POCATELLO — It was old school science fiction that Kaya Evans attributes as one of the reasons her Rhodes Scholar application stood out among nearly 850 others submitted to panelists for a Rhodes Scholarship last year.

The prestigious international scholarship, which pays for recipients’ expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in England, is awarded to only 32 Americans each year — and Evans initially wasn’t planning to apply.

“Honestly I never had any serious intention to apply,” said Evans, a 2017 Century High School graduate who went on to receive her bachelor’s degree in political economy from the College of Idaho in 2021. Evans was selected in November of last year and joined 99 other recipients from across the globe as they began their first year at Oxford this month.

She became the eighth College of Idaho student to become a Rhodes Scholar in the college’s 131 years of existence.

“If it wasn’t for the persistent pressure from professors, I never would’ve done it,” she said. “My first political economy professor pulled me outside of class one day my freshman year and said, ‘I think you should think about applying for the Rhodes Scholarship at some point in the future’. And I remember nodding my head like, ‘sure’. And mentally, I was like ‘I’m never going to do that because I would never get it. It’s just so competitive.’”

After taking two gap years after earning her bachelor’s where she worked in politics and pondered how becoming a Rhodes Scholar could help her further her goals, she eventually pulled the trigger and began the months-long process of applying.

Rhodes Scholars face six components to the application process, which includes earning a GPA of at least 3.70, preparing an academic statement of study and a personal statement, and getting reference letters — and that’s only if you’re shortlisted.

Those shortlisted get invited to a social engagement event in their region, followed by a final interview where they’ll meet with panelists and discuss their interests in the scholarship.

Evans believes that having a strong academic resume as well as a strong athletic resume was an enticing dualism that attracted the panelists towards her application. In high school she was a three-time all-area selection as a member of the Century girls soccer team and was captain for the College of Idaho’s women’s soccer team for two years.

She also believes that her personal statement may have stood out from the crowd, which she says was likely different from most applications because it touched on Stanisław Lem’s 1961 science fiction novel “Solaris.”

“I really like the era of 1940s to 1970s sci-fi,” she said. “The setting is science fiction, but it focuses a lot on sociology and how we relate to one another in futures where things are so different from now that we have to challenge who we’ve become.”

She included her favorite quote from the book in her personal statement.

She said, “it’s something like, ‘we have no need of other planets. One planet our own suffices it us, but we can’t take it for what it is. We don’t need other planets, we need mirrors.’”

She explained, “What I find so interesting about sci-fi is a lot of it is about expansion for human civilization, looking outward to try to discover more about ourselves. But I think that quote reveals that we need to be looking internally first about who we are and how we relate to one another before we just jump and try to escape problems that we have here.”

Evans took that quote to heart and after graduating in 2021 dedicated her time and skills to a political consulting firm in Boise and also managed three campaigns for the Idaho Legislature for District 29 here in Pocatello. Staying close to home was an intentional decision when many around her were leaving the Gem State to pursue careers elsewhere.

“I spent four years studying politics and getting emotionally invested in the outcomes that politics has for people,” she said. “It would’ve felt personally disingenuous to me to leave without acting on that in any way. So I thought I just needed to spend at least some time reinvesting into my community. Because it’s difficult to learn about struggles people are facing and see the causes and feel like you could do something to help and then not do anything to help.”

She explained that her parents were instrumental in shaping the way that she is now, since her father, who taught political science and sociology courses at ISU, encouraged her to “adopt a political lens growing up” and her mother “always had so much compassion for whatever (she) wanted to do.”

“They were never hard on me growing up is the other thing,” she added. “I asked my mom about that a little while ago. I was like, ‘I feel like you guys never gave me any pressure’ and she said, ‘we didn’t because you always put the most pressure on yourself.’”

Currently Kaya is attending Oxford with the goal to earn a master’s of philosophy in political theory, and while she did say she can see herself returning to Idaho afterwards, she also recognizes that there are similar states like Idaho where she could offer her skills and put them to helpful use.

“If it’s not Idaho, I’d like to go to somewhere like Idaho,” she said. “But I do always find myself gravitating back (to Idaho). And I think a lot of it’s just because my family is here and I was raised here and I do feel like part of why I was able to become the person I became is because of the influences I got here. So I’d like to take what I learned in some capacity and bring it back and share the fruits of that labor.”