties would choose any banking or consulting and even TFA over doing the Fullbright. The fact that you even bring this statistic up is laughable. Only like 30 Duke students even bother to apply for this fellowship now and the number is even less in other schools. Students at elite universities are gunning for bigger and better prizes.”</p>

<p>I doubt that. Most Fullbright scholars intend on pursuing a career in academe. The vast majority end up getting their PhDs and joining academe. And the interest level in the Fullbright at elite universities is still going strong,though apparently not at Duke. At Harvard, roughly 100 top students enter their candidature for the award annually. 80-100 students from Brown, Cal, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Michigan, Northwestern and Yale apply for the Fullbright scholarship annually too. And I have no idea what the TFA has to do with this discussion. If there is a joke in this entire discussion, it is your bringing up TFA into this discussion.</p>

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<p>Nice research, Alexandre. Perhaps, with the small exception that the schools you listed represent only a partial list of schools, namely universities. There are a number of a much smaller colleges that take great pride in the success of their graduates in landing Fulbrights awards.</p>

<p><a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/Top-US-Producers-of-Fulbr/48847/[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/article/Top-US-Producers-of-Fulbr/48847/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>[Pitzer</a> College - Pitzer College Students and Alums Awarded 23 2010-11 Fulbright Fellowships](<a href=“http://www.pitzer.edu/offices/public_relations/press_releases/09-10/2010_fulbrights.asp]Pitzer”>http://www.pitzer.edu/offices/public_relations/press_releases/09-10/2010_fulbrights.asp)</p>

<p>Pitzer College has been awarded more Fulbright Fellowships per thousand than any other college or university in the United States. </p>

<p>Fwiw, the performance of certain schools is highly correlated to the availability of resources and the desire to excel in the exercise. Given the huge numbers of Fulbright awards (several hundreds of thousand), it appears to be a rather low hanging fruit.</p>

<p>Of course, that does not stop CCers to report the Fulbright with fanfare … year after year:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/smith-college/935407-fulbrights-again.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/smith-college/935407-fulbrights-again.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>"Fulbrights Again! </p>

<p>14 of them, plus a French teaching “Fulbright” (it’s a Fulbright paid by the French rather than U.S. government), plus two finalists. More than Pomona, Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams, Wellesley, etc. Of the 15, 12 are research Fulbrights, more than Pomona, Amherst, Williams,…you get the picture.</p>

<p>90 over the past six years. More than… " :)</p>

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<p>Xiggi, I only listed reseach universities. Of course, some LACs, like Pomona (130 recipients since 1993), Swarthmore (99), Pitzer and Williams (76 each), Bowdoin (74), Wesleyan (65), Amherst and Kenyon (58 each), Carleton (57), Oberlin (51), Colgate (49), Middlebury (47), Grinnell (41), Macalester (40), Washington and Lee (34) and Claremont McKenna (33), and Davidson and Haverford (21 each) have had much success with the Fullbright. </p>

<p>As the list above shows, again, the list of major recipient institution represents the best in their class.</p>

<p>Women’s colleges and Military Academies each represent their own class, so including them with the rest is unfair…</p>

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<p>A side note that in recent years, the distribution of Rhodes scholars has changed a bit. Looking at data from 1998 forward, one finds the following:</p>

<p>Harvard 41
Yale 26
USMA 18
U Chicago 16
Duke 15
Princeton 15
Stanford 15
USNA 12
Brown 10
MIT 10
U NC 8
Columbia 7
Wash U 7
Swat 5
U Georgia 5
U VA 5
USAF 5
Wake Forest5
Dartmouth 4
Georgetown 4
ST. Olaf 4
U Wash 4
U Minn 4
U. Penn 4</p>

<p>Interestingly, a total of 136 institutions have won over this time period. </p>

<p>What does it mean? I’ll leave it to you august readers to begin that discussion if you want.</p>

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<p>^ That UPenn and Dartmouth are the worst ivy league.</p>

