Nguyen Quy Bao, 18, graduated from the Foreign Language Specialized School, a selective high school under Vietnam National University, Hanoi.
Tsinghua is covering his tuition in full for the first year, worth 30,000 yuan (US$4,430). It will reassess the award annually against his results.
The university ranks 14th in the world in the QS World University Rankings 2027, released in June, second among mainland Chinese institutions behind Peking University. It sits 12th in the Times Higher Education 2026 table, and first in China.
Bao belonged to the first cohort of applicants required to sit the China Scholastic Competency Assessment, a standardized entrance exam established by the China Scholarship Council with the Ministry of Education. Its first global sitting was held on Dec. 21, 2025, and 306 Chinese universities require it for the 2026 undergraduate intake.
Mathematics is compulsory for every candidate, physics and chemistry depend on the intended major, and Chinese-taught programs carry a separate Professional Chinese paper. Each subject paper runs 48 multiple-choice questions in 60 minutes, scored out of 100 and sat online under camera proctoring.
