Ariana Palomo ’25 was named one of 32 American Rhodes Scholars for 2025 on Saturday. She’s the first Brown student to be selected for the scholarship since 2021.
One of the most prestigious academic honors in the world, the Rhodes Scholarship is granted to undergraduate students around the world to pursue graduate study at the University of Oxford.
Finding out she had received the award was “unreal,” Palomo told The Herald.
“It’s a special moment, not just for you, but for your family, for every community you belong to and for everybody that is going to come after you,” she said.
Palomo double-concentrates in International and Public Affairs and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. After graduating from Brown this spring, she intends to pursue two master’s degrees at Oxford — one in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies and the other in Global Governance and Diplomacy.
Palomo, who immigrated to the United States. from Mexico, said that her interest in policy stemmed from her “personal experience of what it means to be an immigrant, of working with other immigrants at a law firm, of having family in different stages of the (immigration) process and with different legal or non-legal statuses.”
At Brown, she was able to analyze her experiences with migration from a policy lens. Hoping to continue her studies post-graduation, Palomo drafted her application for the scholarship this past summer.
The Rhodes Trust splits the United States into 16 districts from which 2 winners of the American scholarship are selected per district. Applicants may apply from the state in which they attend university or the state they reside in, but only if they have been nominated by the institution they attend.
Once Palomo received the University’s nomination, she submitted her application in District 8, which includes her home state of Texas. She found out she was a finalist on Oct. 30 and was notified of her selection on Saturday.
By studying Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at Oxford, she hopes to gain a “comprehensive understanding of what it means to be an immigrant, of why people are migrating, the different types of migration and different types of displacement.”
Immigration is becoming increasingly relevant and “will only become even more critical as time goes on,” Palomo said.
“I don’t think that immigration should be an issue that we think about because we relate to it, or because we have family experience with it or know someone who is an immigrant,” she added.
“Immigration is an issue that everybody should be focused on and that everybody should make a deep effort to understand.”
At Oxford, Palomo aims to understand the role of government and how “relationships between states, between countries, can be leveraged in order to address immigration,” she explained.
Palomo will begin her studies in England in October 2025. After completing her master’s degrees, she intends to attend law school.