<p>D@mn Duke seems hot</p>

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<p>Don’t get me wrong, I think the fact that Penn and Columbia have produced such few Rhodes Scholars historically is quite shameful for both these prestigious universities. In all fairness to Columbia, the school has produced 7 Rhodes Scholars in the past dozen years and this correlates quite well with the fact that the institution’s popularity has skyrocketed in the same time frame. My excuse for Penn is that its the most career-obsessed elite school out there and its graduates are perhaps more concerned with pursuing jobs in big law/medicine/banking that aiming for academia/fellowships. I do think Penn is somewhat overrated of a school though.</p>

<p>[The</a> Rhodes Scholarships - Winner Statistics by Endorsing Institutions](<a href=“Office of the American Secretary | The Rhodes Scholarships”>Office of the American Secretary | The Rhodes Scholarships)
Michigan has produced ONE Rhodes Scholar in the past 12 years. That is absolutely embarrassing. Wisconsin has only produced ONE in the past 12 years and ZERO in the past 10 years. UVA and UNC, in my opinion, are better <em>undergraduate</em> institutions than Michigan or Berkeley and even they have only produced 4 and 6 Rhodes Scholars respectively over the same timeframe.</p>

<p>Alexandre, my point is that EVERY SINGLE data point in existence supports the notion that students from private schools like Brown/Duke/etc. perform much better than their public counterparts in gaining admission and acceptance to the top professional schools/graduate schools/fellowship programs either in raw numbers or per capita.</p>

<p>Even if Michigan has produced more Fullbrights than Duke (one of the few measures where UM outperforms Duke in a measure of graduate success even in terms of raw numbers), the fact that LS&A is about 3-4 times as large as Duke’s Trinity College makes Duke’s performance in the Fullbright competition far more impressive than Michigan’s.</p>

<p>You can dismiss each statistical measure of graduate success individually Alexandre, but you can’t ignore the cumulative effect of all these data points that all paint the SAME PICTURE than the non-HYP Ivies, Duke, Stanford, etc. are better undergraduate institutions than UMich, Cal, UVA, UNC, UCLA and William & Mary.</p>

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<p>You have to put it in size perspective Sefago. Cornell is 3 times bigger than Dartmouth for example.</p>

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<p>^ Did 3 times as many Cornell students apply for the scholarship compared to Dartmouth students? That would be an even better metric… You have to put it in applicant perspective slipper.</p>

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<p>“I do think Penn is somewhat overrated of a school though.”</p>

<p>Wow, just because it has produced fewer Rhodes scholars than other universities?</p>

<p>“The Rhodes Scholarships - Winner Statistics by Endorsing Institutions
Michigan has produced ONE Rhodes Scholar in the past 12 years. That is absolutely embarrassing. Wisconsin has only produced ONE in the past 12 years and ZERO in the past 10 years. UVA and UNC, in my opinion, are better <em>undergraduate</em> institutions than Michigan or Berkeley and even they have only produced 4 and 6 Rhodes Scholars respectively over the same timeframe.”</p>

<p>Michigan has produced three (Fiona Rose in 1998, Joseph Jewell in 2005 and Abdulrahman El Sayed in 2009) in the last 12 years and two in the last 5 years. And no, UNC and UVa are not better undergraduate academic institutions than Cal or Michigan.</p>

<p>“Even if Michigan has produced more Fullbrights than Duke (one of the few measures where UM outperforms Duke in a measure of graduate success even in terms of raw numbers), the fact that LS&A is about 3-4 times as large as Duke’s Trinity College makes Duke’s performance in the Fullbright competition far more impressive than Michigan’s.”</p>

<p>And yet Michigan does as well as Cornell and Penn on a per capita basis. Oh wait, I forgot, those two schools are overrated. </p>

<p>“You can dismiss each statistical measure of graduate success individually Alexandre, but you can’t ignore the cumulative effect of all these data points that all paint the SAME PICTURE than the non-HYP Ivies, Duke, Stanford, etc. are better undergraduate institutions than UMich, Cal, UVA, UNC, UCLA and William & Mary.”</p>

