When the Rhodes Trust revealed its list of 2024 recipients last November, Leverett House had cause to celebrate.

Three of its seniors — Aishani V. Aatresh ’24, Xavier R. Morales ’23-’24, and Lyndsey R. Mugford ’23-’24 — received the prestigious U.S. Rhodes Scholarship, which funds a Master’s degree at Oxford for two to three years.

They joined Harvard’s impressive Rhodes haul — nine out of 32 American Scholars, representing nearly one-third of the U.S. Rhodes’ 2024 class. This dominance was not unprecedented: In the past decade, Harvard had at least two U.S. Rhodes Scholars every year, and in eight of those ten years, Harvard had the most Rhodes Scholars of any school.

Yet Leverett, one of Harvard’s 12 undergraduate residential Houses, stood out on the 2024 list. If the House had been its own university, it would have ranked second in total recipients, just above Yale.

Meanwhile, Houses like Currier, Winthrop, and Kirkland have only seen one or two U.S. Rhodes Scholars in the last decade.

To some extent, this reflects the randomness of where brilliant students end up living in the College’s House system. But according to current and former students, both Harvard’s stellar Rhodes record — and the Houses’ unequal ones — are no coincidence either.

While Harvard Rhodes Scholars are commended for their dedication and accolades, few mention the machine that drives the University’s exceptional results: a wealth of institutional knowledge and personalized tutoring, deployed for every step of the application process. Fellowships tutors in each House prepare students by conducting mock interviews, providing guidance on personal statements, and more.

But leaving it to tutors to shepherd students through the Rhodes process means students have inherently different — and sometimes unequal — application experiences.

Among the Houses, the amount of support students receive while applying to the Rhodes and other prestigious fellowships differs greatly. While some students receive fellowships tutors with firsthand experience who then spend hours helping them craft their essays and prepare for interviews, others form their application largely on their own.

In either case, some of Harvard’s most accomplished students will win, but some will have had more help along the way.

“The College provides a variety of support systems for the students that extend from the Houses, various College offices, and peer mentorship,” Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana wrote in a statement to The Crimson. “We are fortunate to have a House system in which an inter-generational community consisting of faculty, graduate students, and staff are committed to helping students.”

But a Harvard student’s chance of winning prestigious fellowships like the Rhodes doesn’t just depend on their academic achievements or extracurriculars. It is also seemingly bound up in the House they are randomly assigned to during freshman spring.

‘A Million Times More Aggressive’

The Rhodes Scholarship is the most prestigious post baccalaureate fellowship in the world, and is widely considered a golden ticket that fast-tracks winners to future career success. The scholarship’s average sticker price stands at around $150,000, but many of its benefits are incalculable: access to a powerful alumni network, connections at a top university, and a title that commands respect.

This combination of prestige and connection makes the Rhodes Scholarship intensely competitive. In 2023, more than 2,400 U.S. students applied for 32 Rhodes spots, an acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. Other students compete for global Rhodes scholarships, which include constituencies such as Australia, Pakistan, and Germany.

Harvard’s number of Rhodes Scholars may suggest the University has a uniquely talented student body. In reality, many Harvard Rhodes Scholars say, this dominance is largely due to the University’s unique wealth of institutional knowledge about the scholarship.

Marcus B. Montague-Mfuni ’23, who received a 2023 South African Rhodes Scholarship, says once he arrived at Oxford, he felt the implications of bearing his Harvard degree.

“I think there is a tension in the Rhodes community to say that clearly, Harvard people are getting advice that other people are not,” Montague-Mfuni says. According to him, Harvard’s advising for the Rhodes Scholarship is “a million times more aggressive” than that of other schools.

Last year, ten seniors were named Rhodes Scholars, including nine from the U.S., meaning Harvard students made up nearly one-third of U.S. Rhodes winners. By Courtesy of 2024 Rhodes Scholars

Lauren Kim ’23, a 2023 Rhodes Scholar, says while she hasn’t had a “negative experience” at Oxford or faced stereotypes because she went to Harvard, she has talked with Rhodes peers about disparities in institutional knowledge across colleges.

“I have definitely had a lot of tough conversations with people who are not from Ivy League institutions about the fact that Harvard and Yale in particular have a lot of prior institutional knowledge when it comes to what it takes to become a Rhodes Scholar,” Kim says.

