Like thousands of 22-year-olds before him, Krishna A. Rao ’05 planned to travel the summer after graduating from college. With his next five years blocked out between working for the consulting company Bain & Co. and attending law school, he wanted to visit Europe and India.

But opportunity knocked.

Rao will spend the summer, along with one other member of the class of 2005, as a judicial intern in the office of the administrative assistant to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

The function of the office is to assist those who mediate between the Chief Justice’s office and the federal government’s judiciary branch.

The job is mostly copies and coffee. “It is not at a super high level,” Rao says. But the perks—the chance to catch a glimpse of the justices, for example, and a meal with the White House fellows—are great.

Getting the job was a long shot, even for a summa-candidate, Phi Beta Kappa economics concentrator from Harvard. One-hundred twenty applicants competed for two spots.

The intensive process, which Rao likened to applying to college, did not deter him.

“I consider the court to be a fascinating institution,” he says. “But I didn’t expect to get it at all.”

Rao’s stance is a little deceiving—he applied for the same position after sophomore year and says he was encouraged to try again when he had more experience. And yet, somehow, the claim is believable.

Rao’s modesty can be disarming. His air is unaffected, his laugh unforced and tinged with humility—an impressive posture from someone offered admission by Harvard and Yale Law Schools and with job offers from two of the nation’s top consulting companies.

Since the end of his high school career in the suburbs of St. Paul, Minn., Rao says he has known he was destined for a career in law. But he has pursued his interest through economics, not through the traditional government or history route.

He has also challenged himself outside his concentration, taking tough science classes for the intellectual challenge. Organic chemistry, he concedes, is “one hell of a way to satisfy Science-A.”

“I like the sciences, their precision and all that stuff,” he says. “But it didn’t seem to be for me.”

Except the dismal science, of course, where Rao excelled, although his beginnings in economics were inauspicious.

“I took it in high school for one quarter, and it was taught by the hockey coach,” he says. “We got through supply, but I swear, we didn’t get through demand.”