<p>No they aren’t. The quality of undergraduate education at some of those publics is just as good as the quality of education at non-HYP Ivies and Duke. Stanford is indeed superior and on par with HYPM. If your point is that, on average, students at smaller private elites are better than students at public elites, I would agree with you. Public elites still have to accept some students that aren’t quite as gifted and others with different academic interests. But take any top student at a private elite and have them attend a public elite and the undergraduate experience will remain equally as good.</p>

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<p>“Michigan has produced three (Fiona Rose in 1998, Joseph Jewell in 2005 and Abdulrahman El Sayed in 2009) in the last 12 years and two in the last 5 years.”</p>

<p>Alexandre, not that this is important, but may I ask you how to determine the college affiliation of a student winning the Rhodes? Isn’t it the undergraduate?</p>

<p>As we know, the Rhodes scholarship is a competition among states. While Jewell is a native of Michigan, his endorsing university is Caltech. Had Joseph Jewell been lesser known, it would have been more difficult to notice the error in crediting Michigan.</p>

<p>Fwiw, here is the list of the correct institutions for the year 2005</p>

<p>[The</a> Rhodes Scholarships - Winner Statistics by Endorsing Institutions](<a href=“Office of the American Secretary | The Rhodes Scholarships”>Office of the American Secretary | The Rhodes Scholarships)</p>

<p>BOSTON UNIV. (1)
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (1)
CITY UNIV. OF NEW YORK BROOKLYN COLLEGE (1)
CITY UNIV. OF NEW YORK THE CITY COLLEGE (1)
GEORGETOWN UNIV. (1)
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (1)
HARVARD UNIV. (including RADCLIFFE) (5)
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (2)
STANFORD UNIV. (1)
TEXAS A&M UNIV. (1)
U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY (1)
U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY (3)
UNIV. OF CHICAGO (2)
UNIV. OF KANSAS (1)
[?]
UNIV. OF NORTH CAROLINA (1)
UNIV. OF VIRGINIA (2)
UNIV. OF WISCONSIN-EAU CLAIRE (1)
WAKE FOREST UNIV. (1)</p>

<p>WHEATON COLLEGE (1)
WHITMAN COLLEGE (1)</p>

<p>WILLIAMS COLLEGE (1)
YALE UNIV. (2)</p>

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<p>Rhodes scholarships are very very very hard to get. Getting one is impressive full stop- and it has nothing to do with the prestige or academics of the undergraduate institution and more to do with the high caliber of students in the school. These high caliber students would be doing the impossible activities that define a rhodes scholar or church hill scholar</p>

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<p>Hey, Xiggi,</p>

<p>Thanks for the link. The Rhodes folks have finally beefed up the stats on their website. </p>

<p>I should remind folks that when it comes to “counting” Rhodes, you should also figure out if you want to include winners from outside the US that attend US institutions. Hint: gives no advantage to the weaker. Most of the action gets credited to Harvard. </p>

<p>BTW, one of the reasons H wins so many is that they nominate a lot of well qualified candidates. I heard they nominate over 30 some years. Compare that to poor old UofChicago, which is lucky to nominate 10. </p>

<p>Don’t have any knowledge of Cornell or Penn. (or U. Mich for that matter, other than their own campus paper article a few years ago complaining about their process).</p>

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<p>Joseph Jewell was enrolled as a graduate student at Michigan when he won the Rhodes Scholarship. As his undergraduate institution, Caltech is the institution that submitted his application for the award. However, even his Caltech writeup states that after he completes his two years at Oxford, he will either enter Caltech or return to the University of Michigan for his doctoral studies.</p>

<p>[University</a> of Michigan News Service](<a href=“http://ns.umich.edu/index.html?Releases/2004/Nov04/r112404b]University”>http://ns.umich.edu/index.html?Releases/2004/Nov04/r112404b)</p>

<p>[Engineering</a> student wins prestigious Rhodes Scholarship](<a href=“http://www.ur.umich.edu/0405/Nov22_04/rhodes.shtml]Engineering”>http://www.ur.umich.edu/0405/Nov22_04/rhodes.shtml)</p>

<p>[Rhodes</a>, Marshall Scholarships Awarded to Caltech Students Joe Jewell and Wei Lien Dang - Caltech Media Relations](<a href=“News | www.caltech.edu”>http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/12619)</p>