In particular, she points to a binder of testimonies from past Rhodes applicants, held in the Undergraduate Research and Fellowships Office, as a source of information that “people applying out of state schools don’t have.”

The binder contains hundreds of pages of testimonies from Rhodes winners and finalists from the classes of 1997 to 2024. Students provide basic information such as their name, House, year, and Rhodes selection district, before diving into the names of their interviewers, how they prepared for their finalist interview, the questions they were asked — verbatim — and the responses they gave.

“Which Shakespeare character do you identify most with your values and why?” one 2024 Rhodes Scholar reported being asked.

“If you had Congress in a room for two hours with full control of their schedule, what would you have them do?” another 2024 finalist wrote.

Students additionally offer guidance, based on their own experiences, on what future finalists can expect during the cocktail reception, an event Rhodes districts traditionally hold the night before interviews to give judges an informal opportunity to evaluate students.

“It is a 15-20 min timed speed dating session,” one finalist wrote last year. “There are waiters who float around with white wine and sparkling water and finger food.”

“A few people were very clearly trying to hog the limelight / use the cocktail party to brag about their accomplishments to committee members. Don’t be that guy,” a 2024 Rhodes Scholar wrote.

Beyond providing guidance for finalists, the binder testimonies often contain specific advice for endorsees regarding the preliminary written application, including how students should craft their personal statement, from whom they should ask for letters of recommendation, and how to best position their activities list.

“I have heard that this can singlehandedly make or break your application,” a 2016 Rhodes finalist wrote regarding the personal statement.

The binder covers every imaginable aspect of the workings of the Rhodes process and the characteristics of a successful applicant. While applicants to the Rhodes Scholarship at many other universities must build their knowledge of the process from the ground up, Harvard students don’t even have to be endorsed to walk into URAF’s office and view the binder.

Beyond the binder, current scholars point to Harvard’s vast resident tutor advising system in the Houses as another valuable resource within arm’s reach.

“After you get the endorsement, then the House tutors tend to invest a lot in you, because the House really wants a bunch of Rhodes Scholars, so they will give you as much advice as they possibly can,” Montague-Mfuni says.

In comparison, Massachusetts Institute of Technology has three staff members assigned to do all of the fellowship advising: one member dedicated entirely to fellowship advising, and two other staff members who split their time between fellowship advising and other responsibilities.

“We are a rather small operation,” Kimberly Benard, MIT’s director of distinguished fellowships, wrote in an email.

Marissa Sumathipala ’22, a Leverett House fellowships tutor and a 2022 recipient of the Churchill Scholarship — which sponsors students for a year of research at Cambridge — remembers discussing Harvard’s fellowship advising with her MIT friends. They were shocked at the number of fellowship advisers at Harvard. “You’re saying there’s three in every House?” Sumathipala recalls a friend saying.

Sumathipala calls this wealth of advising an “incredible resource.”

A close advising network gives students “the tools and advice that they need to put together all of their hard work over the past four years into a cohesive, compelling narrative,” she adds.

In addition to advising students through the Rhodes process, tutors are also responsible for helping students apply to a number of prestigious fellowships. Every year, Harvard students submit hundreds of applications to the Marshall, Mitchell, Schwarzman, Gates-Cambridge, Fulbright, Churchill, Herchel-Smith, Harvard-UK, and Harvard-Cambridge fellowships, among others.

And Harvard dominates many of these national and international scholarships. The University tops the list of winners for the Marshall Scholarship, having amassed 264 winners since the scholarship was founded in 1954, almost double Princeton’s 139, the next highest tally.

For the Rhodes, while tutors aren’t allowed to view applicants’ essays directly and give feedback on the writing, they have still given past and current applicants elaborate advice on what stories to pull from their personal life to construct a compelling and concise narrative.

“They can give feedback on like, ‘Hey, this is what your story sounds like right now that is generally answering the question correctly or in an effective manner,’” Kim says.

Some students were also advised to include an “I believe” statement in their personal essay — advice that is not in the Rhodes Scholarship’s official instructions for candidates.

