More colleges aiming to join fellowship elite

NORTON -- Like a recruiter for a Fortune 500 company, J. Alex Trayford is hunting for the best at Wheaton College. He looks for students with high grade-point averages, tough courses, and extracurricular activities. He investigates tips from professors about the students who offer profound answers in class discussions.

If Trayford is impressed, he readies a pitch about money and opportunity.

As the associate dean of studies at Wheaton, Trayford is on a mission to boost the number of students applying for the world's most prestigious awards such as the Rhodes Scholarships and Fulbright fellowship. Wheaton, like a growing number of small private colleges and larger state universities, is attempting to break into a territory long dominated by Ivy League schools and other academic powerhouses.

While college officials emphasize they are seeking better opportunities for students, they also hope that winning the scholarships will bring more institutional prestige -- enabling the colleges to recruit more topnotch students and attract donors. Colleges such as Simmons, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University of New Hampshire have or are in the process of opening fellowship advising offices or devoting more staff to work with students.

"I hate to say it, but we need to be part of the 'old boys' network,' " said Susan Krauss Whitbourne, director of national scholarship advising at UMass-Amherst. "There is a natural tendency for people to pick people like themselves for something. The challenge for UMass is to be seen as people they want and we have those people, but . . . they may not be quite as glib or polished."

While colleges have been making such efforts for the past decade, they have been gaining momentum in the last five years. The share of Ivy League students among Rhodes Scholars between 1997 and this year has dropped to 25 percent, compared with 37 percent between 1987 and 1996, according to a Globe analysis of US recipients.

Harvard's share of Rhodes Scholars, for instance, dropped to 10 percent over the last 10 years, down from 17 percent for the previous 10 years. Harvard broke a seven-decade winning streak when none of the 2001 recipients included a Harvard student. The university bounced back the following year with five recipients but missed out again for this year's class.

However, the Rhodes Scholar Trust announced yesterday that six Harvard students will be among the 32 American recipients for next year's class. Slightly more than one-third of yesterday's winners came from Ivy League colleges, and Harvard students are the only ones to represent a Massachusetts school next year. The university holds the record for the most Rhodes recipients at 319.

William Wright-Swadel, who oversees fellowship advising as Harvard's director of career services, said the university has not changed its approach in the face of the growing competition.

"The fact that many schools have excellent students and access to awards is a wonderful thing," he said.

Fellowship foundations have been visiting campuses to encourage students at schools with no history of winning to apply. If a student is the first-ever to win from a college, the Rhodes Scholarships program often points that out in announcements. And some foundation representatives work with the National Association of Fellowship Advisors, a five-year-old support group for colleges struggling to make gains with the competitions.

But foundations say they are not favoring new schools when selecting winners.

"We don't put a thumb on the scale," said Elliot F. Gerson, the American secretary for the Rhodes Scholar Trust. "The notion that the number of Rhodes Scholars is a proxy for the quality of education is a stretch."

Wheaton's success serves as an inspiration for many colleges. When Trayford arrived eight years ago, this liberal arts college of 1,500 students had never had a Rhodes Scholar.

It now boasts three, and since 2001, students have earned more than 60 prestigious fellowships. On its website Wheaton highlights "Championship Students" among 10 top facts about the school.

"A little school that wasn't really on the map with these things can put itself on it," Trayford said.

With its fellowship success, Wheaton is becoming more selective in its admissions. Last year, the college accepted 41 percent of applicants, compared with 65 percent in 2000. The average GPA of an incoming student has increased to 3.5 from 3.35 six years ago.

Applying for a fellowship can involve months of rewriting essays, going through mock interviews, and in some cases, attending a mock cocktail party. Advisers compare the process to taking an additional course and they begin grooming students as early as their freshman year.

The payoff can be huge. A Rhodes Scholarship covers two or three years of graduate study at the University of Oxford in England, while a Harry S. Truman Scholarship provides up to $30,000 to students pursuing graduate degrees in public service.

Some fellowships can seem more like a dream vacation. Alexandra Cheney, a Wheaton graduate from Santa Monica, Calif., is studying surf culture and environmental stewardship as she travels this year through Polynesia, Australia, Japan, Costa Rica, Brazil, and South Africa on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Between the waves, she e-mails a Wheaton class about her adventures.

Myles Matteson, a Wheaton graduate from Epsom, N.H., was interviewed Saturday as a finalist for the Rhodes, but was not selected. He is a finalist for the Marshall Scholarships, which also pay for graduate study at a college in England. Preparing the applications, he said, was a form of self-discovery, especially , in his case, having done much of the work from Africa.

"It's exciting and invigorating going through the process," said Matteson, who previously has won a Truman Scholarship.

James Vaznis can be reached at jvaznis@globe.com.