English majors have been named as the top two graduates of the Graduating Class of 2016 of Princeton University. After careful deliberations by the Ivy League university's Faculty Committee on Examinations and Standing, Cameron Platt of Santa Barbara, California and Esther Kim of Marietta, Georgia have been announced as valedictorian and salutatorian respectively.
Platt, who is expected to deliver the valedictory address during the Commencement ceremony, will attend Oxford University in the United Kingdom as a Rhodes Scholar after a summer dedicated to working on a theater production for the New York Fringe Festival. According to her Rhodes profile, she will also earn a certificate in theater and was notable for attending in the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English.
According to the university website, during her second year as a Princeton student, she received the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence. As a junior, she shared the George B. Wood Legacy Junior Prize for her excellent performance in her academics and extra-curricular activities. She also earned the English departmental prize for every year she has spent in the New Jersey university.
She also served as president of the Princeton University Players, a musical theater company run by students of Princeton.
Esther Kim, on the other hand, plans to move back to Korea to teach English in the rural areas as part of her fulfillment of the requirements as a Fulbright Fellow. Once she returns to the United States, she will pursue an MFA in creative writing from Florida State University.
She has consistently excelled in language study and is fluent in Latin, Spanish and Swahili. She earned the Ward Mathis Prize for short fiction, Emily Ebert Junior Prize for junior independent work and Shapiro Prize for academic performance. She has also interned for nonprofit organizations in Guatemala and Ecuador, and The Nassau Literary Review.
Princeton University's Commencement ceremony will be held on May 31.
