Stanford has selected 248 inductees for its 2025 Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) chapter, with 212 students from the class of 2025 and 36 students from the class of 2026. An induction ceremony for the class of 2025 will be held the Friday before commencement.

Founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary, PBK is the oldest academic honor society in the United States and honors students for excellence in their undergraduate scholarly accomplishments. Stanford students of all majors are automatically considered for PBK selection. 

All universities with PBK chapters can select up to 10% of their graduating class as inductees. Traditionally, a fifth of that 10 percent have been inducted as juniors, according to Melissa Colleen Stevenson ’96, treasurer of Stanford’s PBK chapter. 

Stevenson says that PBK looks for “excellence, breadth and character” when choosing inductees.

“[The distinction] recognizes that not only have you done well, but you have pursued a breadth of coursework across STEM, humanities and social science fields,” Stevenson said. “It is not enough to be excellent at one of those. In fact, many students who have the highest possible grades are more specialists, and we’re looking for people with a lot of breadth.”

Computer science major James Varah ’25 M.S. ’26, who thought PBK was only for humanities majors, was “pleasantly surprised” to find out he had been chosen. In addition to his CS major, Varah will complete his art minor by the end of this academic year, “accidentally fulfill[ing]” the requirement of breadth for PBK.

Varah has been painting and drawing since he was seven years old. Through taking roughly one art class every quarter, Varah has been able to fulfill the nine classes required for the art minor. 

“It was nice to get that break from CS using a different part of my brain and for the breadth,” Varah said.

Varah also spent a quarter abroad in Madrid. Although the program offered no CS classes, Varah discovered one of his passions: flamenco dance, which he still enjoys doing today.

Decades earlier, in her graduating year of 1996, Stevenson shared Varah’s surprise with news of her PBK letter, which she received while travelling abroad in Europe.

“During a weekly call home to my mother, I found out that a letter had arrived, because it was a physical letter in 1996. My mother said, ‘You got another one of those things, should I just throw it away?’” Stevenson said. “To this day, I don’t know why I knew that [PBK] was a real thing as opposed to other [organizations] and such.”

Stevenson believes that students are often unfamiliar with PBK before induction. Inductee Helena Getahun-Hawkins ’25 M.A. ’26 received the news of her acceptance into PBK joyfully but did not “have it on [her] radar.” Getahun-Hawkins is an international relations (IR) major minoring in Spanish and pursuing a co-term in journalism. 

“As an IR major, you have flexibility to take a lot of different classes,” Getahun-Hawkins said. “I’m kind of indecisive about my career path and what I want to do, and there are a lot of things that interest me.”

Without ever considering PBK’s breadth requirement, Getahun-Hawkins was “intentional” about taking a variety of classes. 

“It was really a goal of mine every quarter to learn new information,” she said. “It’s very unsatisfying when I take a class and I feel like I didn’t learn any new information, or I took it because it was comfortable.”

In just four years, inductee Alex Borthwick ’25 M.A. ’25 completed an IR major with two minors: human rights and Middle Eastern language, literature and culture. She also finished a co-term in public policy.

Outside of the classroom, Varah, Getahun-Hawkins and Borthwick have pursued a wide range of extracurricular activities. Borthwick encourages students to join supportive living communities and to “orient life” around service. 

“Staying grounded in service was a very important part of my time here, especially because there is a dominant culture of pushing towards certain careers,” Borthwick said. “Only do things you feel passionate about, because there is not enough time to do everything.”

Borthwick is a resident assistant (RA), a tutor at the Hume Center for Writing and staffs the Bridge Peer Counseling Center. She also runs a club called Melody, which offers underprivileged youth one-on-one piano lessons. 

During high school, Varah belonged to a robotics club, where he taught new members how to program. Varah brought this skillset to Stanford and is now a lead CS and engineering tutor, which allows him to “understand the material at a deeper level and help people along the way.”

Varah also found a sense of community in the Stanford Archery team, which he encountered at a club fair in his first quarter. “Most of my closest friends are all on the archery team, and it has been a continual source of joy and good community since my first year,” he said. 

Over the past few years, Getahun-Hawkins has been part of Stanford Concert Network, The Stanford Daily and On-Call Cafe, and is now president of the Stanford Ethiopian Eritrean Student Association (SEESA). 

She also volunteers with Ravenswood Reads through the Haas Center, which she has found deeply fulfilling. 

Getahun-Hawkins emphasized personal growth outside of academics. “The friendships and acquaintances that you make in college are really important,” she said. “I don’t mean this in a network-y way, but there are a lot of cool people around and definitely take advantage of being in this space because it doesn’t last very long.”

Having completed her degrees, Borthwick will move to Cairo for a year-long fellowship through American University. She is considering working for a human rights non-governmental organization (NGO) or attending law school.

This summer, Getahun-Hawkins will intern for The Wall Street Journal. After her co-term, she plans to pursue foreign correspondence. Meanwhile, Varah hopes to combine his CS major and art practice minor in his career, possibly through computer graphics.

Varah looks back at his transcript with pride. “It feels good to be acknowledged for what I’ve accomplished, especially when it’s not something I expected to be recognized for,” he said.