Fox also does stand-up at comedy clubs in Harvard Square and around Boston.

Fox said he wasn’t really planning on applying until his Tutors in Eliot House and Professor of Government Michael Sandel encouraged him to take the leap.

He described the scene at a preliminary round cocktail party as “people standing around talking about how wonderful they are.”

For Kumar, the news of being a scholar provided a birthday gift for her mother.

Kumar, who grew up in India, Singapore and Indonesia, applied for the scholarship from Pennsylvania.

A 2001 graduate of Duke, Kumar is planning to take two years off from Medical School to study at Oxford.

As an undergrad, Kumar worked with sick children in East Timor. Last summer, she worked with Congolese refugees. Kumar said she has no idea how she became a Rhode Scholar.

“They must have a method to their madness,” Kumar said. “I just don’t know it.”

Kumar said she was grilled during her interview with hypothetical questions ranging from the very specific to the very broad.

She plans to get an M. Phil in International Relations during her time at Oxford.

Pollen could not be reached for comment yesterday.

American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust Elliot F. Gerson ’74 said he does not know why Harvard is so dominant in the Rhodes competition.

“I have no idea,” Gerson said. “But it is reasonable that the competition roughly reflects the selectivity of the student body.”

British colonialist and philanthropist Cecil Rhodes created the scholarship in his will in 1902.