Columbia Gets Back Into Rhodes Ranks

Ending a five-year drought of Rhodes scholarships, two undergraduates at Columbia University this weekend won the prestigious fellowships, tying their school with Harvard University and topping Yale University for the number of students it will send to study for two years at the University of Oxford.

A political science major who hosts a campus cooking show, "the Careless Cook," Jason Bello, 21, and an economics and environmental science major who worked as a catwalk technician sampling sea-floor sediments in the Arabian Sea, George Olive, 22, were selected by the Rhodes committee Saturday from 14 Columbia finalists.

A Bronx native graduating from Dartmouth College, a Stanford student from Manhattan, and a Stanford student from Amagansett, N.Y., are also among the 32 American winners.

The Rhodes scholarship, the oldest and most prestigious international fellowship, was founded in 1902 to gather outstanding students from around the globe to study at Oxford.

Every year, 32 Rhodes scholars are selected from regional committees in America.

Graduating Rhodes scholars has become an important comparative marker among top-tier institutions. Harvard often produces five or six Rhodes scholars a year, and Columbia's dry spell was considered by many to be a black mark on the Ivy League school.

"It's something that bothered people, because we should have Rhodes scholars every year," Mr. Olive, a native of Springfield, Mo., said.

"It was all Miss America-style, and very excruciating," Mr. Olive, who also won a Marshall Scholarship last week, said of the Rhodes selection process.

Mr. Olive, who had to decline the Marshall after winning the Rhodes, said his friends joked that if he won both awards, he had to ask the president of Columbia, Lee Bollinger, to cook him breakfast.

At Oxford, Mr. Olive plans to study large-scale infrastructure changes in developing countries. He plans to pursue a career bringing green energy to developing countries, but says he is loath to give up the comforts of New York City.

"I love the Met and the Natural History Museum, or going to Peter Luger for a cheeseburger on a Saturday," Mr. Olive said.

Mr. Bello, a Boston native, said he plans to study free markets for new media in countries such as India.

Mr. Bello, who is co-president of Columbia University's LGBT Jews and Allies group and the Black Students Organization, said his backup plan if he didn't win the scholarship was to join Teach for America.

With three winners each, Stanford University and the University of Chicago were the schools that brought in the largest number of Rhodes scholars.