Seniors Sabrina Drammis, Margaret Guo, and Nicole Zeinstra were awarded NCAA Postgraduate Scholarships following the 2016 winter season. Guo, a member of the women's swimming and diving team, and Zeinstra, a distance runner on the women's track and field team, become the third members of their respective programs to earn the honor, while Drammis is only the second student-athlete from the women's basketball team to receive this scholarship.
The one-time, non-renewable grants are awarded annually to students who excel academically and athletically, and who are in their final year of intercollegiate athletics competition. Only 29 scholarships for men and women are available each sports season (fall, winter, and spring) across all three NCAA divisions.
The student-athlete also must intend to continue their academic studies as a full-time or part-time graduate student. Candidates are nominated by the school's faculty athletics representative and screened by regional selection committees, and the recipients are selected by the NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship Committee.
Drammis, a three-time NEWMAC all-conference pick, closed her career by breaking the 26-year old MIT record for career rebounds with 884. She stands second in points (1.393) and field goal percentage (.448), third in scoring average (13.8) and rebounding average (8.8), fifth in blocks (64), tied for fifth in steals (184), and tied for ninth in career free throw percentage (.609).
Drammis is majoring in computer science and has already accepted a software engineering position at Second Spectrum following graduation, in addition to being admitted into MIT's Master of Engineering program. While serving as a software engineering intern at Second Spectrum, Drammis helped develop a touchscreen Web application that integrated interactive 2-D visualizations based on advanced NBA data, in addition to working on a Web interface that enables users to quickly generate 3-D data visualizations for 2-D images and video. Working as an undergraduate researcher for the Fluid Interfaces Group in the MIT Media Lab, she designed, developed, and executed a research project on improving social networking experiences with wearable and peripheral devices. Drammis was the 2015 MIT iOS Game Development Competition Audience Choice winner and is a choreographer for MIT DanceTroupe.
Guo, a four-year member of the women's swimming and diving team, collected four All-America honors at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championship this past March. She was a member of the 400 medley relay, 400 freestyle relay, the 200 medley relay, and the 200 freestyle relay teams, and qualified as an individual for the first time in her career.
A Rhodes Scholarship finalist and Goldwater Scholar, Guo is majoring in electrical engineering and computer science as well as bioengineering. She has researched endometriosis in the Griffith Lab and conducted a SuperUROP in the Computational Physiology and Clinical Inference Group. In addition, Guo is the president of the MIT Society of Women Engineers and serves as both a tutor and executive team member of Eta Kappa Nu. This year, Guo was also honored with an Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar Award, which is awarded by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine. Guo was one of 36 student-athletes from across the three NCAA divisions to earn the honor as one representative from each sport was selected from a field of approximately 1,000 nominations.
Zeinstra, a four-year member of the women's track and field team, earned All-America honors for the first time in her career this season at the NCAA Indoor Championship in the Distance Medley Relay as she helped the team to sixth place with a time of 11:52.29. Over her career, Zeinstra has competed in seven NCAA Championships including three in cross country and four in track and field. Zeinstra has also been awarded with three All-New England accolades during her time on the track and field team.
A three-time New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Academic All-Conference selection, Zeinstra is the vice president and treasurer of the MIT Undergrad Biochemistry Association, treasurer of MIT Best Buddies, and associate advisor for the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering. Zeinstra is a research assistant at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research as well as a Department of Biological Engineering Research and Innovation Scholar.
