Hieu told VietNamNet he was still overwhelmed with emotion after receiving the full scholarship.

“When I opened the admission letter, I was trembling with excitement when I saw that I had been accepted. When I read about the scholarship amount, I was even more surprised and jumped up in my room. My mother, who was sitting next to me, burst into tears of joy,” Hieu recalled.

The University of Chicago ranks among the top six universities in the US and top 13 in the world, according to QS rankings. Hieu was also admitted to several other public universities in the US.

Hieu said the application that helped him win the scholarship was not created with the goal of “applying to study abroad” from the beginning but developed naturally through years of learning and self-discovery.

“If my profile had only included grades or awards in the usual way, like the typical image of an academically strong Asian student, I think I might not have been distinctive enough to win a full scholarship. All the projects and extracurricular activities I joined were not done with the idea that I would later use them to apply for overseas study. I truly pursued them out of passion,” Hieu said.

300 essay drafts

To reach this milestone, Hieu wrote a huge number of essays, sometimes working through the night. His mind was always full of ideas, and whenever a better idea appeared, he would rewrite everything from the beginning.

In total, he wrote nearly 300 drafts, but about 90 percent were discarded after being rewritten. The final essay he submitted, he said, inspired him the most. He chose to write honestly, with critical thinking and unconventional perspectives.

“I did not try to guess what the university wanted to hear. I wrote exactly what I truly thought. Two months after sending it, when I read it again, I still felt it best reflected who I really am,” he said.

Tran Doanh Tuyen, Hieu’s father, understands how hard his son worked to achieve this result. “There were nights when he wrote essays all night long. He kept writing and deleting, deleting and rewriting. Sometimes he was so tired that he just stared at the screen, but then he lowered his head and continued writing.”

The essay-writing process gave Hieu valuable experience.

“At first, when I began writing essays, I usually wrote them in Vietnamese and then translated them into English. Later, when I gained more experience, I realized that method was not effective. When I wrote directly in English from the beginning, the essay became more natural, matched my thinking rhythm better, and people evaluated it more positively,” Hieu said.

A long daily journey 

Hieu lives quite far from school, so every day he travels about 40km round trip. Despite the distance, whether in hot weather or cold days, he wakes up at 5:30am to go to school.

Hieu believes studying is effective only when a person feels interested and motivated.

For his projects, he followed his passion, maintaining them for a long time and focusing on real impact. Many of his projects support children with disabilities, such as using AI to recognize sign language or teaching coding to hearing-impaired children.

“The thing that makes me happiest is when I return to the center after several months and the children still remember me and run up to greet me. I feel happy that my efforts and dedication have created meaningful impressions,” he said.

His father still remembers the many scars on his son’s arms from using saws and chisels to make handmade gifts for children at the disability center.

Hieu’s academic achievements are remarkable. In 2025, he won the championship of the Vietnam AI Championship and a second prize at the Vietnam AI Olympiad, along with first prize at the National Youth Informatics Contest.

He also won third prize in the national excellent student competition in Informatics for two consecutive years in grades 11 and 12. His GPA in the first semester of grade 12 reached 9.8, and he scored 1570 on the SAT on his first attempt.

Most recently, Hieu continued to impress by winning a silver medal at the 2026 International Artificial Intelligence Olympiad.

Thuy Nga