Nguyen Do Thu Phuong
College of Health Sciences
Thu Phuong grew up in the highlands of Vietnam in a small city called Bao Loc. Her father was a carpenter and her mother was a secondary school teacher. Phuong grew up in not good economic conditions. The place where she lived lacked access to high quality education, so she had to work hard and be proactive in her studies. She was accepted into a talented and gifted high school based on her secondary school test scores. Thu Phuong later passed into a prestigious university, which is Foreign Trade University. She initially attended a university in Vietnam for a year, but did not find it academically challenging. She found VinUniversity on Facebook and applied after reading stories of academically talented students.
Her initial application to VinUniversity was unsuccessful because she lacked interview skills. Still committed to attend VinUniversity, 7 months later, she bought a plane ticket from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. She showed up at the admissions office in person and brought a painting she made with an accompanying essay about the girl who climbed a tree to reach for the brightest firefly to illustrate her vision of life. She asked the counselor to be reconsidered for entrance to VinUniversity. The School of Nursing saw her promise in reaching the brightest and highest firefly; and offered her a position in the nursing school with a 100% scholarship.
Thu Phuong says the best part of VinUniversity is not only the academic strength of the faculty, it is their empathy and understanding combined with their commitment to help her determine her life direction. As a nursing student, she has learned the importance of empathy and understanding in the clinic and the hospital to relieve the impacts of trauma in her patients.
Thu Phuong recently applied to and was accepted to Harvard Medical School Master of Medical Sciences in Global Health Delivery program. Her goal is to extend caring to those less fortunate. She is particularly interested in applying digital health and telemedicine to improve health in people living in the poorest and most distant parts of the world.
