British Fellowships Return Rhodes' Favor

For many American students, Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships represent the pinnacle of academic achievement, because they allow a few top scholars to study in England for free.

But as Americans fight for the opportunity to go to Cambridge and Oxford, students at those prestigious British institutions are competing for the chance to make the opposite journey.

Several scholarships are available to British students wishing to study in the United States--the most prestigious ones are the Henry, the Choate and the Knox, each of which bring one scholar per year, the Harkness, which brings about 10 students, and the Kennedy, which brings about 12 per year.

Since Harvard students won record numbers of Rhodes and Marshalls this year, perhaps it is only fitting that the vast majority of Brits who win scholarships to the United States end up in Cambridge, Mass.

Approximately thirty British fellowship winners are currently studying in the United States and all but a handful are studying at Harvard. Most of the other winners are attending MIT or Yale. The winners share very little other than a common gift for achievement. The British fellowships do not require specific plans of study and this year's winners are attending a wide variety of courses.

Laurence Hurst, who received his undergraduate degree from Cambridge University in biology last year, is this year's winner of the Henry Scholarship, and he is currently studying the evolution of religion at Harvard. The Henry is awarded to one British subject each year who is allowed to choose to attend Harvard or Yale. The approximately $8000 award pays not only for tuition but is also designed to encourage recipients to socialize and travel. The winners are not allowed to work towards a degree, but apart from that, the only requirement is that the recipient write a paper decribing his experience at the end of the year. "Not bad for $8000," says Hurst. Next year, because his fellowship requires that he "put his feet on Commonwealth soil," he plans to go back to study towards a Ph.D. at Oxford.

Hurst is researching the evolution of religion, a topic which is unusual among the sciences because it "extends into theology and philosophy. It is also highly contentious because of it's connection with the whole sociobiological thing." He says he audits classes and likes to "talk to academics all over the university--Wilson, Bell, Gould--I go around knocking on people's doors and disturbing people." Hurst also taught a section of Science B-16 last semester and is currently teaching one for Science B-17.

By contrast, Alan M. Taylor, this year's recipient of the Joseph Hodges Memorial Choate Fellowship, is studying economics, even though he majored in math at Cambridge University's King's College. Presented in honor of a former president of the Harvard Club of New York who was ambassador to Great Britain, the Choate fellowship is awarded annually to one Cambridge student. The Harvard Club of New York has funded the award, which includes tuition and a monthly stipend, since its establishment in 1919.

"There is a long tradition of the Choate fellow at Harvard," says Taylor. The Choate fellow has lived in the same Winthrop House suite since the House system began, Taylor says. The room contains a bureau--which is more than 50 years old--with a plaque on it which says, "rooms of the Choate fellow, 37 Weld Hall, ex bono Harvard Club of New York 1935." In addition, the Winthrop dining hall contains a plaque with a list of all the names of all Choate fellows.

Margaret Chirgwin is one of about 12 British students studying in the United States on a newer scholarship. The John F. Kennedy Memorial Scholarship normally funds a year at Harvard or MIT and includes all fees and a living allowance of about $9000. Chirgwin, who received her undergraduate degree in medicine at Cambridge and a graduate degree at Oxford, is now working towards a masters in public administration at the Kennedy School. Although "being in the K-School means you don't get to see a lot of undergraduates," Chirgwin is also taking a beginning Spanish course with undergraduates.

Despite their diverse plans of study, the British scholars say they have all noticed several ways in which a Harvard education differs from their common British educational background.

At universities in England, academics are at once more intense and more casual than here at Harvard, the fellows say. In general, British students are tied more closely to their departments and have more contact with professors.

At Oxford and Cambridge, students devote all of their academic work towards one field. According to Hurst, there are "no core requirements. If you enter a field, that's all you ever do." In fact, students are "not allowed to take courses in other fields," and very few students do double majors.

This system has both advantages and disadvantages, the fellows say. "Harvard students pursue a major but do lots of other things as well," Taylor says. "They are much broader and not so specialized. But they are not as far down the road in their are when they graduate," Taylor says.

It is very hard for British undergraduates to experiment, he says. "It may be good to have the chance to switch around a bit," Taylor says. "At Cambridge, the most flexible university in the U.K., the [exam] system allows taking a different subject each year. Normally, if you sign on the dotted line for electrical engineering at 17, that's what you're taking 'til you're 21."

But the English system has important benefits for students who have clear career plans. For example, a person who wants to be a doctor can "go straight into medicine at 18 and qualify at 23-24," Chirgwin says. "We're more specialized in high school. You decide at 16 what your future is."

