Baltazar A. Zavala

On the afternoon of Harvard’s glorious victory over Yale, Baltazar ‘Zar’ A. Zavala ’11 opened up a text message informing him that he had received a Rhodes Scholarship. Very soon, Zavala became a fixture in the local and national press, catapulted to the status of mini-celebrity.

What the press coverage doesn’t reveal: According to Meaghan E. Glisczinski ’11, one of Zavala’s best friends, the 6’1’’, 195-pound wide receiver has a flair for “girly” drinks when he goes out, and confesses to once being scared to death by a headless rat in his science lab.

Zavala moved from Mexico to El Paso, Texas, at the age of four, and says he knew that he wanted to go to Harvard a year later. An Emmitt Smith fan and cartoon aficionado, Zavala wanted to be a champion of some sort when he grew up and was told that the only way to achieve that was to attend Harvard. The precocious toddler, raised as a single child by his mother, never let go of that dream.

At Harvard, Zavala is a model student and tenacious athlete. The joint concentrator in engineering and neurobiology maintains a 3.92 GPA and was recently elected to the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa. During his first year at the College, Zavala walked on to the football team and revelled in the camaraderie, so much so that he gladly accepted giving up 30 hours a week to rigorous training routines.

“What I like most about him is that he has a great sense of humor and is just really goofy and light-hearted,” said Glisczinski.

“Committed” is another trait that defines Zavala, be it with respect to p-sets, football, or love. He met his fiancée, Melanie Johns, as a freshman in high school, and the two soon became a couple.

“My senior year in high school, I went up to accept a big award in front of the whole student population,” he says. “On the podium I took out a promise ring and told Melanie that no matter what happened or where we were, we would stay together through college.” Zavala kept his word and on their seventh anniversary next June, the couple will tie the knot.

At Oxford with his future wife by his side, Zavala plans to pursue a M.Sc. in neuroscience and clinical neurology. He says he hopes to eventually become a neurosurgeon. However, Yves R. Chretien, a lecturer in the Department of Statistics who spent the summer of 2009 in China with Zavala, has different plans in mind for the Rhodes scholar.

“He’s a natural leader,” Chretien says. “In 15 years, he’d make a reasonable president of Harvard.”