2022 Truman Scholar
Name: John Lin
Concentrations: Health Systems and Policy (IC), Biology
Graduation Year: 2023
Hometown: Sugar Land, Texas
About the Truman Scholarship
Established by Congress in 1975, the Harry S. Truman Scholarship supports college juniors who intend to pursue careers in public service and have records of campus/community service and/or leadership. Brown can nominate four candidates and up to three additional transfer students each year. All United States citizens or nationals are eligible to apply. Your application is due on UFunds by November 7; read more about the Truman Scholarship on Fellowships@Brown.
Aside from the $30,000 scholarship and the auxiliary full rides to schools like Princeton, the Truman Scholarship is fundamentally a community of aspiring public servants. It’s so tight-knit that we’re called the ‘TruFam’. In late May, I attended Truman Scholars Leadership Week (TSLW), where I met some of the most impressive (and friendliest!) folks I’ve met in my entire life. Indeed, Senior Scholars volunteer their time to come to TSLW and teach us junior scholars about their experiences with public service. Last week, the Truman Foundation connected me with another Truman Scholar who had worked in the White House and was now a Stanford law student, and he was thrilled to talk about his experiences. When I worked in DC this past summer, I hung out with many of the friends I had made at TSLW nearly every day.
What are your goals?
I plan to attend medical school. In the long run, I hope to serve as an academic physician and help build a more equitable healthcare system through patient care, research, and policy.
How did you find out about the Truman?
In my sophomore year, my longtime research mentor—Dr. Paul Greenberg, who has always been incredibly supportive and helpful—recommended that I consider applying for the Rhodes Scholarship. I couldn’t say that I knew much about the Rhodes Scholarship at the time, other than that Cecil Rhodes had a complicated legacy. He explained what the Rhodes Scholarship was and threw out a few other suggestions—the Fulbright, the Truman, and the Goldwater. My first reaction was shock. Really!? But I did more research into each of these scholarships on the Fellowships@Brown website (and I mean research in the loosest possible sense, not in the Goldwater sense), and I realized that I might be qualified for the Truman Scholarship.
What did your application process look like?
The application process is very holistic. Your grades matter insofar as they show that you can succeed in graduate school, but you won’t be selected or rejected just for having a 4.0 or 3.0 GPA. (At Brown, we don’t even have a GPA!) What the Truman Foundation cares about is your record of service and leadership—whether that’s leading a student organization, serving in the community, or working in government. As the Truman Foundation says, it’s rare that you find a Truman Scholar who has done all three.
I began reviewing the Truman Scholarship application in September, creating a Google Doc with all of the questions and character limits. I started noting down a few things I wanted to mention for each question (but nothing too formal), and I began assigning myself deadlines to finish each essay question. After I finished the application, I worked with the Writing Center (shout-out to Fiona Sappenfield!) to revise my submission, and I submitted my application in early December. There are up to two interviews—first with Brown’s selection committee, and then with the Truman Foundation’s regional selection committee.
What are the benefits of the application process?
For anyone who is thinking about graduate school, the Truman Scholarship makes you consider your motivations for applying, your career plans, and how your experiences have led you to this point. I wrote my Truman Scholarship application before I started on my medical school applications, and having so much written about my background and goals helped me finish my application so much quicker.
What do you feel were your strengths in applying for this fellowship?
The most important trait for any Truman applicant is the ability to articulate your experiences and interests in a cohesive story that explains why you are interested in public service. For example, my main focus was health equity. For Question 7 (leadership example), I described my journey from volunteering in community clinics to founding the Medical Literacy and Access Project to connect low-income, immigrant patients with healthcare. For Question 8 (public service example), I talked about proposing, writing, and passing hate crime legislation in the Texas House of Representatives. For Question 9 (issue statement), I wrote about high healthcare costs and other barriers to care in the United States. For Question 11 (graduate school plans), I explained why I wanted to pursue an MD/MPA and specifically focused on the only medical school that provided this dual degree program at the time. For Question 12 (post-graduate school plans), I discussed how I would integrate health equity into my residency plans (e.g., serving in community/government health centers, researching public health, and advising municipal and state policy. For Question 13 (5-7 years after graduate school), I said that I hoped to work in academic medicine and lead a public health system. For Question 14 (additional personal information), I described the barriers that my family has faced in accessing healthcare and how this influenced my outlook on life. My policy proposal, addressed to the then-director of the state department of health, related to price transparency programs for healthcare services, which I had researched. Through each of these questions, I added more and more to my story and explained my goals further and further.
Keep in mind that your narrative does not need to be perfect! However, you should hopefully have a solid explanation as to why you want to do what you want to do.
What, if anything, did you see as a potential limit to your candidacy?
I always thought of the Truman Scholarship as a scholarship for the politically and legally inclined—its most famous alumni are people like Stacey Abrams. Neil Gorsuch, and Janet Napolitano—so being a student interested in medicine and public health, I didn’t know if I was a good candidate for the Truman Scholarship. I’m so glad I applied—I’ve met many fellow Truman Scholars who are also passionate about epidemiology, medicine, and health policy, as well as Truman Scholars in diverse fields like forestry and educational psychology.
What advice do you have for anyone applying for the Truman? The Truman Scholarship wasn’t even on my radar until my junior year, so my primary advice is to try applying if you’re interested in attending graduate school and in public service. The name ‘Harry S. Truman’ sounds intimidating, but the scholarship is open to everyone who wants to eventually work in government or nonprofits. At TSLW, I met Truman Scholars who were aspiring musicians, environmentalists, and foresters. Whether you’ve worked with a bunch of student clubs, or interned in a city, state, or federal government office, or conducted research in a lab, I say: go for it!
Read more about John and his accomplishments on the Brown website. If you’re interested in reaching out to John, please contact fire@brown.edu.
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