Eighty-one students won Harvard’s highest honor for undergraduate writing, the Hoopes Prize, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences announced on Thursday.

The prize, which is funded by the estate of Thomas T. Hoopes ’19, was awarded to students from a wide variety of concentrations, “on the basis of outstanding scholarly work or research,” according to the Prize’s iSite. Instructors nominate students’ projects for the prestigious honor during the first half of the semester.

“I was very surprised and I was really grateful.” said Chase W. Hu ’12, an awardee whose project was titled “Tracing the American Dream: A Quantitative Approach to Attitudes.” Hu, who is also a Crimson business editor, said that he had all of the friends, professors, and classmates who had taken the time to look at pieces of his thesis to thank.

Maya E. Pena ’12, a history concentrator who won the prize for her project called “A Cup and A Half of Health: This History of Flour Enrichment in the United States 1910-1955,” said that she was “incredibly surprised” upon hearing that she had won.

“I knew a lot of really wonderful projects were nominated this year,” Pena said.

She said that since she plans to join the Teach for America corps next year and likely go to medical school afterward, the prize nicely caps off her academic focus on history.

“It’s a really wonderful form of validation for my time at Harvard,” Pena said. “I think this will be a nice thing to carry with me into the future.”

Hoopes, who was the curator of St. Louis’ City Art Museum for more than 25 years, intended for his prize to help fulfill the mission of “promoting, improving, and enhancing the quality of education...in literary, artistic, musical, scientific, historical or other academic subjects made part of the College curriculum under the faculty supervision and instruction,” according to the Hoopes Prize’s iSite.

The other winners of this year’s Hoopes Prize were Marc F. Aidinoff ’12, Sarah Akhtar ’12, Ross P. Anderson ’12, Matthew A. Aucoin ’12, Tarek J. Austin ’12, Shika Card ’12, Caitlin E. Carey ’12, Jill R. Carlson ’12, Chen Chen ’12, Sway P. Chen ’12, Mark J. Chiusano ’12, Kerry K. Clark ’12, Alissa S. Costello ’12, Schuyler H. Daum ’12, Francis Deng ’12, Marion I. Dierickx ’12, Manning Ding ’12, Thomas B. S. Dolinger ’12, William E. Eger ’12, Farha A. Faisal ’12, Adina R. Feier ’12, Kevin W. Fogarty ’12, Eva M. Gillis-Buck ’12, Benjamin T. Hand ’12, Max R. Harris ’12, Keri A. Hartman ’12, Winston S. Hill ’12, Rachel R. Hinman ’12, Melody Y. Hu ’12, Zachariah P. Hughes ’12, Allan C. Jean-Baptiste ’12, Kwon Yong Jin ’12, Yannis K. Valtis ’12, Jocelyn G. Karlan ’12, Jonathan M. Kaufman ’12, Meredith H. Keffer ’12, Sharon Kim ’12, Danielle J. Kolin ’12, Victoria E. Koski-Karell ’12, Ethan A. Kruse ’12, Ian N. Kumekawa ’12, Timothy J. Lambert ’11, Talia B. Lavin ’12, Jennifer Lim ’12, Stephanie Lin ’12, Rachel T. Lipson ’12, Eric Lu ’12, Christopher M. Madl ’12, Dylan R. Matthews ’12, James K. McAuley ’12, Xiaoli Mi ’12, Lavinia R. Mitroi ’12, Abigail R. Modaff ’12, Julian Moll-Rocek ’12, Kevin M. Neylan Jr. ’12, Trung T. H. Nguyen ’12, Sara C. Plana ’12, Catherine T. Poor ’12, Mark Ragheb ’12, Alexandra A. Rahman ’12, Sana Raoof ’12, Ellen L. Rice ’12, Thomas S. Rice ’12, Riva J. Riley ’12, Antonia M. R. Peacocke ’12, Betty J. Rosen ’12, Brett A. Rosenberg ’12, Emelyn A. Rude ’12, Ashin D. Shah ’12, Fei Song ’12, Kenric Tam ’12, Colin G. X. Teo ’12, Alexandro E. Trevino ’12, Priscilla G. Wang ’12, Emma W. Wood ’12, Vernon Wu ’12, Justin B. Wymer ’12, Chung Y. Yu ’12, and Simone X. Zhang ’12.

—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at sweinstock@college.harvard.edu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: May 4

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of one Hoopes Prize winner. It is Maya E. Pena, not May E. Pena.