Finding the path to Rhodes success

Born and raised in Odessa, Ukraine, Anastasia Piliavsky knew only 30 words of English when her plane touched down at Logan Airport 10 years ago.

Now, the 23-year-old is a graduate of Boston University with a degree in social anthropology. She has done field studies in India and Mongolia, and has filmed and translated a documentary about the indigenous Sahariya people of India.

Yesterday, the 10th anniversary of the day she and her family arrived in the United States, her name was on the list of 2005 Rhodes Scholars.

''I'm kind of floating around. I'm not really believing it yet," said Piliavsky, one of 32 American recipients announced yesterday.

Piliavsky is one of several immigrants or first-generation Americans among the Rhodes Scholars selected from the United States this year. Swati Mylavarapu, a senior at Harvard University studying human rights in international development, is a first-generation American from Hyderabad, India. And social studies major K. Sabeel Rahman, also a Harvard senior, is a first-generation American from Bangladesh. Besides Piliavsky, two other scholars are from former Soviet countries.

''The recent Rhodes selections demonstrate the extraordinary abilities and ambitions of new Americans," said Elliot F. Gerson, American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, which announced the 2005 American winners.

The Rhodes Scholarships provide two or three years of study at Oxford University in England. The awards were created in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes. Scholars are selected on the basis of academic achievement, personal integrity, and leadership potential, among other criteria.

The 32 American students will join scholars from 18 nations around the world. Approximately 95 scholars are selected each year. This year's American winners were chosen from a pool of 904 applicants from 341 colleges across the nation.

More than one-third of the American winners are from Massachusetts or attended school in the state. Six are current or former Harvard students, and two are from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Boston University, Williams College, and Wheaton College have one scholar each, and one Yale University scholar is from Westwood.

''It's quite a bumper year for Massachusetts," Gerson said. ''It's quite a group."

Elizabeth Masiello, a magna cum laude graduate of Wellesley College and now a student at MIT, has worked for the National Security Agency in computer technology and plans to study economics at Oxford. The other MIT scholar, Laurel Yong-Hwa Lee, was a biology and neuroscience major who established a centralized healthcare system in Honduras for orphanages and women's shelters serving 11 villages.

Catherine J. Frieman, the Yale scholar from Westwood, has conducted archeological excavations in Denmark and on the Isle of Man. She spent last year in Aix-en-Provence, France, and is an active volunteer in a prison literacy program.

Sarah J. Hill, a senior at Harvard majoring in biochemical sciences, is a cellist with the Bach Symphony Orchestra who has conducted significant research relating to ovarian cancer.

Mylavarapu is president of the Harvard International Relations Council and is a national debate champion.

For Rahman, who is completing his undergraduate thesis on poverty alleviation in his family's native Bangladesh, one of the best parts of winning the Rhodes was sharing it with his parents. As soon as he was selected, he called his mother and told her in Bengali, ''I won!"

''She kind of did a double take," he said yesterday. ''I had to tell her twice."

Rahman is former senior editor of the Harvard International Review and a tutor at the Harvard Writing Center. He plans to study international development at Oxford.

Piliavsky, who attended high school in Waltham and lives in an apartment with her parents near Boston's Mission Hill neighborhood, said her parents didn't really understand the prestige connected with the Rhodes until reporters began calling their home yesterday. Last night, the family planned to celebrate her achievement and, in effect, theirs, since arriving in the United States.

''It's been a long way; it was really, really rough," Piliavsky said. Earning a Rhodes Scholarship is ''a matter of great pride for my parents and the community."

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.