One day the thought occurred to Brown that he could get a Ph.D. in engineering. He didn’t care about the degree or the prestige, but the subject matter fascinated him. He knew that the two best science and engineering schools were Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech). He wanted to study at one of them.
But the Army had never assigned an officer to get a Ph.D. The Air Force and the Navy had, but not the Army. The Army’s philosophy was that when a Ph.D. was needed, they would hire a civilian. Brown figured that if he got a fellowship that paid for the schooling and was accepted at one of the world’s two best graduate schools, then the Army couldn’t refuse. As required, he asked for permission from the Army to apply for the National Science Fellowship.2 This fellowship, while not as prestigious as the Rhodes scholarship, was far more valuable financially.
This was such a new idea for the Army—an officer asking to get a Ph.D. using a National Science Fellowship—that they sent out a high-ranking official from the Pentagon to interview Brown. This official liked the idea and decided to approve.
So Brown applied and scored in the 99.9 percentile in the quantitative part of the National Science Fellowship test. Fellowships were awarded based on ability, and Brown certainly had the ability to handle the subject matter. Meanwhile, both MIT and Cal Tech had accepted him. Brown picked MIT because he thought it was the best science and engineering school in the world.