For recommendations, tutors work with students to gather a strategic array of academic and non-academic references who can speak to different aspects of the endorsee’s character. Alex Braslavsky, head of Pforzheimer House’s fellowships team, likes to create what she calls a “narrativized CV,” where students distribute different parts of their resumé to recommenders to prevent overlap in their letters.

As endorsees progress through the application, faculty deans, resident deans, and tutors become increasingly involved in securing their success — a bit like helicopter parents, obsessing over the details of their kid’s college essays.

The final part of the application, Dean Khurana’s endorsement letter, develops through the House system before the dean adds his signature.

"We are fortunate to have a House system in which an inter-generational community consisting of faculty, graduate students, and staff are committed to helping students," Dean Khurana wrote. By Addison Y. Liu

Tutors themselves write the endorsement letter, which summarizes the applicant’s materials. Dean Khurana then sends the materials to the Rhodes committee.

Weeks later, students are selected as finalists and fly out to their last interviews and the Rhodes reception, armed with the guidance of the URAF binder and the advice, institutional knowledge, and resources of their particular House.

12 Different Advising Systems

The Houses also influence students’ Rhodes applications long before they apply. A prospective applicant’s House is often their primary source of information, their sounding board for ideas, and even the encouragement that determines whether or not they apply.

As early as a year before the first round deadline, students attend information sessions led by their House’s fellowships team and discuss potential applications with tutors they’re close to. In the summer before their senior year, they declare their interest in applying to the Rhodes and start officially working with their House’s fellowships tutors.

First, tutors advise students’ applications for a University endorsement, which is a requirement for applying to the Rhodes. A University-wide selection committee composed of senior faculty chooses the students they think will have the best odds of winning, and can endorse as many students as they want.

Applying for endorsement requires two recommendation letters and three short essays. “How do you plan to better humanity with the support of a Rhodes Scholarship, and why does that plan matter?” one prompt asks.

Once a student receives Harvard’s endorsement, their House’s fellowship team kicks into high gear, helping endorsed students navigate the grueling process to becoming a Rhodes finalist — collecting five to eight letters of recommendation, crafting a 1,000-word personal statement and a 350-word academic statement, and soliciting the endorsement letter. Over months, endorsees work closely with their House fellowships tutors to perfect each of their application materials, often texting questions late at night and discussing their application in the dining hall.

However, there is no standardized fellowships advising process, nor much communication across Houses.

Braslavsky says that Houses tend to have “very specific ways of mentoring that we just haven’t shared with one another.”

“I think each House is operating on its own in terms of fellowships,” she says.

These “specific ways” include a variety of resources: mock interviews, information sessions, essay guidance, office hours, and records of past applications.

But these in-House resources tend to remain exactly that: in-House. Each fellowships team uses its own unique set of resources and practices, developed over years of advising, applications, and patterns of success.

While URAF offers standardized materials and training for fellowships, these sessions are largely supplemental.

William R. Wahpepah, an Adams fellowships tutor, sometimes listens to a URAF training recording on ranking endorsements if they miss the in-person session. “I don’t think that they’re actually mandatory,” Wahpepah says. “They’re mostly supplemental.”

Director of URAF Jonna Iacono wrote in a statement that “URAF works closely with colleagues from across Harvard — faculty, staff, and House Fellowships Tutors — to provide clear and consistent information about opportunities and competition processes, information that they can then share with students.”

“Interest in these opportunities continues to grow and our undergraduates can also learn more about them directly from URAF: through our website, information sessions, recordings, written materials, and advising,” Iacono added.

According to Wahpepah, tutors might be in the same room during URAF events, but they still don’t communicate with each other. “I think that there’s always things that other Houses are doing that we could learn from that would ultimately lead to better support systems,” Wahpepah says.

The exception is when a tutor switches Houses. The Pforzheimer fellowships tutors recently revamped their office hour offerings following a suggestion by a tutor who transferred to their team from Adams House. “Since we’ve switched over to that, it has been much more effective,” Braslavsky says.

Alex Braslavsky, a tutor in Pforzheimer House, says "I think each House is operating on its own in terms of fellowships." By Joey Huang

Tutors say their lack of communication comes down to the intimate nature of House living, a focus on their own students, and even a degree of competition.

“Part of it is in-House competition makes us really want to be the ones that have the most Rhodies, or something of that nature,” Braslavsky says. “Which, to me, is quite silly.”

