Indian-origin students in Rhodes Scholarship list

HOUSTON: Several Indian-origin students have found a pride of place among the 32 named last week to receive the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship for 2008.

Six students of Indian or South Asian origin are among the recipients of the scholarship, the oldest international study awards available to American students.
   
Each will receive scholarships to study at the University of Oxford, in England, for two to three years.
   
Pravin Rajan, Ishanaa Rambachan, Andrea DeHoed, Deep Shah, Shayak Sarkar and Isra Bhatty were selected from 764 applicants endorsed by 294 colleges and universities.
   
Georgetown University graduate Rajan, now a Second Lieutenant in the US Marine Corps Reserve, will enter the Oxford's D Phil programme in the Department of Politics and International Relations, where he will research the impact of military interventions on the Middle East.
   
Upon completing graduate work at Oxford, Rajan will be a Marine Infantry Officer in Iraq or Afghanistan.
   
Ishanaa Rambachan, the chairwoman of the student senate at St Olaf College, Minnesota, plans to study women's political and economic empowerment. The Minnesota native, daughter of Indo-Trinidadian immigrants, has studied and worked in Turkey, Egypt, Morocco and India.
   
After her studies at Oxford, Rambachan plans to work in development for a US or United Nations aid agency or for the World Bank. "It puts me in a position to do good work...I can now help the most people as much as possible," she said.
   
Rambachan, who had worked in rural India, helping women start small businesses, plans to study international development at Oxford, looking at how to reduce poverty and increase political representation, especially among women in south Asia.