UC Berkeley Grad Varsha Sarveshwar Named Rhodes Scholar

BERKELEY, CA — A UC Berkeley graduate has received one of the world's most prestigious honors for academic excellence.

Varsha Sarveshwar was among 32 students from the United States selected as a 2022 Rhodes Scholar, The Mercury News reports.

Sarveshwar graduated in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and minors in public policy and history.

She is a recipient of the 2020 Political Science Departmental Citation, the 2019 Travers Scholarship in Ethics and Politics, the Percy Undergraduate Grant for Public Affairs Research, and the Chancellor’s Award for Public Service.

In 2019 Sarveshwar was elected President of the UC Student Association, representing more than 275,000 students.

In 2018, she managed Rigel Robinson’s Berkeley City Council campaign. Robinson received 56 percent of the vote in Berkeley’s student-supermajority district to became the youngest councilmember in city history.

Varsha has since served as an alternate member of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee, a delegate to the California Democratic Party convention, and a political staffer on Assemblymember Rob Bonta’s campaign.