With the purpose to identify and help outstanding students who strive for a successful career in the US with guidance from Career Pass Institute (CPI), yet are financially restricted, we decided to establish our Career Success Scholarship Program to best support those that deserve it.
This year, there has been a competitive pool of applicants which has given us a hard time to assess and select the best candidates for the scholarships. After careful considerations, CPI is pleased to announce our Full-ride Scholarship recipient: Thu (Laura) Nguyen from Cornell University - who incredibly impressed the admission committee by her remarkable profile as well as the effort put into the application. Upon reviewing the applications, CPI was not only convinced by her solid background and extraordinary curricular activities but we also appreciated Laura's determination and goals for her career path.
As learning about Laura Nguyen's story and her personal development process, CPI could not find any other suitable fit to grant this full-ride scholarship. In particular, Laura has proven herself to be a hard-working and ambitious student by her early attempts to enroll into top schools in Vietnam for the gifted (Tran Dai Nghia & Nang Khieu High School for the gifted) for both her secondary and high school years. At the age of 17, Laura decided to take her education to a new level by spending the rest of her high school years in the United States like most students nowadays. Notably, we learned from Laura's school-selection-process story the maturity of a thoughtful young girl who took numerous efforts to seek for scholarships from top-notch schools. As much as Laura was determined to pursue her studies in the U.S, she at the same time understood her responsibility to ease the tuition burden for her family, hence, turning down lots of her dream schools due to financial restrictions. Luckily, she got the chance to enter Grier all-girl boarding school with 100% financial aid which she surely deserves after all the hard work.
Graduated from Grier as a valedictorian with exceptional grades and achievements, Laura continued to aim for bigger goals at Cornell University (one of America's most prestigious colleges) - her next success after many sleepless nights and tremendous efforts put into the college application. Specifically, most of the challenge was derived from Laura's pressure to deliver the best personal statement and supplementary essays that could strongly distinguish her from a ton of potential applicants. At Cornell, Laura gradually become even more career-oriented and ambitious about her future. Particularly, CPI team largely admired her great amount of devotion to extra-curricular activities, school organizations and other community services throughout the school year and summer period. From professional groups such as “Society for Women in Business" or “Cornell European Business Society” to student associations and other educational experience like “U.S Boarding School Conference in Vietnam," Laura has never stopped herself to keep exploring the world and go beyond her own limits. Unlike many other students with lots of uncertainties about their career, Laura Nguyen has stood out to us by her clear mind and desire to follow the Management Consulting path in the future. When sharing because her dream career path, Laura expressed her constant concern about adopting more professional skills and resources related to her favored major:
“Unlike many other students who are still trying to figure out what to do with their lives, I understand what I want and the steps I need to take in order to achieve it. Knowing that my former major Policy Analysis & Management would not provide me with business resources that other students in the Dyson School of Business get, I determined to immerse myself in pre-professional clubs and learn from people who have received great internships in Consulting/Finance sector. As I tried to apply for internal transfer to the Dyson School, at one point I was intimidated by the 3% acceptance rate and the interview process. However, making into the program recently has reassured me on my career choice and encouraged me to work even harder than before."
More importantly, CPI admission committee also found it astonishing to watch Laura's personal video about how she sees herself in 20 years’ time. From the short yet comprehensive and meaningful video, CPI team much admired her for how well-organized she is in setting up clear goals for every stage of her life to how committed she has been to executing the plan. In the near future, Laura wishes to gain professional experiences in leading companies within the U.S to be able to establish her own start-up company in Vietnam later on and to support her family in long-term. Amazingly, we are pleased to figure out how Laura is very keen on her passion to help Vietnamese education system turns better in the future.
Last but not least, this young yet thoughtful woman has also persuaded us by her urge to obtain more skill sets, advices and unique strategies from other experienced Viet who successfully landed jobs in the U.S as she fully understands the shortage of job opportunities for international students.
"At Cornell, I am pressured even more to pursue my career interests and be successful later on. However, as I’m learning more and more about the getting jobs in
the US, I realized working hard is not enough. Especially when the US has been tightening its laws in recent years that makes it harder for international students, I really need mentors who have went through the process like anh Tony to guide me with the right strategies and advices. After talking to Tony, I understand that a lot of my beliefs align with his and I truly think that CPI could help students like me to reach our career goals.”
CPI hopes this long story short about Laura would inspire a lot of Vietnamese students out there to push further and thrive towards their career goals, no matter how many challenges they face. It is because hard work and determination will always pay off eventually.
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