Of the 47 courses, equivalent to 143 credits, on Binh’s transcript, she received only one B, with all the others graded A.

Binh said she was very happy with the result after four years of hard work at university.

“I was genuinely surprised. There are many very talented students in my class, with high entrance scores and strong achievements in different fields. I don’t think I’m the best student; I was simply fortunate to have the highest GPA in my program,” Binh said.

Four years ago, Binh, an English-major student at Hanoi-Amsterdam High School for the Gifted, scored 29.34 points and was admitted to International Business, the university’s highest-cutoff program that year.

However, when she first entered university, Binh felt nervous and under pressure because everyone around her seemed so talented. At one point, she even wondered, “Do I really belong here?”

Unwilling to stop there, Binh worked hard to quickly adapt to her new learning environment and reach new academic milestones.

Speaking about her study methods, Binh said the key was to pay close attention in class and be able to distill and grasp the main points of each lesson.

“At university, each course comes with a thick textbook, and it is very difficult to memorize everything. So I focus on lectures to identify the points emphasized by the professors. I have a habit of taking notes and marking the core content because those points often appear in exams and tests,” Binh said.

To perform well in exams, Binh said that in addition to knowledge, students need to know how to relate what they learn to real-world situations. Besides carefully reading the practical examples included in textbooks, she regularly searches for information online and in books and newspapers, selecting useful material.

Interested in logistics and supply chain management, Binh participated in competitions related to the field. “Besides looking for information online, I also ask senior students and graduates for advice at career workshops,” she said.

She believes that studying effectively does not mean maintaining a packed and stressful study schedule.

A trip to Germany opens up career direction

Binh said the most valuable thing she gained after four years at FTU was the courage to keep moving forward. She remembers deciding to take part in a student exchange program at the University of Mannheim in Germany. Having never spoken German, she had to learn how to live away from home, register her residence herself and navigate life in a completely unfamiliar country.

The trip also changed the way Binh thought. One day, while standing beside a river in Mannheim and watching cargo ships pass one after another, she began thinking about how an economy operates and how cities, people and flows of goods are connected. She also wondered why her own country had not yet been able to achieve the same.

“At that moment, a question came to my mind: Could I one day contribute to changing my country’s economy? That was when I realized that going far from home is not only about discovering what the world has to offer me, but also about seeing what I can do for the place where I began,” Binh said.

During that time, Binh received the Baden-Württemberg scholarship for outstanding international students.

Over her four years at FTU, Binh received academic encouragement scholarships for four semesters. She also achieved an IELTS score of 8.5, Chinese proficiency equivalent to HSK 5 and French proficiency at DELF A2 level.

As valedictorian, Binh is happy with the achievement but understands that once she enters the job market, employers will not only care about grades, academic classification or certificates of achievement. She will have to solve real-world problems, which may be very different from what she learned in textbooks. Binh believes she still has a great deal to learn on her new journey.

“In the next stage of the journey, a valedictorian, just like any other new graduate, has to start from scratch and keep striving,” Binh said.

Before graduating, Binh spent about a year working at Maersk, a Danish multinational provider of integrated shipping and logistics services. She recently chose to leave the company to devote time to preparing for a specialized career in logistics and supply chain management in the healthcare sector. She is also focusing on completing the HSK 5 Chinese proficiency exam to better support her future career.

Thanh Hung