Tuong Anh, a former Chinese-major student at Hanoi's High School for Gifted Students in Foreign Languages, was admitted to Tsinghua's Chinese-language program with a scholarship covering 50% of tuition.
Tsinghua ranks 14th in the world in the most recent QS World University Rankings, released in June 2026. Her separate award at Beijing Normal University, known as Beishida, covers tuition, dormitory and living costs in full.
The application capped the personal essay at fewer than 1,000 characters. To fit more into that space, Tuong Anh wrote hers around lines of classical poetry.
For her mother, a Chinese-language lecturer, she chose "run wu xi wu sheng" (nourishing all things softly, without a sound) from Du Fu's "Spring Night Rejoicing in Rain," casting her own drift into the language and toward teaching as something that had soaked in quietly over years.
For her first-year study plan she used "qiu mu zhi chang zhe, bi gu qi gen ben" (to grow a tall, lasting tree, first make its roots firm), from the Tang statesman Wei Zheng's "Memorial of Ten Thoughts to Emperor Taizong."
