Le Vu Minh Tri, a 12th grade Math 1 student at Hanoi - Amsterdam High School for the Gifted, has just received an acceptance letter to the Mathematics program at Harvard University. This is the 4th ranked university in the world, according to the THE rankings in 2024. In addition, Tri also got into Duke University, the 26th ranked university in the world. Both agreed to provide him with a scholarship for 4 years if he studies at the school.

“I jumped for joy, and my dad hugged me tightly when he heard the news,” Tri said.

In addition to the acceptance letter, Minh Tri also received a personal congratulatory letter from a representative of the Harvard University regional admissions committee. In the letter, she said that the admissions committee and the professional consulting team, which are professors in the Mathematics department, were very fond of and impressed with Tri's research on Mathematics through art.

“We believe you will become a great part of the Mathematics faculty,” the letter read.

Le Vu Minh Tri, 12th grade Math 1 student, Hanoi - Amsterdam High School for the Gifted

Early on, Minh Tri showed his strength in Math. When he was in middle school at Hanoi - Amsterdam High School for the Gifted, he won the second prize in the city-level Math competition. He was the runner-up in the Math competition when he entered high school and won the national prize for excellent students for two consecutive years.

After many years of studying this subject, Minh Tri was fascinated by the beauty of Mathematics. Therefore, when he started to cherish the idea of ​​studying abroad, the Ams student still wanted to continue pursuing the path of studying and doing Mathematics.

“The US is a place with a rigorous and vibrant academic background in science, including Mathematics. Therefore, I hope to have the opportunity to study and develop my passion here.”

When he decided to come to the US, Harvard was the first school Tri thought of because the Mathematics department here is in the top 3 in the country. This is also where leading professors teach and write textbooks for the Mathematics department at other universities across the US.

“In addition, there is another reason, I always wanted to study Math 55 - a famously difficult subject that is only available at Harvard. If I have the opportunity to study here, I will register for some more subjects in the exchange program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - a program exclusively for students of the Mathematics department,” Tri said.

Tri just received his acceptance letter to Harvard University's Mathematics department.

Although Tri officially started preparing his application at the end of 11th grade, he had actually “accumulated” quite early. Since 9th grade, the male student had started participating in Math-related activities such as self-study and writing scientific articles.

Tri has two independent studies on Mathematics, including a 40-page scientific paper on Non-Euclidean Geometry, presented at the Institute of Mathematics on March 28, and a study on Mathematics education methods for secondary school students through the application of creative art activities such as Origami (paper folding art), tessellation design, and fractal art, applied in interdisciplinary Mathematics - Art education.

The male student said that the motivation for him to start researching the application of teaching Math through art activities came from the fact that his mother also works in the field of creative arts. Her job requires mathematical imagination such as creating shapes and symmetry. However, his mother was someone who did not like Math.

Or Tri's younger sister also had a rather stressful time studying Math at school. However, she has outstanding artistic talent based on her imagination of spatial depth or proportions in paintings.

“That is why I want to find the law of connection between the two fields of Mathematics and Art to help children who have difficulty with Mathematics have a more open view, and at the same time understand that Mathematics can be applied to many areas of life.”

Since middle school, Tri has been the initiator and manager of the project “Where Math meets Art”. Over the past 3 years, the members have organized many tutorials on applying Mathematics to creative activities, such as folding origami polyhedra (related to the concept of Plato’s polyhedra), the art of knotting - macrame (related to knot theory and topology)…

Because the time to prepare the documents coincided with the national excellent student exam preparation period, Tri prioritized completing the standardized test scores earlier. The male student had achieved 8.5 IELTS, self-studied SAT and achieved 1550/1600.

At the time of submitting his application, Tri had not yet participated in the national excellent student exam for grade 12, so when he won the prize, he wrote an additional letter to the school to update his latest achievements.

In his main essay for Harvard, Tri recounted the time when he was a middle school boy, overwhelmed by his mother taking him to visit an exhibition of plastic art made from sugar materials. Tri realized that he could use Mathematics to practice art - two fields that seemed unrelated. Thanks to that, he also wanted to carry out activities to help young children learn Mathematics through art, making learning more fun and easier.

In addition, Tri also believes that creative thinking is the result of the education at the high school he attended - a place he considers "quite liberal". "The teachers inspired and helped me feel the beauty of Mathematics, educating us in humility, concentration and the spirit of lifelong learning.

This story is also a lesson about maturity in perception and what I want to pursue in the future," Tri said.

Delighted with what her son has achieved, Ms. Vu Ngoc Minh - Tri's mother said, "The opportunity to enter Harvard was a very narrow door and he had to try very hard."

“It was a competitive journey, but my child always had his own opinions and a strong mentality. Tri has the ability to read and research, and is never pressured by his peers even though he has many talented friends around him. This result is a worthy reward for his efforts and abilities,” said Ms. Minh.

Next August, Minh Tri will go to the US to study Mathematics at Harvard University. He hopes this will be the starting point for his path of in-depth Mathematics research.

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