Seven Harvard students were named winners in two prestigious nationwide scholarship competitions.

Jedediah S. Purdy '97 and Debra L. Shulman '97 were both selected as recipients of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, which recognizes outstanding students planning to pursue careers in government or public service.

Director of Fellowships Paul A. Bohlmann praised the Truman Scholarship recipients for their leadership and inter-personal skills.

"It's a very sought thing," Bohlmann said. "[Purdy and Shulman] are both very incredibly talented and wonderful people."

Winners of the scholarship, which will pay $30,000 towards college and graduate school tuition, underwent several interviews and were asked to submit an original essay detailing how they would address a pressing topic in American politics.

Jason I. Comander '97, Joshua H. McDermott '98, Vikaas S. Sohal '97, Aurelio A. Teleman '98 and Iwei Yeh '98 were winners of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, which is earmarked for students planning careers in mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering.

Each college may identify three students as national finalists for the Truman Scholarship, and four students can be selected as Goldwater Scholarship finalists, according to Bohlmann.

According to Comander, students seeking the awards first apply to Harvard's Fellowships Office. Officials there then select the candidates for the final competition.

Because Harvard College and Radcliffe College are considered separate schools, however, Harvard was able to send a maximum of six students to the Truman finals and eight to the Goldwater finals.

One winner said he was proud simply to have been selected as a finalist from a talented pool of Harvard candidates.

"More than winning the award, I was happy to be one of the eight nominees from Harvard," Comander said.

As in previous years, Harvard fared well in the nationwide competitions, according to Bohlmann.

"Five out of seven Goldwater recipients is awfully darn good," he said. "And we usually get two or three Truman winners, but we've had a few years with more."

Sohal, who will receive $7,000 in both of his remaining undergraduate years, said the scholarship will help him defray the cost of tuition and supplement his income earned as a teaching fellow in Engineering Sciences 148: "Bioelectric Signals and Their Processing in Neural Networks."

"The money will come in really useful," Sohal said. "But still, it's just a drop in the bucket compared to Harvard's tuition.