Le Vu Minh Tri, a 12th grade Math 1 student at Hanoi - Amsterdam High School for the Gifted, has just received an acceptance letter to the Mathematics major at Harvard University. This is the 4th ranked school in the world , according to the 2024 THE rankings. In addition, Tri also passed the entrance exam to Duke University, the 26th ranked school in the world. Both agreed to give him a scholarship for 4 years if he studies at the school.

“I jumped for joy, and my dad hugged me tightly when he heard the news,” Tri said.

In addition to the acceptance letter, Minh Tri also received a personal congratulatory letter from a representative of the Harvard University regional admissions committee. In the letter, she said that the admissions committee and the professional consulting team, which are professors of the Mathematics Department, were very fond of and impressed with Tri's research on Mathematics through art.

“We believe you will become a great member of the Mathematics faculty,” the letter read.

Le Vu Minh Tri, 12th grade Math 1 student, Hanoi - Amsterdam High School for the Gifted

Early showing his strength in Math, since his junior high school days at Hanoi - Amsterdam High School for the Gifted, Minh Tri won second prize in the city-level Math competition. He was the runner-up in the Math competition when entering high school and won the national prize for excellent students for two consecutive years.

Having been attached to this subject for many years, Minh Tri was fascinated by the beauty of Mathematics. Therefore, when he began to cherish the idea of ​​studying abroad, the Ams student still wanted to continue pursuing the path of studying and doing Mathematics.

“America is a place with a rigorous and vibrant academic background in the sciences , including Mathematics. Therefore, I hope to have the opportunity to study and develop my passion here.”

When he decided to come to the US, Harvard was the first school Tri thought of because the Mathematics department here is in the top 3 in the country. This is also where the top professors teach and write textbooks for the Mathematics department at other universities across the US.

“In addition, there is another reason, I always wanted to study Math 55 - a famously difficult subject that is only available at Harvard. If I have the opportunity to study here, I will register for some more subjects in the exchange program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - a program exclusively for students of the Mathematics department,” Tri said.

Tri just received his acceptance letter to Harvard University's Mathematics Department.

Although Tri officially started preparing his application at the end of 11th grade, he had actually “accumulated” quite early. Since 9th grade, the male student had started participating in activities related to Mathematics such as self-research and writing scientific articles.

Tri has two independent studies on Mathematics, including a 40-page scientific paper on Non-Euclidean Geometry, presented at the Institute of Mathematics on March 28, and a study on Mathematics education methods for secondary school students through the application of creative art activities such as Origami (paper folding art), tessellation design and fractal art, applied in interdisciplinary Mathematics - Art education.

The male student said that the motivation for him to start researching the application of teaching Math through art activities came from the fact that his mother also works in the field of creative arts. Her job requires mathematical imagination such as creating shapes and symmetry. However, his mother was a person who did not like Math.

Or Tri's younger sister also had a rather stressful time studying Math at school. However, she has outstanding artistic talent based on her imagination of spatial depth or proportions in paintings.

“That is the reason why I want to find the law of connection between the two fields of Mathematics and Art to help children who have difficulty with Mathematics have a more open view, and at the same time understand that Mathematics can be applied to many areas of life.”

Since secondary school, Tri has been the initiator and manager of the project “Where Math meets Art”. For 3 years, the members have organized many tutorials on applying Mathematics to creative activities, such as folding origami polyhedra (related to the concept of Platonic polyhedra), macrame (related to knot theory and topology)…

Because the time to prepare documents coincided with the national excellent student exam preparation period, Tri prioritized completing the standardized test scores earlier. The male student had achieved 8.5 IELTS, self-studied SAT and achieved 1550/1600.

At the time of submitting his application, Tri had not yet participated in the national 12th grade excellent student exam, so when he won the prize, he wrote an additional letter to the school to update his latest achievements.

In his main essay to Harvard, Tri recounted the time when he was a middle school boy, overwhelmed when his mother took him to visit an exhibition of plastic art made from sugar materials. Tri realized that he could use Mathematics to practice art - two fields that seemed unrelated. Thanks to that, he also wanted to carry out activities to help young children learn Mathematics through art, making learning more fun and easier.

In addition, Tri also believes that creative thinking is the result of the education at the high school he attended – which he considers “quite liberal”. “The teachers inspired me and helped me feel the beauty of Math, educating us in humility, concentration and the spirit of lifelong learning.

This story is also a lesson about maturity in perception and the things I want to pursue in the future," Tri said.

Delighted with what her son has achieved, Ms. Vu Ngoc Minh - Tri's mother said, "The opportunity to enter Harvard was a very narrow door and he had to try very hard."

“It was a competitive journey, but my child always had a strong opinion and mentality. Tri has the ability to read and research, and is never pressured by his peers even though he has many talented friends around him. This result is a worthy reward for his efforts,” said Ms. Minh.

Next August, Minh Tri will go to the US to study Mathematics at Harvard University. He hopes this will be the starting point for his path to in-depth research in Mathematics.

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