Smart Move : Ex-San Clemente High School Student Will Go to England as Rhodes Scholar

Holly Wyatt is the kind of 20-year-old woman who graduated from high school at the same time she was beginning her second year of college.

She’s the kind of college student who has two majors and “a minor in peace and conflict studies.”

She’s the kind of person who waits on tables to support herself and volunteers to speak to inner-city high school students about the virtues of a college education.

Oh yes, one more thing.

Holly Wyatt is the kind of person who is a Rhodes scholar.

Excited, Relieved

“I’m very excited, very tired and relieved,” Wyatt said Sunday at her mother’s San Clemente home.

Wyatt, a former San Clemente High School student and a USC senior, was one of 10 women and 22 men named Sunday as American Rhodes scholars-elect.

“It’s been the hardest week of my life,” said Wyatt, who had traveled to her mother’s from San Francisco, where she had competed for the coveted scholarship.

Recipients of the 1988 Rhodes scholarships were chosen during nationwide meetings held Wednesday and Saturday and will study 2 years at the University of Oxford in England.

“I’ve had some very fierce competition with some of the most extraordinary people,” said Wyatt.

What did her mother have to say about raising one of only 2,532 American students ever to receive a Rhodes scholarship in 85 years?

“I’m not surprised,” said Judith Beaulieu. “She worked really hard. She is highly motivated, highly organized. . . . When she sets out to do something, she tries really hard.”

And what did Wyatt’s friends think?

“They think it’s really wonderful, and they say my politics are going to revolutionize England,” Wyatt said, chortling slightly.

“I don’t know about that,” she added with diplomatic modesty appropriate for major in international relations and political science.

Wyatt’s father, Edwin Wyatt, and his wife, Gayle, live in Vista. Her mother, Judith Beaulieu, and her husband, Bob, live in San Clemente.

“They are wonderful people, very supportive,” she said.

Her older sister, Camille, 24, works in a Los Angeles department store, and her younger brother, Scott, 16, “is a champion basketball star at San Clemente High School and a future astronaut,” she said.

Wyatt sees the opportunity to study abroad as a rare privilege that she would have been unable to enjoy without the financial assistance of the Rhodes scholarship. Scholarship winners receive college and university fees and a stipend to cover living expenses.

“I hope this money can be used to effect change in the world,” Wyatt said of her scholarship, “the kind of change that Cecil Rhodes may not have effected, but certainly his money will allow other people to effect.”

Cecil Rhodes, a British philanthropist and colonialist, established the scholarships in 1902, hoping they would contribute to world understanding and peace. Among the qualities sought in scholars are intellectual and academic excellence, integrity, respect for others and the ability to lead and use their talents fully. Women have been allowed to apply since 1976.

Wyatt was one of only 10 women and 22 men in the United States to receive the honor Sunday.

As a 20-year-old senior who will graduate in May, Wyatt finds herself a year ahead of most classmates. Her advantage stems from USC’s Resident Honors Program, which enabled 15 select freshmen to enroll at the university in 1985 and skip their senior year in high school.

As they earned freshman college credits, the students simultaneously satisfied their high school graduation requirements.

In 1985, when studying under the program, Wyatt told The Times: “The workload is immense. Between 60 and 70 hours a week, depending on whether we have a paper due.”

Nevertheless, during her college years, Wyatt worked in San Clemente cafe and a bar and grill in Pasadena. She also learned to speak Italian.

While working to support herself, Wyatt earned a grade-point average is 3.97, out of a possible 4.0.

Intellectual Role Model

She said USC international relations professor Coit Blacker was her “intellectual role model.”

The path to being named a Rhodes scholar began with nomination by her university, then competition at state and regional levels that included writing essays, oral presentations, the evaluation of her transcripts and letters of recommendations discussing her academic, personal and extra curricular activities.

Wyatt finds the timing of her scholarship ideal.

“I would like to work in arms-control issues,” she said. “I’m very interested in the European community . . . particularly as it moves toward greater political integration.”

By 1992, she said, Europeans nations hope to have established a common currency, eliminated tariffs and adopted a single passport.

“Those are very, very exciting prospects for someone who studies international affairs,” Wyatt said.

Fulfilling Another Dream

Of course, studying in England also will allow her to fulfill another dream.

“I hope to crew at Oxford,” she said.

Although Wyatt played high school basketball and volleyball, she has never rowed a boat in races before.

“But, hey, how tough is it to row?” she joked.

Wyatt said she also has been nominated for a Fulbright grant to study in Italy, where she hopes to “study Italy’s role in NATO.”

And someday, she would like to marry and have children. But for now, her education is uppermost.

Her concerns are with such issues as “peace-and-conflict studies,” which is “a way of looking at national and international security in the nuclear age--the nuclear age, that’s the key,” she explained.

Wyatt said her boyfriend has mixed emotions about her recent good fortune, sharing her happiness while sorry to see her leave for 2 years. She would not disclose her boyfriend’s name.

“It may infringe upon his sovereignty,” Wyatt explained, which is the way international relations majors say they want to protect someone’s privacy.

After years of excellence and achievement unmatched by most people three times her age, does Wyatt have any regrets?

“If I could undo or change anything, I’d probably have to say that I would try not to grow up so fast,” said Wyatt, who now regrets enrolling in college before finishing high school.

“It was a wonderful experience,” she said, but added: “I wish I had savored every minute of high school.”