Rhodes Scholarship
The Rhodes Scholarship is a postgraduate award that supports exceptional students from around the world to study at the University of Oxford. The scholarship is one of the oldest and most celebrated international fellowship awards in the world. Each year 32 young students from the United States are selected as Rhodes Scholars and join an international group of Scholars chosen from more than 64 different countries to form a class of about 100 scholars.
Award: Rhodes Scholarships are tenable at the University of Oxford. Scholarships are normally held for two or three years depending on the course of study. Scholars can apply for a masters’ degree, a second bachelors’ degree, or a doctorate. Scholars may do two one-year taught master’s degrees, but may not receive a third year’s funding. The Rhodes Scholarship funds all university and college fees, a living stipend (about £15,000 per year), and two plane tickets to travel to and from Oxford.
Criteria: The selection criteria are as follows and are elaborated on in more detail on the Rhodes Scholarship website
- Academic excellence
- Energy to use your talents to the full
- Truth, courage, and devotion to duty
- Moral force of character
If you hold citizenship outside the U.S., click here to find your constituency.
Applicants must be endorsed by the Office of Distinguished Scholarships in order to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship. To be eligible to apply for university endorsement, applicants must meet with the ODS executive director at least twice before the endorsement application deadline. Those meetings must be at least one week apart. See below under “How to apply for UNC endorsement.”
Eligibility
At the time of application, an applicant must:
- be at least 18 but not yet 24 years of age (i.e., the applicant must still be 23 on October 1, of the application-submission year). An exception will be made in the case of older candidates who completed their first undergraduate degree later than usual. In these cases you must: have not reached your 27th birthday (i.e. have been born after 01 AND your first undergraduate degree must have been (or will be) awarded on or after 1 October of the prior calendar year.
- have completed (or will have completed by June / July following the application-submission year) an undergraduate degree from a college or university with a GPA of 3.7 higher
- Note: while a 3.7 is the minimum GPA to be eligible to apply for endorsement for the Rhodes Scholarship, most applicants will have much higher GPAs. An applicant with lower than a 3.8 will have an even more challenging time receiving university endorsement.
Eligibility for other constituencies can be found here.
How to apply for UNC endorsement
All of the items for application for UNC endorsement for the Rhodes scholarship should be completed outside of the Rhodes portal. You are welcome and encouraged to create an account within the Rhodes portal to become familiar with the platform and the application components.
- Meet with ODS Executive Director Marc Howlett at least twice. You can make an appointment here.
- These two meetings must occur in the current calendar year, be separated by at least a week, and occur before the endorsement deadline.
- After your second meeting, ODS will share the UNC-Chapel Hill endorsement application for the Rhodes Scholarship with you.
- Apply for UNC Endorsement with the Application for UNC Endorsement Form
- Submit a completed Rhodes endorsement application in PDF form. The application template you will have already received from ODS. The Rhodes endorsement application will contain at minimum the following parts
- CV (max two pages)
- Personal statement (include word count)
- Academic statement (include word count)
- All relevant unofficial transcript
- CV (max two pages)
- Submit a completed Rhodes endorsement application in PDF form. The application template you will have already received from ODS. The Rhodes endorsement application will contain at minimum the following parts
- Request six to Eight (6-8) Letters of Recommendation (for US applicants) or Six (6) Letters of Recommendation (for Canadian applicants)
- Use the Recommender Name Submission Form to request letters. (Do not enter recommender names into the Rhodes online portal at this stage.)
- At least six recommendations must be received by ODS by the endorsement application deadline in order for the application to be considered complete
- If you are a US applicant and receive endorsement, you’ll be expected to have eight letters of recommendation by the national application deadline.
Resources for applicants
- Thoroughly read the following Rhodes rules and guidelines:
- Overview
- Information for Candidates
- Courses at Oxford
- Life at Oxford
- Application Guidance
- Frequently Asked Questions
- For international candidates, Which Scholarship?
- ODS information sessions and prep-shops
- Schedule a meeting with the ODS executive director to discuss your application and receive advice to consider.
Applicants may apply for multiple scholarship awards simultaneously, including the Rhodes, Marshall, and Gates Cambridge Scholarships. However, pay careful attention to differences in guidelines for personal statements among other considerations.
