Beyond the Rhodes

Three years at Oxford University. Free tuition. Some costs and travel fees covered. Sound good?

No, I'm not talking about the Rhodes Scholarship.

Not the Marshall Scholarship, either.

While those two are considered to be the most prestigious fellowships available to students, there are many more lesser-known awards that offer the same benefits.

For example, the John Swire Scholarship grants three years of study at Oxford to Asian students who are studying overseas.

Only one Penn senior applied -- unsuccessfully -- for the John Swire fellowship this year.

After helping the student throughout the application process, Arthur Casciato -- who, along with Cheryl Shipman, runs Penn's Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships -- added the John Swire Scholarship to the center's online list of fellowships.

But ultimately, such small, relatively unknown fellowships are not the focus of CURF's two-person office. In fact, the Penn senior first found out about the John Swire fellowship through her father, who discovered it by searching online.

Established just six years ago, CURF was designed with a specific charge: to help Penn win prestigious fellowships in similar numbers as its Ivy League peers.

This year, Penn fared well, boasting both a Rhodes winner and a Marshall recipient.

Still, there is room for improvement. Three Yale University students won the Rhodes this year.

According to Casciato, Penn's numbers will continue to improve as more Penn students apply for the fellowships.

"The key to being successful was the discovery that the problem wasn't with any one thing," Casciato said. "It was simply that we weren't applying in the numbers that our peer institutions were applying."

The reality, though, is that more applications mean more work for CURF's very small office.

"The more we work to increase the number of apps, the more we create work for ourselves," Casciato said. "The work isn't the problem, but rather the quality of work, given limited staffing and resources."

If more applications are the key to Penn winning more fellowships, then the CURF office must be expanded in order to accommodate those applications. Otherwise, Casciato and Shipman will be stretched thin, and the result will be less attention given to each individual application.

"We're always here to help, regardless of the fellowship," Casciato said. "But we have a specific charge. We have certain things that take priority, from the University. We were set up to be a centralized location for the most important fellowships."

If CURF continues to focus on the "most important fellowships," it is likely that soon Casciato and Shipman won't have time for the lesser-known fellowships such as the John Swire.

At the very least, CURF's online list of fellowships needs to be made more comprehensive.

For example, if you're a senior hoping to spend a year in Israel, there are more options than just the Fulbright. Both the Dorot Fellowship and the Shatil Fellowship pay for students to study or work in Israel. If you checked CURF's Web site, though, those grants are nowhere to be found.

"It would be wonderful if we could have someone who was specialized in smaller grants as part of our office," he said. "We would love to have someone who we could create a niche for, to keep up with just the smaller fellowships.

"We would be more effective if we at least had one more person in here."

The Rhodes and Marshall might be the most important to the University in terms of prestige and ranking.

But for students, the opportunity to study for free at some of the world's foremost institutions is an unbelievable opportunity.

Most students do not declare a major until their sophomore year, and some do not learn what subjects truly interest them until the end of their college careers.

Fellowships therefore provide the perfect chance to study a subject more in depth -- and not have to pay for it.

Whether that opportunity is called the Rhodes or the John Swire may matter to U.S. News & World Report college rankings, and it may matter to Penn administrators, too.

But for students looking to further their studies for free, the end result is largely the same: three years at Oxford for free, with some travel costs covered.

That sounds good to me.

If Penn ever wants three Rhodes winners -- and still have time to help support students applying for smaller awards -- the University must help students by expanding the CURF office.

Josh Pollick is a senior political science major from Los Angeles. On Point appears on Mondays.

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