November 29, 2011 — Augusto Alonso, a senior Biomedical (Mechanical) Engineering senior was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship and a walk-on linebacker on the USC football team. 

Augusto scored a perfect 36 on his high school ACT, walked on to the USC football team and supports "Engineering Without Borders," which is working on providing clean water to Honduras.

Visit http://usc.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1294784 to see a video of Augusto discussing his Rhodes interview.

Augusto was also mentioned in a Los Angeles Times article discussing the contributions of walk-on players:

On an adjoining field, linebacker Alonso worked against the first-team offense. In each of the previous two weeks, his work during practice had been acknowledged with the chance to get in for a few plays at the end of games. That fulfilled a dream for the Nebraska native, who came to USC on an academic scholarship after getting a perfect score on an aptitude test. Alonso was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, an international postgraduate program at Oxford University, so he missed the game at Oregon last Saturday because of an interview in Colorado Springs. A senior, he knows he might never play another snap for the Trojans — USC ends its season on Saturday night when it plays host to UCLA at the Coliseum — and he's just fine with that. "Everything we've done, for those six plays I was out there, was 100% worth it," he says of the Colorado game. "Every single second of it."

The whole story is available here: http://www.latimes.com/sports/college/usc/la-sp-1124-football-bench-warmers-20111124,0,6166043,full.story