Furthermore, because students devote all of their time to one field, they find it easier to get to know their department, the fellows say. In England, "integration in the department is much higher," Hurst says.

"At Cambridge, you're regarded as a member of the department," says Graeme Dinwoodie, here on a Kennedy Scholarship.

By the end of the third year, biology students are included in professional discussions, invited to faculty events and "at 11 and 3 each day we trek off to the tea room and discuss stuff," Hurst says.

And the professors who talk to British students are not just unimportant junior faculty members, says Dinwoodie, who is studying at the Law School. "Cambridge professors are every bit as big in their fields as Harvard professors," he says.

All of this contact allows British undergraduates have a much closer relationship with faculty members than Americans do, the fellows say.

Harvard is "very different from Oxford or Cambridge," Chirgwin says. "Contact with professors seems to be much less. When I was an undergrad at Cambridge, I did a year of philosophy and had a tutor who was a professor. We did a couple hours a week, and it was a real intellectual experience with feedback."

"Here you have a student a few years ahead of you so you don't get much intellectual help. There, you got a lot of enthusiasm from people writing books who are interested in their fields. I really miss that personally. I'm wandering around here by myself. You have to fight to get contact--it's different at Oxford and Cambridge where it's part of the system," she says.

Every British lecture course also has a tutorial section with no more than two students. Thus from their first year, students have personal contact with a full faculty member--or occasionally a graduate student--for each course.

"An important part of teaching at Cambridge is supervision, weekly or fortnightly, with a graduate student or faculty in your college," Taylor says. "I saw a lot of senior academics in my subject. Since people are supervised in pairs, they get more personal attention and comments. It's more satisfying."

The problem with Harvard classes, Dinwoodie says, is "in a class of 200, there's no way that everyone can possibly get to know the professor."

Perhaps because British students have a lot of personal contact with professors, they are not formally tested as often.

"They basically say, 'this is a reading list, go and do it if you want to," Hurst says.

The only exams given at Oxford and Cambridge are at the end of the year, and they are similar to Harvard's general exams. The tests--called tripos--are given at the end of every year at Cambridge and at the end of the first and third years at Oxford. Unlike Harvard's ordinary system where students take exams on specific course material, the tripos cover entire fields of knowledge.

The British fellows say they have mixed reactions to Harvard exams. The English "system of assessing performance I find more desirable but I'm an exam sort of person," Taylor says. "There are three terms when...you're just learning, not assessed. After having time to learn, then you're tested. I find it slightly irritating that here the students are tested week by week, as if they were still in" high school.

"This means that the learning process is always hurt by the examination process. That's stifling. People need time to go away and think until they've mastered it for themselves," he says.

But there are drawbacks to the English system, fellows say. "Third year is live or die. It's a lot more stressful. If you fail a course here, you can take it over. There, if you fail a field, you failed. There's no second go."

The exam system at Cambridge and Oxford plays a important role in student traditions. Exam results are posted by name, not I.D. number, "on a sheet of paper tacked on the wall of the senate house." In the maths tripos, the results are read from the top of a balcony in the senate house in order of finish to the assembled students and then thrown off the balcony, Taylor says.

It is the "most antiquarian and arguably cruel of ceremonies. People trek to the senate house at 9 a.m. and find out their fate," he says. In the past, the person with the worst score would then step forward and have a wooden spoon dropped on his head from the balcony, he says. "Everything's public and aboveboard; there's none of this I.D. number business."

Spoon dropping is not the only curious Cambridge custom. Because students apply to specific colleges within both Cambridge and Oxford, the colleges are more tightly knit than the Harvard houses. Each one has its own customs and identity.

"At some colleges, such as Caius, you have to wear an [academic] gown to dinner," Hurst says. And Chirgwin described one of the traditions involving Clare College--the all-women's college she attended at Cambridge--and King's College. "Once a month one of their drinking clubs comes to piss on our wall, and we all gather on top and throw eggs and flour down at them."

Although they live in older buildings--the earliest colleges date back to the 14th century--British students live better than their American counterparts, fellows say. "I find the idea of sharing [college] accomodations pretty horrible," said Chirgwin. "Living in [Cambridge] University, I had either one or two rooms which were not shared in any way, and what I had was normal." Housing is guaranteed all three years at Cambridge and during the first and third years by Oxford.

British students also consume more alcohol. The drinking age in England is only 18, so alcohol can play an official role in campus social life than in the United States, fellows say. "At Cambridge, students will get plastered every night. In America they go out and have ice cream. A lot of the student life there revolves around alcohol. Freshmen are legal, so we always have wine and sherry at formal dinners," Hurst says.

"It's quite disgusting," Chirgwin says.