MIT Students With Overachiever Syndrome to Infiltrate Oxford as 2025 Rhodes Scholars, Rest of Us Feel Achingly Inadequate
Prepare yourselves for an epidemic of sparkling resumes and relentless ambition: four MIT students have been selected as Rhodes Scholars and will soon descend on Oxford University, sparking fears of a sudden shortage of awards, accolades, and World Challenges That Need Solving.
The quartet of Earthly prodigies, Yiming Chen, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo, are already causing a shortage of printer ink due to their lengthy CVs. “I thought my printer was outdated, but turns out it’s just intimidated,” shared one MIT admin, who requested anonymity to avoid public shaming.
Chen, an MIT graduate who can best be described as a musical AI wizard—since she probably knows more about artificial intelligence than most robots—plans to continue her mission to transform the daunting outer realms of machine learning in healthcare. “I didn’t really have a choice in the matter; it’s just what smart people do,” remarked Chen, modestly. “I’ve been just winging it since I picked up the guzheng at the age of four.”
Wilhem Hector, the first Haitian citizen to become a Rhodes Scholar, plans to energize Haiti with renewable energy dreams, perhaps generating more power than his collective amount of enthusiasm might already be contributing. “I just want to give back,” Hector explained, “and maybe learn how to make renewable energy out of that infamous British weather.”
Anushka Nair, whose brain is partly owned by places like MIT, Stanford, and Tesla, plans to defend the world against misinformation while at Oxford. “I figure if I can handle understanding machine learning, dismantling internet misinformation should be a piece of binary cake,” stated Nair, whose name is now synonymous with high-functioning brilliance.
Meanwhile, David Oluigbo is setting himself up to solve global health challenges with AI. He’s already started preparing by turning internships into peer-reviewed papers. “I want to help those in low-income countries,” said Oluigbo, while casually multi-tasking as the EMT on call and writing a novel, probably titled “How to be Better than Anyone at Everything, Basically.”
Professor Nancy Kanwisher, co-chair of the Presidential Committee on Distinguished Fellowships, expressed sheer, yet unsurprised delight over the Rhodes selections. “These students wow us every day, and we are just blessed they didn’t all cure cancer while they were at it,” she said, adding, “But shouldn’t they have cured cancer by now?”
So, as these model specimens of human potential prepare to take their hyper-competent talents across the pond to Oxford, the rest of us are left to wonder if lying on our resumes about learning to play guitar at age five just isn’t going to cut it anymore.
