VietNamNet Bridge - Nearly all high school students who won top prizes at competitions for excellent students, when asked about their future plans, said they want to study abroad.

Doan Viet Cuong, first year student of Hanoi Foreign Trade University

Studying abroad is the dream of Do Ngoc Khanh, a first-year student of Hanoi National University, who won the silver medal at the 2015 Asia Pacific Informatics Competition.

Khanh said he wishes to study in Singapore or Japan, developed countries near the homeland of Vietnam.

Doan Viet Cuong, first year student of Hanoi Foreign Trade University, is famous among the students’ circle with very impressive results he got from the national high school finals. With 9.75 scores for math, 9.75 scores for English and 9 for physics, Cuong was the second highest scorer in Vietnam in A1 group exams (those who attend A1 group exam have to sit maths, physics and foreign language tests).

Cuong said he plans to study in the US after finishing the foreign trade university in Vietnam. 

Most of the high school students who won high prizes at ‘Road to Olympia’, the national prestigious competition annually held for excellent students, choose to go abroad to follow university education instead of attending Vietnamese universities. 

The first prize winners at the competition receive scholarship offered by donors which allows them to study at a university in Australia. Meanwhile, the runners up at the competitions also study with scholarships they got themselves from foreign governments or foreign schools.

In Hanoi, the Hanoi-Amsterdam High School for the Gifted is considered the ‘workshop that produces the most Vietnamese students who go abroad to study’.

A student of the school, an English majoring student, said that 2/3 of her classmates plan to go abroad after finishing high school.

Nearly all high school students who won top prizes at competitions for excellent students

“They began preparing for their overseas study when they entered the school,” she said.

“In fact, applying for studying at the Hanoi-Amsterdam School is also a preparatory step for overseas study,” she said, adding that Hanoi-Amsterdam School is a prestigious school which gathers the best students in Hanoi. It is a well-known education brand in the eyes of foreign educators.

An analyst commented that Vietnam can take pride because it has many talents, but it cannot take pride in the fact that the best students all want to study abroad.  

“Statistics show that most of the excellent students don’t return to Vietnam after they finish studying overseas,” he said.

“Vietnam produces excellent students, but they do not devote themselves to Vietnam, but to other countries which pay them high salaries and offer them good working conditions,” he said.


GDVN