But, as a result of this isolation, tutors across the Houses are not on the same page about what resources exist.

Braslavsky only recently discovered the URAF binder of Rhodes applicant testimonies, when she visited the office on behalf of a student applying for one of the non-U.S. Rhodes scholarships.

“I only just found out about this now, which is atrocious,” Braslavsky says. “It’s three years into my time as a fellowships tutor.”

In contrast, Judy Murciano-Goroff, a Leverett fellowships tutor, has her own files of Rhodes finalist testimonies. She reaches out to Leverett finalists directly after their interviews to ask for every question and detail of the event they can remember. Murciano-Goroff then shares her file with each new class of Leverett applicants.

Murciano-Goroff’s experience, though, is highly unusual. She’s been a tutor in Leverett for more than 30 years, and additionally serves as director of fellowships at Harvard Law School.

Many tutors only work in a House for three to five years. With constant turnover, the Houses sometimes struggle to keep institutional memory of quality advising alive — and sometimes lack streamlined processes for bringing new tutors onto advising teams.

But not Leverett. Murciano-Goroff even penned a 1998 manual called “Insider’s Guide to Writing a Successful Fellowship Application” for the Office of Public Interest Advising at HLS.

If Leverett House had been its own university, it would have ranked second in total recipients of the Rhodes, just above Yale. By Julian J. Giordano

“She has been doing it for so, so long, and it’s just amazing,” Sumathipala says, expressing how much she’s learned from Murciano-Goroff as a first-year Leverett tutor. “No one knows as much about fellowships as she does.”

Murciano-Goroff did not respond to an interview request for this article.

Other Houses don’t have this level of institutional knowledge, though. Although Braslavsky received “lots and lots of files” from her predecessor, she says they’re not organized.

“He just gave me his entire folder from his four years, I believe, of leading the team. And everything his predecessor had given him, he gave to me,” she says.

Eliel Sanchez-Acevedo, a pre-law tutor in Pforzheimer, arrived after a gap in the House’s pre-law tutoring, which follows the model of fellowships but for law school admissions. As a result, Sanchez-Acevedo and the resident dean worked to retrieve old documents and other materials from previous tutors.

“It’s always difficult to start something, when there’s no one else to teach you how to do it,” Sanchez-Acevedo says.

Mock Interviews and Missed Emails

With this emphasis on in-House advising, the amount of support students receive while applying to fellowships depends heavily on the House they are randomly assigned to freshman spring, and the tutors they get to know as upperclassmen.

Some students directly credit their success to close relationships with their House tutors, saying they strengthened relationships with tutors well before application season. After all, students and tutors live side-by-side, eating in the same dining halls and playing intramural sports together. When the time came to apply, their advising was highly personalized and intimate.

But others say their interactions with House tutors are sparse and business-like.

Tommy Barone ’25, a resident of Currier House and Rhodes finalist, says Currier’s fellowships advising team has fallen far short of meticulously guiding him through the Rhodes process — an expectation that some other Houses seem to uphold.

“There was this really unpleasant realization over the course of the last two weeks, as I talked to more and more people who had also been endorsed, that they were getting this incredibly over-the-top, gold standard advising from their Houses, and I was getting absolutely none of that,” Barone, a Crimson Editorial Chair, says.

Many Currier students feel that their tutors and deans have not provided them with enough support. By Anne M. Foley

Barone contrasts his experience with that of a friend in Pforzheimer House, whose fellowships adviser asked for the contact information of the student’s closest friends and family to understand her personality before writing her Rhodes endorsement letter.

Barone, however, says his engagement with Currier’s fellowships team has been confined to one breakfast conversation with his fellowships adviser, during which he discussed the “broad strokes” of his Rhodes application.

“Everything that I’ve really needed, I’ve had to figure out myself on some level,” Barone adds, noting that he has looked to Rhodes Scholars from previous years for advice.

Currier House Faculty Dean Latanya A. Sweeney wrote in a statement to The Crimson that she and Faculty Dean Sylvia I. Barrett were “previously unaware of the need for enhanced support within Currier or that our services might be perceived as falling short compared to other houses.”

