Mallory Dwinal had never thought about fellowship opportunities before she got to Northwestern. Now, the Rhodes Scholar and recent member of USA Today’s All-USA College Academic Team is Oxford-bound – thanks in part to NU’s Office of Fellowships, she said.
“I came to Northwestern without a clear plan of what I wanted to do,” the Weinberg senior said. “(The Office of Fellowships) did a lot in terms of talking with me about what my interests were outside of the professional sphere and then figuring out how I could connect those back to a viable career path.”
NU’s Office of Fellowships has quietly built itself into one of the top fellowships programs in the country. For 2008-2009, Northwestern was fourth in the nation in Fulbright awards behind the University of Michigan, Harvard College and Yale University, according to a report by The Chronicle of Higher Education. This year, NU boasts two Rhodes scholars and tied Yale for the most Gates Cambridge scholarships, with one current student and three alumni winning the fellowships.
NU students won 105 external fellowships last year, compared to 222 external and internal fellowships at Yale University, 93 at Dartmouth College, 46 at Columbia University and six at Cornell University. Not all universities have an office of fellowships that maintains such statistics.
The Office of Fellowships helps students in all steps of the application process, from fine-tuning their writing skills to sitting down and talking at length about what particular academic, social and leadership skills they could highlight on their applications, said Sarah Anson Vaux, director of the Office of Fellowships. The office strives to help students prepare for future careers, she said.
“It involves intense personal work with me or a member of my staff on writing, presentation and more importantly self-reflections and fitting personal talents to what you want to do with your life,” she said. “Everyone who goes away is changed in some way. We’re enlarging their vision, and that’s something that will stay with them.”
The Office of Fellowships works with students who have been recommended by faculty members as well as students who apply on their own, Vaux said.
“We have a process of collecting names, but we also use a democratic process of letting everyone in the university community know about valuable opportunities,” Vaux said. “After that, we talk with individual students and select programs that would be a good fit.”
As a large institution, NU’s ability to provide such individualized services for students is impressive, said Joseph Spooner, director of the Office of Fellowships at Williams College. Williams had 21 students receive fellowships last year.
“Our numbers pale in comparison to what’s happening at NU,” he said. “Our student body is much smaller, but Northwestern is running one of the five best programs in the country right now for fellowships. The breadth is just phenomenal.”
Despite all NU has accomplished thus far, there is always room for improvement, Vaux said. A recent initiative brings sophomore, junior and senior applicants together in discussion groups to talk about the application and interview process, she said.
Currently, the discussion groups include students recommended by faculty members, but as the program expands, Vaux said she hopes to be able to include all applicants.
“There are so many kids here with talent,” she said. “We’d like to bring more students in and have more winners in every category.”
The dedication the Office of Fellowships shows to its student applicants is one of the most important and helpful aspects of the program, Dwinal said.
“I consider them to be one of the single most valuable resources on campus,” she said. “They know what works and what doesn’t and how to guide students toward what does.”
