CFW99

Yep, every scholar will have one or two senior scholars who will fill the role of their 'academic big sibs.' I'm great friends to both scholars who mentored me, and hung out with them quite a lot! It really depends on the person, though, but in general I think the 'mentoring' is a great idea to familiarise new scholars to the Ertegun culture, as well as to introduce you to your new Oxford life. They'll usually try to pair you with someone similar in terms of interests, but my two mentors work in completely different fields from me, so that's actually not too big of a factor.
All my surprises re: the scholarship were pleasant, such as how I didn't expect there would be so many awesome activities for us throughout the year. My third term was kinda uneventful because of COVID, but the other two terms were splendid. Ertegun scholars are given a lot of freedom and support when it comes to organising activities, and it's not rare for someone to host an event, organise a movie night, or anything along those lines. (Those things would also be funded by Ertegun; I can't recall anyone ever being turned down, but of course it didn't mean we could ask for a 10-grand budget XD.) In addition, we can also make suggestions for termly events. For every (non-COVID) term there will be 6-8 cultural events in the House, and if there's something you really want to see (for example, a Beethoven concert), you can suggest it to the Director and they will take that into consideration.
Hope this helps! Feel free to let me know if you want to know about some other thing.

Thanks so much for this info remediaris!!

Ertegun scholar in the 19/20 season here - will be happy to answer any question you guys might have! Quick recap of some important info that you guys might be interested in:
- Your respective faculties will decide who to nominate for the scholarship, and for that they'll arrange an interview with you in about two weeks. Afterward, they'll make a shortlist and send it over to the Ertegun board members, who will make their decision. I'm not sure if everyone interviewed will end up getting nominated by the faculty/department, but from what I know, the Ertegun board members will take about 30% of the eventual shortlist across ALL humanities programmes.
- That means if your faculty doesn't contact you for an interview in late February or early March, then I'm sorry, but chances of getting the scholarship will be pretty low then...
- The meeting will happen sometime mid-March. I can ask to find out when it's gonna happen, but anything beyond that is unfortunately confidential (no scholar has access to any information re: the nominees, etc.).
- They do have a preference for Master's degrees over DPhils. We always have a few people in archaeology, music, ancient history, theology, English (that is, counting the alumni who are still studying at Oxford). People from other fields aren't as lucky. I was the only classicist to have received that scholarship in the 19/20 academic year, and this year there's none.
Let me know if you have other questions!