Yale News

In 2022, Sayda Martinez-Alvarado ’23 — then a senior at Yale — was devastated to learn that she had not been selected as a Rhodes scholar. 

Two years later, after reapplying to the program following her graduation, she was overcome with disbelief when the panel announced her as one of the 32 American Rhodes Scholars this year. Martinez-Alvarado said that hearing her name felt so surreal that for a few moments, she stood frozen, unable to fully process the moment. 

 “The person I was standing next to had to tap me on the shoulder and motion toward the judges for me to snap out of it,” she said.

Martinez-Alvarado is one of four Yalies this year who received Rhodes Scholarships this past weekend. Martinez-Alvarado and current Yale senior Angelin Mathew ’25 are two of the 32 American Rhodes Scholars and Chriss Tuyishime ’25, an international student from Rwanda, and Tony Wang ’24, an international student from China, are two of the international scholars chosen from over 70 countries around the world. 

Recipients of the Rhodes Scholarship receive funding for two to three years of graduate study at the University of Oxford, the foremost consideration being academic excellence. Since its inception in 1902, the qualities of a Rhodes scholar have been adapted to value an ambition for social impact and the ability to work with others.

“[Scholars] should be committed to make a strong difference for good in the world, be concerned for the welfare of others and be acutely conscious of inequities,” Ramona Doyle, American secretary of the Rhodes Trust, wrote in a press release announcing the 32 American Rhodes Scholars.  

Sayda Martinez-Alvarado ’23

After hearing her name called, Martinez-Alvarado immediately called her parents and then shortly after expressed thanks to the many friends and mentors who helped her throughout her journey to Yale and her Rhodes Scholarship. 

At Yale, Martinez-Alvarado majored in psychology and was in the Education Studies Program. Throughout her time at the University, she developed a passion for equitable education, which shaped many of the activities she was involved with at Yale. 

“I’ve always been committed to this mission of education, and making it more accessible to all students, and reimagining how we can make it a more effective tool for social and economic mobility,” she said. 

As a student who found immense comfort in the first-generation, low-income community, she provided mentorship as an FGLI student ambassador for the Yale College Dean’s Office. She was also the head first-year counselor for Davenport College, a head advising fellow for Matriculate, a nonprofit college advisory group, and the head conductor for the Davenport Pops Orchestra. 

Most recently, she has worked as a senior policy analyst at EdTrust, a nonprofit promoting educational access and opportunity for students of color and FGLI backgrounds. For the past year, she has been working to make college more affordable to students of color and from low-income backgrounds.

Martinez-Alvarado still plans to attend law school after her studies abroad, focusing on law within the education system. Since very few law schools offer such a curriculum, she reapplied for the Rhodes scholarship to pursue education-specific degrees at Oxford. She is particularly interested in two programs — a master’s in education and in evidence-based social intervention and policy evaluation.

Angelin Mathew ’25

For the final stage of the scholarship, Mathew flew to Atlanta for an interview, competing against 15 other finalists for two spots. When the panel announced that she had won, she immediately burst into tears and hugged the other finalists.

“I would be so happy if any of the other people in this room won because I had gotten to know their life stories,” Mathew said. “I was just filled with a lot of gratitude for having won, but at the same time, I was inspired by the other finalists around me.” 

Mathew is currently pursuing a double major in Molecular Biology and Humanities, focusing on Buddhist-Christian comparative theology. 

She is deeply interested in how spiritual and religious beliefs inform end-of-life care and medical decision-making, founding a global initiative called the Existential Flourishing Network. Mathew also led research focusing on socio-demographic locations of death across 20 years, cancer treatment affordability and treatment technologies that could improve the care of bedridden, terminally ill patients.

At Oxford, Mathew hopes to pursue a master’s in religious studies and a second in medical anthropology. She’s specifically interested in the UK’s initiatives to destigmatize death. Much of the work of the UK National Palliative Care Council aligns with the area of study that Mathew has been researching for the past two years. 

“They found that there was a really big gap between where people said they wanted to die and where they were actually dying. And part of their intuition was that this might be because there’s not enough mainstream discussion around death or advanced care planning,” she said. 

Mathew also hopes to study how different religions could inform patient-doctor relationships. 

Chriss Tuyishime ’25

Tuyishime is a senior majoring in Ethics, Politics, and Economics expecting to graduate in December. While pursuing a certificate in global health studies, he contributed to a policy brief on sustainable investment in the African pharmaceutical industry submitted to a senior official at the African Development Bank. For his senior thesis, he is researching Rwanda’s use of innovative aid modalities. 

Tuyishime has served as a marine student explorer in France, a summer law intern in Washington, D.C. and a college prep tutor in Rwanda. 

At Oxford, he plans to pursue two master’s degrees — in translational health sciences and in public policy.

Tony Wang ’24

As an undergraduate at Yale, Wang  received six awards, including the CMES Libby Rouse Prize Fellowship for Peace and the Conger-Goodyear Prize for Outstanding Senior Thesis. He was also named a Henry Fellow, which provided a fully funded scholarship to study in the UK. He graduated in 2024 with a double major in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and History of Art.

Tony has studied Persian, Sanskrit, and several ancient languages to explore the history and archaeology of the Silk Roads. He has published four papers in Chinese and English, with another forthcoming, and serves as a trilingual editor for the “Journal of Ancient Iranian Studies.”

As a research assistant in the Yale Department of History and at the World Art History Institute in Shanghai, he deepened his expertise, while volunteering as a docent at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, the Capital Museum in Beijing, and the Tsinghua University Art Museum. His archaeological fieldwork in Afghanistan and Pakistan inspired his work with initiatives like “Guardians of Bamiyan” and “Guardians of Gandhara,” where he developed heritage preservation courses and site labels for local communities.

Tony plans to pursue research in archaeology at Oxford. He hopes to become a researcher based in China, focusing on cultural interactions and sharing archaeological insights through public education.

Currently, there are more than 2,000 American Rhodes Scholars globally.

Update, Nov. 20: Since the publication of this article, Tony Wang ’24, an international student from Beijing, China, has also been named a Rhodes Scholar, and the article has been updated to reflect this.