Sunday, November 23, 2014

Rhodes Scholars

The latest batch of Rhodes Scholars were announced. None from UGA, where I teach, this time around. Out of curiosity I decided to run the numbers, based on this page, of SEC schools and how many Rhodes Scholars they've had. I suspect the latest batch are not included. Below, in alpha order, are the schools with the number of scholars in parentheses. If you wanted to rank them, it'd be (1) Vanderbilt (2) Georgia (3) Missouri (4) Alabama (5) Florida.

Alabama (15)
Arkansas (10)
Auburn (4)
Florida (12)
Georgia (23)
Kentucky (9)
LSU (14)
Mississippi (0)
Mississippi State (2)
Missouri (18)
South Carolina (8)
Tennessee (7)
Texas A&M (5)
Vanderbilt (26)

Is there any deeper meaning to this list? Perhaps not, except that the top five are probably also the best five academic schools in the conference, at least as measured by these and other awards (Goldwater, etc.) and the income SAT/ACT scores. Probably A&M underperforms and Alabama overperforms in terms of its academic quality and Rhodes ranking.

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