“We are taking immediate action to address these concerns with additional expertise,” Sweeney added. After receiving a comment request for this article, the Currier deans arranged personal sessions for each finalist with a past recipient of both Rhodes and Marshall scholarships.

According to students across Harvard’s 12 upperclassmen Houses — from past winners of the Rhodes to students currently in the process — individual relationships with tutors can bolster a student’s ability to position themselves for success.

Conner M. Huey ’25, a resident of Dunster House and current Rhodes finalist, expresses gratitude for one Dunster fellowships tutor in particular, MaryGabrielle “MG” Prezioso ’13, whom he describes as “wonderfully helpful” in advising his scholarship applications.

“MG has really been taking on my case, but that’s her. That’s a her thing,” Huey says, adding that he sends her text messages whenever he has questions about his applications.

“I just literally ask, ‘I think I’m gonna do this. What do you think about this idea?’ And then she just gives me feedback. She’s like, ‘maybe consider spinning it this way,’” Huey says.

Kim, the 2023 Rhodes Scholar, recalls how her fellowships team in Eliot House recruited the faculty dean and other Eliot affiliates to host a mock Rhodes finalist interview with Kim that “looked exactly like” her actual finalist interview.

“All of those people had a sense of who I was and what kind of applicant I was, so that already takes a lot of effort from the side of Eliot. I think they did a phenomenal job of doing that and making the process feel really intimate and supportive,” Kim adds.

In Leverett, Harvard-Cambridge scholarship winner Birukti Tsige ’23 described a close relationship with her House tutors, particularly Murciano-Goroff. “I was feeling very lost,” Tsige says of her junior year. “That was about when I met Judy.”

Tsige and her blockmates became close friends with Murciano-Goroff, often getting meals or stopping by her office to talk to her “about everything.”

“I’d never been to the UK. I’d never been to Europe. It just didn’t feel like a possibility,” Tsige says. “And then we started talking more about it.”

Now, Tsige is in her second year of a Master’s program at Cambridge, studying creative writing and working on her dissertation novel. She’s traveled to Italy, Portugal, and Greece.

Throughout the process, Murciano-Goroff told Tsige how “good and great and magical” the program would be, and encouraged her to apply despite fears that she would not win.

“She made it feel like it’s possible,” she adds.

Yet this level of advising is not guaranteed. Many Currier students, for example, feel that their tutors and deans have not provided them with enough support.

“Part of the problem here is a significant disconnect between students and all of the different kinds of staff and faculty that run the House,” Barone says.

Five other Currier residents, who were granted anonymity to discuss ongoing relationships with House tutors, say Currier often struggles to meet their individual academic advising needs and provide relevant expertise on scholarships and fellowships.

One senior in Currier recalls applying to a national scholarship earlier this year. The student emailed the Currier fellowships tutor asking if there was a tutor familiar with the scholarship that they could speak with.

The student never heard back.

For the Rhodes process in particular, two endorsed students say they experienced difficulties communicating with tutors and largely worked alone to plan their statements and solicit recommendations. One even reached out to another House for help — and received resources that Currier did not offer them, including a document of advice from previous winners and finalists.

Since 2014, Currier students have won one Rhodes Scholarship and one Marshall Scholarship, lagging behind all other Houses. Lowell currently leads the Houses in that time period with 11 combined winners, just above Dunster and Quincy.

Barone says Currier’s faculty deans must emphasize high expectations for advising.

“It invariably falls on the House to create a system within which fellowships tutors are expected to provide really gold standard support,” he says. “I have been — much before this process — incredibly dissatisfied with Currier House’s advising infrastructure writ large.”

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According to Braslavsky, Pforzheimer House has made a concerted effort to prioritize fellowship tutoring in recent years, including increasing the number of tutors. This time last year, the House had its first Rhodes Scholar since 2017.

“It shouldn’t be underestimated what it means to have mentors within arm’s reach,” Braslavsky says.

Yet whether their mentors were close or far, in just a few days Barone and the rest of Harvard’s U.S. Rhodes finalists will fan out across the country for their cocktail receptions and interviews.

Soon after, the winners will be announced. If any Harvard students are on the list, their House may no longer matter.

— Associate Magazine Editor Maeve T. Brennan can be reached at [email protected].
— Magazine writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at [email protected].