In Fred Franz's life account in The Watchtower, May 1, 1987, he recounts (p.24,25):
A high point in my academic life was when Dr Lyon, the [University of Cincinnati's] president, announced to an assembly of students in the auditorium that I had been chosen to go to Ohio State University to take competitive examinations with others to win the prize of the Cecil Rhodes Scholarship, qualifying me for admission to Oxford University in England. One of the contestants outranked me with regard to field athletics, but because of my comparable grades, they wanted to send me, along with him, to Oxford University. I appreciated that I had measured up to the requirements for gaining the scholarship, and, normally, this would have been very gratifying.
He then writes about his learning of and conviction that the Bible Students had the truth, and his baptism on April 5, 1914. He then writes:
I have never regretted that, shortly before the announcements by the educational authorities regarding the outcome of the examinations for the Cecil Rhodes Scholarship, I wrote a letter to the authorities and advised them I had lost interest in the Oxford University scholarship and that they should drop me from the list of contestants. This I did even though my professor in Greek at the university, Dr. Joseph Harry, informed me that I had been chosen to receive it....With my father's permission, I had left the University of Cincinnati in May 1914, just a couple of weeks before the end of my third term there as a junior classman. I immediately arranged with the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society to become a colporteur, or pioneer, as such a full-time minister is called today.