24 Juniors Elected to Phi Beta Kappa

Twenty-four juniors have been elected to Alpha Iota of Massachusetts, Harvard’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

The undergraduate honor society, whose stated goal is to encourage “scholarship, friendship, and cultural interests,” admits students based on factors such as the variety of their course loads and the depth of their intellectual endeavors. The application process includes submitting two letters of recommendation, which the society recommends be written by faculty members at the University.

The inducted students said that they were very pleased with their prestigious achievement.

“I’m extremely honored, and at the same time humbled. I feel extremely lucky and blessed,” said Andrew Q. Le ’10. He added that he takes a broad course load because he is both an economics concentrator and a pre-medical student.

Stephanie H. Lo ’10 said that she partly attributed her election to her natural inclination to test her own academic limits.

“If you’re passionate about the classes that you enroll in and you’re willing to challenge yourself, Phi Beta Kappa may naturally follow,” Lo said. She added that the election committee may have been impressed by the multi-faceted academic interests reflected by her course load, which includes economics, biology, and high-level mathematics classes.

Jeffrey D. Nanney ’10 said that he credited his achievement in large part to his teachers.

“I really attribute a lot of it to having conscientious professors who really went out of their way for me,” he said. “You don’t even turn in your resume, so the balance falls a lot on them.”

Vikram R. Modi ’10, an applied mathematics concentrator, said that while he is very pleased to join the honor society, PBK should not be viewed as an end goal.

“I don’t see it as something to work towards,” Modi said. “I see it as a reflection of what you would have done anyway.”

The twenty-four students inductees into Phi Beta Kappa are Zachary R. Abel, Zachary C. Arnold, Jeremy N. Aron-Dine, Daniel M. Bear, Malcolm G. Campbell, Brian S. Chen, Timothy H. Hsieh, Wenna Jia, Eric T. Lander, Andrew Q. Le, Christopher T. Lim, Stephanie H. Lo, Mary Anne Marks, Vikram R. Modi, Colin J. Motley, Jeffrey D. Nanney, Hamida B. Owusu, Palmer Rampell, Anthony C. Speare, Dennis L. Sun, Yi Sun, Julia Ye, Chelsea Y. Zhang, and John C. Zhou.