Britain Bound: Six Academically Exceptional Indian American Students Among 51 Marshall Scholars

Six Indian Americans are among  51 winners of the 2024 Marshall Scholarships, considered one of the most prestigious postgraduate awards available to U.S. students.. The recipients, considered among America’s most accomplished undergraduate university students and recent graduates, were chosen following an intense selection process and will begin graduate studies at top universities across the United Kingdom next year. They will begin their graduate studies at universities across the United Kingdom next September. The program received 1006 applications this year from 34 universities across 21states and the District of Columbia.

Created by the British government by an Act of Parliament to honor George C. Marshall, General of the Army, Secretary of State, and architect of the post-World War II Economic Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan, Marshall Scholarships were first granted in 1953. Since their inception, the scholarships have been awarded to academically exceptional American students who’ve recently earned an undergraduate degree from a four-year college in the United States and maintained at least a 3.7 grade point average. 

Indian American winners include: 

Arushi Avachat, from the Bay Area, California, is studying English and Political Science with a minor in South Asian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. As a Marshall Scholar, she will pursue an MA in English and American Studies as well as an MA in Global and Imperial History at the University of Oxford. She is the author of “Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment,” a Young Adult novel releasing from Wednesday Books/Macmillan in January 2024. She is on contract for a second YA novel, which she is currently drafting as her English honors thesis. Outside of publishing, she has organized voter registration, gun control walkouts, and her local Women’s Marches, and she represented California in the 2020 U.S. Senate Youth Program. She has worked in political communications as an intern for Senator Alex Padilla as well as EMILYs List.

Simar Bajaj, from Fremont, California, is currently completing BAs in Chemistry and in the History of Science at Harvard University, where he was elected as junior Phi Beta Kappa. He has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles in medical journals and over 50 news articles in a wide-range of publications. He is the youngest recipient of the Foreign Press Association Award for Science Story of the Year and the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. He is currently a volunteer with the American Lung Cancer Screening Initiative, as well as a research fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he is working on numerous projects relating to obesity, lung cancer, medical education, and digital health. He plans to continue his studies by obtaining an MSc in Global Health and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford.

Anushree Chaudhuri, from San Diego, California, is studying Urban Studies and Planning as well as Economics towards a combined SB and Masters in City Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has worked with the U.S. Department of Energy, the World Wildlife Fund, and an ESG investing start-up, as well as with several climate and sustainability-focused groups at MIT to advance climate research and policies. As an intern with the U.S. Department of Energy, she developed a web application to identify buildings most in need of investment in historically disadvantaged communities. She has worked with MIT’s Science Impact Collaborative to study local community responses to large-scale renewable energy projects, and she represented MIT as an undergraduate delegate to the United Nations COP27 in 2022. As a Marshall Scholar, she will pursue a MPhil/PhD in Environmental Policy and Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Hari Choudhari spent most of his childhood in Bangalore, and is currently studying International Politics with minors in History and German at Georgetown University. He has been involved in multiple internships over the course of his college career, and is currently a Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS) intern with the Political Section at the U.S. Consulate-General in Munich, Germany. He will be interning in Congress with the House Committee on Foreign Affairs next semester. His research on German security policy was published by the American-German Institute. As a Marshall Scholar, he will study Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen’s University Belfast, followed by an MSc in Global Leadership and Peacebuilding at King’s College London.

Sarosh Nagar from Northbrook, Illinois, is a senior at Harvard where he has a perfect record and is dual-concentrating in chemistry and economics with a minor in government. His work as an undergraduate research affiliate at Harvard’s Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and the Law was  cited to inform a WHO treaty and in Congressional hearings regarding drug pricing. His non peer-reviewed work has been published in Newsweek and the Hill. He interned in the CDC’s Global Health Center, served as a Critical and Emerging Technologies Intern at the Office of the Science and Technology Advisor with the State Department, was a fellow in the Science Policy & Regulation Program within NICE in the UK, and served as an intern in the Office of Regulatory Affairs at the FDA. He is the co-founder and president of Harvard’s Emerging Technology Group and developed numerous governmental, international and academic collaborations.  Called “firmly among the top 1% of Harvard undergraduates” over the last decade, he wishes to read for two taught Master’s: one in Innovation, Public Policy and Public Value at University College London, and the second in Global Governance and Diplomacy at the University of Oxford.

Anya Wahal, from Scottsdale, Arizona, graduated from Georgetown University in 2023 with a BS in Foreign Service, majoring in Science, Technology, and International Affairs, with a concentration in Energy & Environment and a minor in Chinese. For her senior thesis, she completed research and produced a documentary on how the Colorado River Basin water shortages have affected farming communities in Arizona. She is currently a Fulbright-Nehru Student Researcher in Delhi, where she is conducting ethnographic and policy research on how women in Delhi’s low-income communities are disproportionately affected by poor water quality. She is also learning both Chinese and Hindi, in honour of her bi-racial heritage. She will pursue an MPhil in Water Science, Policy, and Management at the University of Oxford.