He's got a ticket to ride

When former President Bill Clinton asked to meet with Rahul Prabhakar, who had written an op-ed piece for the student opinion section of Newsday entitled "My Letter to President Clinton," it was only supposed to be a short photo-op.

But after a 15-minute conversation between the two, which included chatting about Clinton's studies at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, Clinton looked at the then 14-year-old Baldwin resident and said, "look me up if you end up going to Oxford."

For Prabhakar, words of wisdom from the former president of the United States was reason enough to set his goals that high. Eight years later, Prabhakar made it to Oxford, and he'll be riding a four-year, fully funded Clarendon Scholarship — awarded by the Oxford University Press to just 150 students worldwide — en route to a Master of Philosophy degree in International Relations. Prabhakar was selected out of 3,200 people that applied from around the world.

"The scholarship isn't an end, it's a means to something else," said the 2005 Baldwin High School alumnus. "Viewing it that way is much more motivating, instead of viewing it as something to hang my hat on."

The prestigious scholarship will cover Prabhakar's tuition and living expenses for his two years of graduate studies. If he decides to pursue a doctorate at Oxford after that, the scholarship will cover that as well.

After finishing school, Prabhakar said he would like to be a key part of addressing challenges facing the international financial system, preferably from a public-service perspective. According to the 22-year-old, it is important for people to understand how finance works, and more importantly, how it can work better. "When we debate reforming our financial system, we should really be envisioning how public and private interests, how politics and markets, interact at all levels," he said. "We should have a healthy financial system, not one that risks falling off the cliff every decade."