CHICAGO - Andrew Kim is always seeking to push himself beyond his comfort zone - choosing to attend an experimental college that doubled as a working ranch, training as an emergency medical technician in his home state of New Jersey and working with Chicago's homeless population.

Ian Desai was so curious about some maps in a book that he retraced the ancient voyage of Jason and the Argonauts, one of the most enduring Greek fables, along the south shore of the Black Sea.

Both University of Chicago graduates were among the 32 Americans selected Sunday as Rhodes Scholars for 2005. The scholars, chosen from 904 applicants, will enter Oxford University in England next October. The scholarships fund two or three years of study.

At Oxford, Kim plans to study international relations, and he's most interested in conflict resolution and refugee issues, particularly related to Africa.

"I believe at some point in my lifetime, Africa will be a much bigger international issue than it is now," Kim said in a telephone interview from Boston, where he was interviewed as part of the Rhodes Scholar selection process.

At the University of Chicago, Kim - a first-generation Korean-American who grew up in Cherry Hill and now lives at his parents' home in Marlton - played cello in a blues band, worked on a community garden and was intensely involved in the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

"It allowed me to engage with the city of Chicago and leave the walls of the university," he said.

Before attending the University of Chicago, Kim went to Deep Springs College, a two-year college and a working ranch with a total of 26 students, located in a remote area of California's high desert.

There, each student had a role in keeping the ranch running, and Kim was the dairy man, rising early each day to milk cows.

"The idea of the college is to form these intense communities and understand the responsibilities within each community," he said. "Most of the meat we slaughtered and butchered ourselves. It forced you to respect the process required to keep yourself alive and keep your community going."

Kim also is training to be an EMT, a decision he made because he felt helpless when he saw a man on a corner suffer a heart attack. Kim does not plan to make it a career, but said he enjoys "getting out and understanding personal interactions and helping people on a daily basis."

Desai, a native of New York City, said he chose the University of Chicago because of its classical studies program. He received a university prize for his collection of poetry, and is now living in Chicago, working on a non-profit organization he helped create that is focused on promoting cross-cultural understanding.

During a study abroad program in Greece when he was 19, Desai decided to replicate the ancient voyage of Jason and the Argonauts - and for six weeks, he walked, took buses, rode a motorcycle and struck a deal with a group of Turkish fishermen to do so.

"I was looking to retrace this journey and get a kind of current perspective on this ancient myth," he said.

That experience influenced how he intends to approach Oxford, where he plans to pursue degrees in both modern Greek studies and Oriental studies. "I'd really like to look back on the past through a modern lens," he said.