Difficult journey ends with a Rhodes Scholarship
Peter N. SpencerSTATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Graniteville resident Zujaja Tauqeer is really, really smart.
Members
of the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee already knew that by the
time they had selected the 21-year-old Brooklyn College pre-med student
as a finalist from the thousands of applications they received around
the country.
So when they sat down to interview Ms. Tauqeer two
weeks ago, they weren’t really interested in her 3.97 GPA, or the fact
that she speaks four languages, is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and has
published studies on the bio-chemistry of autism in medical journals,
stemming from her work at the Institute for Basic Research (IBR) in
Willowbrook.
They wanted know about her story — so she told them
how she and her family escaped religious persecution in Pakistan and
moved around the United States before they finally found a home on
Staten Island.
Two hours later, Ms. Tauqeer joined an elite
group of Americans as a winner of one the most prestigious awards in the
world. The Rhodes Scholarship pays for two years of postgraduate study
at the University of Oxford in England.
Read more: http://www.silive.com/northshore/index.ssf/2010/12/difficult_journey_ends_with_a.html