Male student admitted to top 9 US university with zero SAT score

Despite majoring in Russian and having no SAT score, Quang Duy was admitted to the Health Sciences program at Johns Hopkins University - top 9 in the US and two top schools in Canada.

Pham Quang Duy is a Russian major student at Hanoi - Amsterdam High School for the Gifted. Since the end of March, he has received acceptance letters from the University of Toronto, British Columbia, John Hopkins and Boston.

According to US News , Toronto and British Columbia are the top two schools in Canada, while John Hopkins is ranked 9th and Boston is among the top 43 best universities in the US.

Pham Quang Duy in his yearbook photo at Ams school. Photo: Character provided

Becoming a doctor has been Quang Duy's dream since 9th grade, after a volunteer trip to the National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion with his mother. Seeing children fighting genetic diseases or leukemia every day, Duy dreamed of a miracle to cure the disease and help them return home.

"From then on, I read more documents about genetic diseases and gradually fell in love with the field of molecular biology, genetic disease treatment or new inventions in the biomedical field," Duy said.

Initially, Duy set a goal of studying abroad in Canada, choosing the Health Sciences major. The reason is that the medical training program here is equivalent to a master's degree, requiring candidates to have a bachelor's degree in a related field before studying.

As soon as he entered grade 10, Duy started preparing his application, including transcripts, essays, and extracurricular activities. The male student maintained an average score of 9.5 at school and achieved an IELTS score of 8.0.

This time coincided with the Covid-19 outbreak, so Duy could not participate in many extracurricular activities. He came up with the idea of ​​researching adolescent mental health during the social distancing period with his friends. As a result, his and his group's research was presented at the International Conference on Health and Education organized by the University of Montreal, Canada, in 2022.

"The research results show that young people lack the skills to seek social support and that prolonged online learning, combined with frequent use of social networks, seriously affects their mental health," Duy said.

The research paper was also published in a public health journal. The male student acknowledged that at that time, the Covid-19 epidemic was a hot topic worldwide, so related research was of interest. He had to submit the manuscript a month in advance and go through the peer review process before reporting.

In 2023, Duy continued to participate in a conference on Public Health in Thailand. His presentation on the current state of Internet addiction in adolescents and its consequences on mental health was selected as the best presentation in the session on "Mental Health". This was the highlight that the male student mentioned in the extracurricular activities section, along with research internships at several medical schools in Hanoi.

Duy received a certificate of excellent presentation in Thailand, November 2023. Photo: Character provided

Duy's original intention was to study abroad in Canada, but he later decided to apply to more schools in the US to test his abilities. Because he made the decision late, Duy did not have time to take the SAT - a popular standardized test for US university admissions.

The biggest difficulty when moving to the US, according to Duy, was choosing the topic of the essay. At first, because of his passion for molecular biology and neuroscience research, Duy intended to write about this field but realized that his knowledge and experience were not enough. In the end, the male student changed the topic to describe the process of self-study since grade 10, emphasizing the difficulties and solutions.

For example, the male student mentioned the difficulties in conducting online surveys during the Covid-19 pandemic and the process of finding documents to build a toolkit and the process of learning appropriate analysis methods.

"I think this shows my commitment to research and my ability to learn on my own," Duy said.

Due to the short preparation time, Duy was less stressed and did not expect much from the results. When he received the news of his admission to Johns Hopkins two weeks ago, Duy and his family were surprised.

"Reading the words 'welcome to class 2028', I couldn't believe my eyes. I felt very lucky to have had the opportunity to experience and achieve good results," Duy said.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, a health research organization expert at UNC Vietnam, is the person who guides Duy from concept, orientation to statistical software. Ms. Ngan highly appreciates Duy for his efforts in learning to conduct a complete scientific research. According to her, high school students usually participate in a few stages such as data collection or data entry, few students do the stages of data analysis and writing.

"Duy is passionate about the biomedical field, has the ability to self-study and read documents very well," she commented.

Ms. Hoa Hong Nhung, a Math teacher at Hanoi - Amsterdam High School for the Gifted, also assessed that the male student has good self-study ability, finding many ways to solve the same problem.

"She often takes the initiative to arrange time after school to ask for advice," she said.

Duy attends Summer School in Quy Nhon, 2023. Photo: Character provided

Looking back at the application process, Duy assessed that the strength of his profile was consistency, demonstrating commitment to the chosen direction.

"A profile does not need to be too diverse, but needs to demonstrate strengths, commitment, self-study ability and self-development as a roadmap instead of trying to prove that you are good in every aspect," Duy said. Another experience Duy had when preparing a profile was to refer to articles about his international students to learn from.

What Duy is most proud of is that he researched and applied for the school himself. While in Canada, Duy applied according to the requirements of each school, in the US, this is done through the Common App.

"When I opened the Common App, I was overwhelmed by the number of items I had to prepare. At each step, I had to look it up online and visit study abroad consulting sites both in Vietnam and abroad to find instructions, so completing the application was quite difficult," Duy admitted. "But through that, I improved my ability to research and proactively study, which are important skills in college."

Duy has not decided whether to go to the US or Canada. The male student is also considering the general medicine program at VinUni University, where he received a 90% scholarship.

Although he knew that pursuing a career in medicine was a very challenging path, Duy was determined to become a doctor or researcher in the field of neuroscience.

"I hope to experience new challenges to improve myself, like this time applying to university," Duy shared.

Grassland - Doan Hung

Source: https://vnexpress.net/nam-sinh-do-dai-hoc-top-9-my-voi-ho-so-khong-diem-sat-4731308.html