Nguyen Hoang Quyen, a former student at Hanoi-Amsterdam High School for the Gifted, one of the most prestigious schools in Vietnam, was accepted by six Ivy universities in the US that granted scholarship in 2012. These included Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Brown, Columbia and Chicago.

Quyen was happy receiving the congratulatory call from Harvard, but she surprised everyone when she decided to turn it down.

Explaining her decision, Quyen said she did not want to be in the race for the Number 1 position at the school, and because Harvard has an academic bias, Quyen wanted a young school with lively activities. And she finally chose Stanford University. 

Quyen was a volunteer with SEALNET (Southeast Asian Service Leadership Network) in Vietnam. In 2011, she went to Singapore to implement a project on migrant workers, where she met people who suffered violence and abuse. The trips with SEALNET helped her grow up. 

Vo Tuong An, 18, from Quang Ngai province, in April also surprised many people when refusing the financial support package of $63,900 a year (VND1.4 billion) for a 4-year study course offered by Harvard University.

Like Quyen, An refused the opportunity because she wants a dynamic school environment which allows him to be faithful to her dream as a volunteer.

An decided to go to Stanford, which she believes offers great opportunities to students to develop both spiritually and physically with sports and many extracurricular activities. The financial support package the school granted to An is $66,000 a year.

After finishing high school, An also received a full scholarship from 10 other reputable universities, including Yale, Cornell, Dartmouth and Wellesley, thanks to her impressive achievements at high school.

When she was in the 8th grade, she was granted a scholarship by University of Mississippi and invited to a summer camp. John Baptist Memorial invited An to study there where she became very well known for excellent learning results and as a leader of social movements. 

In June 2016, Pham Thanh Tung, 24, who finished Hanoi Medical University, and turned down Harvard University, left Hanoi for the US to study epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University for a master’s degree.

Prior to that, Tung had received full scholarship offer from the Vietnam Education Foundation to study in the US and from the Swedish Institute Study Scholarships to study at Karolinska where the Nobel Prizes in Medicine and Physiology are awarded each year. 


Chi Mai