An American nonprofit organized on Sunday morning a workshop on study in the U.S. that was attended by over 100 Vietnamese students who are seeking opportunities to enroll in undergraduate and graduate programs at U.S. colleges.

The New York-based Institute for Vietnamese Culture and Education (IVCE) brought together a group of six speakers, including a Vietnanese student from Yale University, an American professor of anthropology at the same school, and four other Vietnamese alumni of U.S. colleges, who shared their tips on preparations for a successful application with the participants in the lecture hall of the Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

Tran Thang, IVCE president who earned a degree from the University of Connecticut in 1998, said that English command forms only a part of whether an applicant gets admitted to a certain college.

Academic performance, extra-curricular activities, and how a candidate presents themself on papers play a key role, Thang asserted.   

Records of research accomplishments are very important to those who apply for a master’s degree program, he added.

Tran Nguyen Huan, a University of Southern California alumnus, provided a short overview of his school and his major, construction management, in hopes that those who want to follow it would have a better understanding of the discipline.

Holding a master’s degree in economics from Vanderbilt University, Le Nam advised that finance-banking majors should try to obtain extra certificates in the U.S. so that it would be easier for them to get a job upon graduation. Nam himself is working at Citibank in Ho Chi Minh City.

Lu Doanh Doanh, who gained a chemistry degree from MIT and a medical one from the University of Massachusetts, shed some light on the process of earning a medical school degree in the U.S., which takes about 8 years on average.

Doanh said that before enrolling in a medical college candidates are required to have a college degree first, as opposed to Vietnam where students can apply to a medical college right after they graduate from high school.

Doanh, an American Board Certified Infectious Disease Specialist, worked for an HIV prevention center in Vietnam for seven years before switching to a skin center in the southern hub now.

Doan Thi Tuyet Ngoc, a third-year architecture major at Yale University, spent a pretty long time on sharing her recipe to score well on SAT and GRE, tests needed for admissions to universities in the U.S., and how to write an impressive personal statement.

Her presentation was then complemented by that from Erik Harms, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International and Area Studies at Yale University.

Prof Harms suggested that candidates’ personal statements should include a clear self-introduction, a specific purpose, and how the college they are applying to can help them achieve that purpose.

Tran Viet Hoanh, who have a master’s degree in architecture preservation conferred by Columbia University, supplied the attendees with information on his major and how to choose the right school with a particular budget for tuition.

The event wrapped up with a Q&A session, with questions related to visa applications, scholarships, majors, score conversion, among others.

IVCE was founded in 2000 to help students in Vietnam acquire basic and/or higher education by providing information about student exchange and scholarship programs.