A Vietnamese student who taught herself programming has been admitted to PhD programs in Computer Science at Harvard University, Princeton University and Columbia University simultaneously.
Vu Ha Chau, 23, a senior majoring in Computer Science at Pomona College, received admission offers from the three Ivy League universities in late February, each including full financial support covering tuition, insurance and living expenses for five years, valued at around US$460,000-650,000 per school."This is both the result of four years of persistent effort in university and also feels like confirmation that I truly belong on the path of scientific research," Chau said.
Vu Ha Chau, a senior majoring in Computer Science at Pomona College. Photo courtesy of Pomona College
Chau taught herself programming while studying in the English-specialized class at the Foreign Language Specialized School under Vietnam National University, Hanoi. She recalled how excited she was after uploading her first products online and seeing people use them.However, after entering university in 2022 by securing a full scholarship worth $260,000 to Pomona following one gap year, she realized she wanted to pursue not only software engineering but also research.From her first semester, Chau proactively approached professors to gain experience in robotics engineering research. She soon recognized that while technology is advancing rapidly, it also carries risks, prompting her to explore how innovation could continue while remaining safe.By her second year, she had joined a new project and quickly became drawn to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), a field combining engineering, cognitive science and design."I want to contribute to society by building human-centered systems," she said.One of her studies, titled "The Timeliness of Reviewing Data in Infant Health Monitoring Applications," listed Chau as co-lead author. In 2025, the project ranked among the top 5% of outstanding papers at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the world's premier conference on human-computer interaction.The same year, Chau collaborated with research teams from Pomona College and Stanford University on another project that received a Best Paper award (Top 1%) at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. The research focused on designing AI algorithms that provide feedback to digital artists to help improve drawing skills.Thanks to these achievements, Chau was honored in February by the Computing Research Association as one of eight Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers across North America, becoming the first student from Pomona College to receive the distinction.Chau said these research projects helped her application stand out because they demonstrated persistence and the ability to tackle complex problems, qualities essential for a researcher.Alongside strengthening her programming skills throughout university, she secured internships at major technology companies including Microsoft, Amazon and Qualcomm. She later worked as a software engineering intern in Microsoft's computer graphics optimization division, an experience she said sharpened her analytical thinking and research skills in a leading technology environment.
