Since then, Rao’s career has been exceptional. Unlike most of his classmates, he enjoyed Social Analysis 10, “Principles of Economics,” and from that point his concentration choice was clear.

While some may feel lost in one of the College’s largest concentrations, Rao says, he credits his success in the department to his initiative in interacting with faculty. After the Court turned him down the first time, he approached two professors at Harvard Law School for work as a summer research assistant. Both accepted.

“From his first assignment for me as an R.A., what struck me was that Krishna always has a very deep understanding of what he is doing,” Professor of Law Christine M. Jolls writes in an e-mail. “It somehow seems to be in his nature....[H]e was thinking at the level of an economics Ph.D. candidate even though he still had two more years of undergraduate education.”

Jolls went on to advise Rao’s thesis, an empirical analysis of the effects of a 1974 federal pension law.

Rao says he hopes to combine his passion for economics and law, although he is not sure in what capacity.

Based on his resumé, one would think Rao is looking to return to the Court later in life. If he has any such ambition, he doesn’t let on.

“There’s a tendency to think about goals as career options,” Rao says; instead, the question should be, ‘what kind of family, what friends and relationships do I have?’”

He persuaded Bain & Co to transfer him to San Francisco so he could be closer to his brother, Vikram, an M.D.-Ph.D candidate at the University of California-San Francisco.

Rao says there is a “small but significant possibility” he’d like to combine his J.D. with an MBA, and he hopes that the next two years will help him decide whether or not he wants to pursue corporate law, business, or something else entirely.

Rao says the demanding schedule and academic pressures of Harvard taught him how to strike “the work-life balance,” but that “every time you start a new job, you strike a new balance.”

Jolls, his thesis adviser, says Rao is uniquely equipped to handle it.

“He seems like an exceptionally thoughtful and grounded person,” she writes in an e-mail. “He manages to accomplish an enormous amount without ever seeming to get out of balance.”

Still, Rao says that meeting that balance has not always been easy.

“There are always some times...[when] you say to yourself, ‘I wish I had put in a little extra or I put in too much,’” he says. “Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don’t.”

—Staff writer David B. Rochelson can be reached at rochels@fas.harvard.edu.