For 62-year-old Nguyen Van Minh, patience is a virtue as three exam failures in the past failed to defeat him, who gave another try at this week’s national university entrance exam, Vietnam’s way to enroll students for higher education. In the exam lasted from Wednesday to Thursday, teen candidates and proctors at an exam council in the central city of Hue felt really surprised when seeing this old man sit for the challenging exam he failed three times already since 2008.

“I still feel as nervous as I was 40 years ago when I took my middle school graduation exam at this same exam council,” Minh, hailing from the central province of Quang Tri, said Wednesday after taking two of his three tests to gain admission to Hue University.

The man failed to get into the school’s architecture and atomic physics majors in the previous years; one time exam administrators even asked him to go out of the exam room after mistaking Minh for a candidate’s parent.

To cover the fees for this year’s tests, Minh had made a saving out of his meager salary from the job of a security guard at a radio station in Quang Tri for the last one year.

The sexagenarian said he would move to Hue to simultaneously do many jobs to support his studies if Minh passed the exam.

“I will strive again next year if I do not make the grade this year.”

In Vietnam, college applicants must pass a set of three tests chosen from math, physics, chemistry, literature, history, geography, biology, and foreign languages to be admitted to their college of choice.