In 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation created the Gates Cambridge Trust with a $210 million endowment. This program brings college graduates to England’s Cambridge University for two or three years of post-graduate study, under an all-expenses-paid structure similar to Oxford’s Rhodes Scholarships. About 200 Gates scholars are in residence at Cambridge at any given time, and since the program’s founding they have come from almost 100 different countries. Recipients are selected by “academic excellence, leadership ability, and commitment to improving the lives of others.” That last criterion, says the program, is “fundamental and sets this program apart from others of its kind.”
- Gates Cambridge Scholarship, gatescambridge.org