Samo alum Madison Tung on the "Rhodes" to a scholarship

Samo alumnus, Madison “Maddy” Tung (’15), was recently one of 32 winners to receive the Rhodes Scholarship out of 2,005 applicants from across the country. This academic scholarship, founded by Cecil Rhodes in 1902, grants the winners a full ride scholarship to Oxford University for graduate school. Along with the Rhodes Scholarship, she won three other scholarships, including the Truman Scholarship, the Marshall Scholarship and the Schwarzman Scholarship. Right now, she is in her fourth and final year at the United States Air Force Academy. Ava Tung (’19), Maddy's sister, explained that it took her years of preparation and dedication to become a Rhodes Scholar. Maddy is an undergraduate student at the Air Force Academy; she worked to maintain her grades and to get involved in many activities. Claudia Bautista-Nicholas, a Samo teacher who worked with her, described her as an outgoing student and a born leader. “She was the most phenomenal women I had ever met in my entire life. She was the youngest and she was this little spit fire. She dominated the conversation and guided the seniors most of the time,” Bautista said.According to Maddy, it is important that the applicants have a specific idea about what they want to study. Currently, Maddy is a math major and looks forward to studying artificial intelligence at Oxford along with math. She will apply these skills to work in international development and information warfare. Applying for the award required writing multiple essays and was similar to applying to college. After she applied, she became a finalist and had to interview to earn her spot as one of the 32 winners. The Air Force Academy requires students to have some type of scholarship to go straight to graduate school instead of going into service, so she was motivated to apply to multiple graduate scholarship programs. Currently, Maddy is in her final year at the Air Force Academy, which she was inspired to go to because of the unique opportunities for her there. It provides many unusual college options not found at a typical university such as learning skydiving and studying cyber security. “Coming out of high school I realized that I enjoyed school and I was decent at that. I also really liked wrestling. So I saw that my skill sets were both academic and athletic, and I wanted to do something and make a difference, so I thought that the military was a good place to combine my athletic and academic interests to use both of those to try to make a difference in the world,” Maddy said. In addition to being on the wrestling team, she was in Acadeca and ASB while she was at Samo. Ava says that right now her sister hopes to apply her education working at a think tank in Washington D.C.