Selection
In total, 477 individuals have been awarded a Kennedy Scholarship. The selection process is highly competitive, with a national competition which begins each autumn. Following a long-list and short-list process, around twenty-five individuals are invited to London for interview by the trustees.
When evaluating applications and interviewing candidates, the trustees take into consideration:
- intellectual ability
- personal and communication skills
- wider interests and attainments
- the focus and value of the candidate's proposed study at Harvard or MIT
- capacity for future influence and leadership
The selection aims, criteria and standards are comparable to the Rhodes Scholarship program. William Waldegrave, Baron Waldegrave of North Hill, the current chairman of the Rhodes Scholarship program and Provost of Eton College, studied at Harvard as a Kennedy Scholar. All successful applicants are invited to an annual reception in their honour.
Read more about this topic: Kennedy Scholarship
Famous quotes containing the word selection:
“Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)
“The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the highest and most legitimate pride of an Englishman to have the letters M.P. written after his name. No selection from the alphabet, no doctorship, no fellowship, be it of ever so learned or royal a society, no knightship,—not though it be of the Garter,—confers so fair an honour.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)