A Vietnamese college student has recently won first prize at a Microsoft Office skill competition concluded last week in the U.S city of Las Vegas.

Tran Dinh Vi, a senior at the Ho Chi Minh City Banking University, bagged a gold medal at the 2012 Certiport Worldwide Competition on Microsoft Office, which attracted more than 285,000 unique candidates from 53 countries who competed to demonstrate their mastery of Microsoft Office products.

Vi beat 112 student finalists in the final round to pocket a US$5,000 cash scholarship and be named the World Champion in Microsoft Word 2010.

In the concluding round, competitors participated in timed, unique tests to demonstrate their ability to create documents for information presented in Microsoft Word.

The Vietnamese entrant was followed by Jacob Hjort Bundgaard from Denmark and Luo Wenhan from Singapore.

This was the third consecutive time the student took part in the competition, though both previous times he failed to advance past the national round.

He will hold the World Champion title forever, Certiport, the organizer, said.

Vietnam sent three candidates to the competition, with the other two failing to win any prize.

Certiport, a U.S.-based provider of performance-based testing of knowledge and fundamental computer skills, has held the contest for 11 years straight around the world.