As to the methods of selection, Parkin decided to allot that task to committees composed of political and academic leaders in each country or dominion. He spent most of 1903 and 1904 traveling the globe. He met hundreds of officials and worked to establish committees in Canada, the United States, South Africa, Rhodesia, New Zealand, Australia, Bermuda, and Jamaica. The United States presented his greatest challenge. It had far more territory, more people, and more colleges and universities than any of the others. It would also send more scholars – more than half of the total.
Due to the difficulties of getting the mechanism up and running, Parkin concluded that in the United States and most of the dominions it would not be possible to send students to Oxford in 1903. Therefore the first American scholars did not reach England until the fall of 1904. One immediate puzzle in the United States was how to send thirty-two scholars from forty-eight states. (Actually, there were only forty-five states, but the territories of Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona were allowed to participate. Oklahoma achieved statehood in 1907; the other two in 1912.)
One had to keep in mind that Rhodes wanted students from each of the states. After consulting with many university and civic leaders, Parkin concluded that the best solution would be to send one scholar from each state in 1904 and 1905, but no Americans at all in 1906. A rotation like this would produce a three-year cycle of 48, 48, and 0 – an average of 32 per year. The colleges in Oxford eventually complained that this system created housing and other problems, when in some years they had to find room for over forty Americans and in others none. Thus in 1915 Parkin devised a new scheme. Henceforth in any given year only two-thirds of the states would elect scholars, producing thirty-two traveling to Oxford each autumn.
In every state Parkin assembled a committee. It generally consisted of the presidents of the four or five most prominent universities in the state. In some states the governors also participated. This happened even though President Theodore Roosevelt had advised Parkin against it. Roosevelt warned that governors would always be looking ahead to the next election and that this might influence their choice of winners.14 In other countries during the early years of the program government representatives played an even greater role. In Canada, for example, the committees included the lieutenant-governor, the chief justice, and the chief superintendent of education, as well as college presidents.
By the spring of 1904 the machinery was set up and the first batch of scholars was selected. The process would remain little changed until after the First World War. A candidate first had to declare the state in which he was applying. This could be the state in which he resided or the state in which he went to school. Of course, a student who was from Massachusetts and attended Harvard University had but one choice to make. However, a student from North Dakota who attended Harvard had two options. This remains true to the present day.
Following this, each student had to pass a qualifying examination in Greek, Latin, and mathematics. Then, upon recommendation by his college or university, he and other candidates met with the selection committee for an interview. After a day of interviewing the finalists, the committee notified the winner. The future Rhodes Scholar then listed several Oxford colleges, in order of preference. This list was sent to Wylie, who did his best to win admittance for the student in one of the preferred colleges. The following autumn the student traveled to Oxford, at his own expense. (Nowadays the Rhodes Trust pays for transportation.) Once in Oxford, he received a yearly stipend-set initially at £300. This sum was sufficient for college lodging and other fees plus all personal expenses, but only if the student was frugal.
A process for selecting Rhodes Scholars that looked fine on paper proved to be anything but that during the next dozen years or so. One problem resulted from the criteria mentioned in the will. Rhodes Scholarships differed from all others in that the recipients had to demonstrate more than just academic ability. They also had to show character, concern for their fellow human beings, leadership potential, and an interest in “fighting the world's fight” in some form of public service. How could one evaluate all these intangibles? Parkin and the committees agreed that each scholar must be “superior” in at least one of the areas and “good” in the others. But whereas one could assess academic performance by grades and other solid evidence, how could one gauge character and leadership ability? Addressing a conference of university and college presidents in Chicago in 1903, Parkin answered this query in straightforward fashion. All that committee members had to do was select the man whom they envisaged becoming president of the United States, chief justice of the Supreme Court, or U.S. ambassador to Great Britain!15 This advice provided a lofty ideal. It would also haunt the program in later years, as the careers of Rhodes Scholars came to be measured against it.
Despite the initial flurry of publicity the program received when Rhodes' will was made public, recruitment remained a nagging problem through the First World War. Again and again the selection committees and Parkin lamented the fact that many potential applicants were not aware of the scholarships. Indeed, most Americans quickly forgot about them or became hazy about their details. This was true even of the New York Times. In 1909 the newspaper misleadingly announced the appointment of a woman Rhodes Scholar.16 Of course, having a female scholar would have violated Rhodes' will. Not until 1976 would an Act of Parliament permit amending the will in that fashion. What had happened in 1909 was that an organization called the Society of American Women established a fund to send one female student per year to study in Britain. There was no connection to the Rhodes Scholarships at all.
Besides insufficient publicity, another serious obstacle was the qualifying exam. Between 1904 and 1918 some two thousand students took it, but only about half passed.17 Of course, many other likely candidates shied away from the examination and never applied at all. Most candidates had little problem with the mathematics or the Latin; the big hurdle for most was the Greek. Virtually all British students had studied both of the classical languages in secondary school. In the United States most applicants had studied Latin in high school or college, but few outside of classics majors had taken Greek. Some successful candidates claimed that the language exams were not too difficult and that any intelligent young man could easily pass that section of the test if he studied Greek privately for a few months beforehand.18 Nevertheless, not too many wanted to invest so much time preparing for an examination, particularly when a passing grade in itself did not guarantee winning a scholarship. After years of complaining, Parkin was able to get the Oxford colleges and the Rhodes Trustees to agree to a compromise. After 1909 candidates could take the initial qualifying exam in mathematics and Latin and postpone the Greek part until after they were notified of their appointment to a scholarship.19 The new Rhodes Scholars, however, were still required to take the Greek section prior to arrival in Oxford.
Even with this compromise, however, the number of applicants did not increase markedly. Through the First World War the number of qualified applicants who could be considered by the committees averaged only about one hundred per year. That was an average of two or three candidates for each scholarship. In some states, especially the less populated ones, the number of candidates might be none or one. In situations where only one or two candidates presented themselves, the committees sometimes judged that no one was worthy. This meant no scholar was appointed that year. From 1904 to 1918, when the selection system was changed, there was only one year (1916) when all of the available scholarships were distributed.20 In 1905 ten of the available forty-eight slots went unfilled. In short, some of the recipients won their scholarships virtually by default.
To make matters worse, there were many examples of blatant abuse or laxity by the committees. In many states the appointment of Rhodes Scholars became a rather cozy, gentlemanly rotation among the handful of prominent universities. Thus in a given year the scholarship might go to the candidate from university “A,” the next year to the choice of university “B,” and so on until the series began again.21 Parkin did his best to curtail this practice, but with only limited success.
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