You are sitting in a stuffy room in Rhode Island in your best black suit. You have been waiting for five hours. In some ways, you have been waiting your whole life. It will all be over soon.
There are eight people in the room with you on this cold autumn day: all young, ridiculously accomplished, and also wearing their best suits, mostly black. You smile, chat and play the name game. (“You go to Princeton? Do you know . . . ?”) You share stories about previous hurdles overcome -- the first- and second-round interviews -- and the pathetic state of dating at each of your distinguished schools. You fidget with a pen. You wait.
You wonder what you are doing here at the final round of the Rhodes Scholarship competition. It seemed like a good idea at the time: You were a college senior with good grades and no particular plan. You went to some informational meetings and were told that your grades were good enough, that your activities were interesting, that you had a chance. You didn’t really know what the next step to your future greatness was or should be, so you went for this prestigious scholarship because everyone knows it’s a sign that you’re really good.
Over the summer, you researched study programs at British universities, planned your MPhil course, contacted professors, chose a tentative thesis topic. You found eight people at Stanford, four of them professors, who were willing to write you letters of recommendation. You itemized your accomplishments into an exalted grocery list. You wrote 17 drafts of your essay, aiming for the perfect formula that would alchemize your personality, achievements, interests and goals into a magically compelling 1,000 words.
You flew back to Stanford from Woodbridge, Conn., for the campus-round interviews, 20 minutes of questioning by a panel of former Marshall and Rhodes scholars who were pressing but not unfair. A month later, you were awarded a state-level interview by the Connecticut Rhodes Committee; it felt like winning the lottery.
The state round was not bad. There was a reception and a dinner: Social skills are at least as important as grades. Amazingly enough, it was enjoyable. The committee members knew your file, knew your life, asked interesting questions. You were caught off guard when asked, “You’ve had so many successes. What’s your biggest failure?” You made one up.
They interviewed nine people that day -- two Yale, two Harvard, a smattering of UConn and Wesleyan, and you. At 4 o’clock, the committee filed into the room of hopefuls to announce the two finalists. It was the girl from Wesleyan, and you.
Your family was thrilled. Your friends were excited. You began to see a slightly awed deference, a difference in the way people talked to and about you. You prepared to go to Rhode Island for your district’s national interviews, the last round of selection.
Now, in the tense room this gray afternoon, you think back to your final interview earlier in the day and wonder if you could have answered anything differently or better. You don’t think so. You’ve heard horror stories of committees asking, “How would you solve the health care crisis?” or “Name every book in every class you took in college.” But you were not asked these questions. You were, however, required to defend yourself against a barrage of questions that tried to define your position on a theoretical issue tangentially related to your work. You are exhausted.
You think of all the people who are waiting to hear what happens this afternoon. Professors who read your drafts, friends who let you crash in their new apartments, your grandmother praying for you in Queens. You think of yourself reading up on the course of studies you have chosen and wonder if you honestly want to spend years 22-24 in a converted church/library next to a graveyard, writing a 100-page thesis about the sociopolitical implications of Grendel’s dam with hard-drinking passers of English A-levels. You don’t know at all. But you’re good at jumping through hoops, so you do. And in the grueling monthslong process of making yourself a contender, you’ve created and then burnished this image of yourself as a credible and successful graduate student. In the process of convincing others, you’ve convinced yourself. Almost.
There are three men and five women in the room with you. Their bright eyes hold a slightly manic spark; this waiting is interminable. The three men are each called back for second interviews. The last stays behind the solid wooden door for a long time, then emerges red-faced and dazed, with tears in his eyes. “Brutal,” you all say, with sympathy.
Then there is a sound in the hallway, and you shoot up stiffly. The six committee members file into the room and stand in a line against the wall. Some smile wearily.
The chairman of the committee steps forward with a piece of paper in his hand. “I’m as nervous as you are,” he says, and it is true. His voice quavers, and his hands shake unfolding the paper.
He recites the formal disclaimer: “exceptional candidates . . . any one of you. . . .” It was better at the state level, where one law professor said, “Just remember what my committee head told me, which I have found to be true. Rhodes Scholars do very well in life . . . but Almost-Rhodes Scholars do even better.” You are not thinking of that now. You are listening intently while the shaking head of the district committee reads the four names off his list. They pass by you in a blur. Your name is not one of them. You will not be one of America’s 32 Rhodes Scholars next year.
Looking back on the Rhodes chase, I agree with my ’97 classmate and fellow contender Nick Thompson, who tried for it unsuccessfully two years in a row. Thompson sees the rejection as a good thing, because now we both have to be honest with ourselves about whether we truly wanted a graduate degree from a British university, or whether we were just seeking affirmation from society and admiration from our peers. It’s a hard question to face: The coveted name has its own momentum. It tends to carry you away until you start thinking you really are an unstoppable juggernaut of divinely inspired success.
And because of that, being rejected was probably not such a bad thing after all. It certainly deflated my head and gave me a healthy sense of my own limitations.
Not that it felt good.
Esther Pan, ’97, is a writer who worked most recently for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, Czech Republic.
