The Rhodes Trust announced on Saturday that 32 American students have been awarded Rhodes Scholarships and will be heading to the University of Oxford next year to pursue postgraduate studies as Rhodes Scholars, including Chinese-American students. The Rhodes Scholarship is considered the “world’s oldest and most prestigious international fellowship” and one of the most competitive scholarships globally.
Established in 1902 based on the will of British mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, the first recipients of the scholarship entered Oxford University in 1903. Rhodes Scholars study a wide range of advanced degrees at Oxford University, including social sciences, humanities, biological sciences, and physical sciences.
According to rankings by “After School Africa,” the Rhodes Scholarship tops the list of the top ten most difficult scholarships to obtain globally. The competition for this scholarship is fierce, and the selection process is highly rigorous.
The Rhodes Trust American Secretary’s Office in McLean, Virginia, stated on Saturday that nearly 3,000 American students initiated the application process for the scholarship this year. During the application process, 865 students received support from 243 institutions. Subsequently, selection committees in 16 regions of the United States conducted interviews with the 238 finalists.
Out of these, 32 individuals were ultimately selected, coming from 19 states and Washington, D.C., and attending 20 different colleges and universities across the United States. These students will begin their postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom in October 2025, with the scholarship covering all expenses.
Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia and Pepperdine University in California had students receiving Rhodes Scholarships for the first time. Coe College in Iowa had a student win the scholarship for the first time in 53 years, while Davidson College in North Carolina had a student selected for the first time in 25 years.
Four scholarship recipients were from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, marking the highest number of Rhodes Scholars from the academy since 1959. Additionally, four students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were awarded Rhodes Scholarships. According to information released on the MIT website, these individuals are Yiming Chen, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo.
Fourth-year student Anqi Qu from the University of Chicago was named a Rhodes Scholar. She plans to pursue a postgraduate degree in economics at Oxford University next fall.
Yiming Chen, who hails from Beijing, China, and later moved to the Washington D.C. area, will be studying engineering science at Oxford University. She graduated from MIT in 2024 with a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science, as well as a Master’s degree in engineering focusing on computer science.
Through collaboration with IBM Research, Chen developed a neural framework for clinical-grade luminal segmentation of blood vessels and presented her research findings at the MICCAI Medical Imaging Machine Learning conference. Additionally, she worked at Cleanlab, a startup founded at MIT, and created an open-source repository to ensure the integrity of image datasets used in visual tasks.
Chen served as a teaching assistant in the departments of mathematics, electrical engineering, and computer science at MIT, earning recognition for her teaching excellence. She also possesses musical talent, having studied the Chinese classical instrument guzheng since the age of 4, and actively participating in the school’s choir and figure skating club.
Rhodes Trust American Secretary Ramona L. Doyle stated in a release that in addition to academic excellence, Rhodes Scholars should have ambitious aspirations for societal impact and exceptional collaborative abilities to achieve goals with others.
Doyle noted that the Rhodes Scholarship is “the most longstanding and renowned international award for postgraduate studies, arguably the most prestigious academic award available to American university graduates.”
The duration of the Rhodes Scholarship typically ranges from two to three years, with the possibility of extension to four years. The scholarship covers all expenses, a living stipend, and travel costs for the scholars to arrive in the UK. The scholarship is approximately $75,000 per year.
With this latest announcement, a total of 3,674 Americans have received Rhodes Scholarships, representing 329 colleges and universities.