HÀ NỘI—Nguyễn Thị Sao Ly, a 24-year-old Vietnamese student from the central city of Đà Nẵng, has received full PhD scholarship offers to study medicine at eight prestigious US universities.

The institutions include MIT, Cornell University, University of California San Diego, University of Chicago, Rice University, University of Texas Southwestern and Baylor University.

Sao Ly has chosen Johns Hopkins University, which sits atop US rankings.

She is scheduled to begin her doctoral study in August this year, having surpassed 5,500 candidates to win the scholarship worth more than US$410,000 (for five years of study).

Ly left Đà Nẵng City to study in the US when she was 15 years old.

She graduated from Biology and Advanced Medicine department at the California University, Los Angeles, in June 2016. She then decided to do research and look for scholarships to earn a PhD. She looked for opportunities in many universities and conducted interviews from January to March.

The competition for PhD scholarships to the Johns Hopkins is very fierce. 5,500 candidates vied for only 20 scholarships, among which only four are given to foreign students. 

“I am extremely happy! Finally, my efforts are awarded.  Getting a scholarship from Johns Hopkins University was only a far-away dream, but it has now become a reality,” confides Ly.

Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1897.  It is considered the first research university in the US. Over the course of almost 140 years, thirty-six Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Johns Hopkins. The University was ranked 10th among undergraduate programs at national universities, and 11th among global universities by US News & World Report in its 2017 rankings, as well as 17th globally in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. —  VNS