SANJAY BASU, MIT: History motivates him, fiction fascinates him but it is humanitarian work that spurs him. A neuroscience major with an interest in mental health and infectious disease, Basu is the founder of United Trauma Relief, a campus-based organisation that provides pharmaceuticals to aids-afflicted poor and supplies disaster services to international aid relief efforts. Basu, who holds Truman and Goldwater Scholarships, and founded and edits the MIT Undergraduate Research Journal, will be travelling to Thailand soon to work with aids patients. At Oxford, he intends to do an M.Phil in development studies. An admirer of renowned MIT linguist and leftist, Noam Chomsky, Basu wants to study the effects of war and forced migration in recent years and how western governments affect the health of the poor in war-torn countries. "It's clear that major pushes for the improvement of the human condition have resulted in dramatic change over time, and we owe it to our predecessors who stood up and challenged the status quo. It's amazing how much discourse and reality have changed in just the past few years," he says. And it's possible that he'll make fiction his second career. "That's my minor, and I enjoy writing short stories and reading narrative essays," Basu smiles.

SUNITA PURI, YALE UNIVERSITY: Founder of Saheli, a resource group for battered women; researcher; counsellor; pianist and music teacher. Yet, Puri somehow packs in enough time in her busy schedule to study towards becoming a doctor and cultural anthropology professor. Puri's research paper on abusive marriages among South Asian immigrants in America and England won her the Rivers Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology and will soon be published in the Medical Anthropology Quarterly journal. She has also received the Amy Rossborough Fellowship from Yale to found a support group for South Asian immigrant women in and around New Haven. Puri will continue her investigation into domestic violence while at Oxford. "I want to use what I learn in Britain from these groups to strengthen groups in the US. I hope my experience in Oxford will give me academic and interpersonal tools that I can use to work towards a future as a physician and a professor of anthropology," says Puri. "Given the diversity in America it is especially important that physicians be culturally sensitive and supportive to provide the best medical care for patients and to cultivate a trusting relationship with patients." But it's not all work-Puri is a trained classical pianist. "Music has always been an outlet for me and an extremely important form of personal investigation and expression."

PAWAN K CHERUVU, DUKE UNIVERSITY: With Mahatma Gandhi as his idol, it was preordained that Cheruvu, a biomedical engineering major, be interested in not battering the body. So it comes as no surprise that he wants to pursue a double major in medicine and engineering, focusing on developing equipment that can diagnose heart problems without penetrating the body. A few months ago, he started testing an alternative pacemaker on sheep at Duke and earned a patent on a portable urine analyser that can spot diseases and pregnancies at 1/10th the cost of similar machines. "My sister Deepika has always challenged me to apply my knowledge to help people in the greater community," he says. Cheruvu graduated from high school at 16-many of his classmates were 18-and he earned a Tampa Tribune scholarship. In 1994, he won The Tampa Tribune/Scripps Howard Regional Final Spelling Bee. Notwithstanding his accomplishments, Cheruvu was daunted by the prospects of winning a Rhodes scholarship. "The competition is unbelievably fierce," he says. "Winning it is a surreal experience for me." And Cheruvu will have you know that he feels like any other child who grew up in Florida and happened to "stumble into some big waters".

-Mabel Pais