VietNamNet Bridge – Many education consultancy centers have opened to help Vietnamese students win scholarships to prestigious schools in the US.

The beneficiaries of these centres are often students of families with high incomes who can pay the fees. More and more students have won scholarships, not because they suddenly had better learning capability, but because they had received methodical and professional support from education consultancy firms.

The firm's’ main business is preparing students for enrollment in the best schools and finding valuable student grants. Only students from well-off families who can afford high tuition go to these education consultancy centers.

One educator said the majority of Vietnamese students studying at US prestigious schools under full scholarships were trained at such “scholarship-hunting centers”.

A Hanoi-based center reportedly that offered advice to 80 students over the last two years said that 99 percent of the students won scholarships, while 25 percent won scholarships from top schools.

The top schools included Cornell University, Dartmouth College, New York University, Georgetown University, Macalester College, Vassar College, Hamilton College, Duke University, Colgate University, Bryn Mawr College and Lehigh University.

Another center, also in Hanoi, advertised that in the last four years, from 2010 to February 2014, the total of the scholarships the students of the center obtained amounted to over VND300 billion.  

Hundreds of students had enrolled in top US universities, including Ivy League universities and top 10 liberal arts institutions.

A center in HCM City has released the names of students who have won grants to schools like Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Brown University, Duke University, Pennsylvania and Princeton.

The representative of the center said that in 2013-2014 alone, the center had helped seven Vietnamese students win student grants to Ivy League schools.

A question has been raised about these firms’ methods and their rate of success.

There are two groups of education consultancy firms in Vietnam. While the first-generation firms target the clients who are sure they cannot pass the entrance exams to domestic universities, the next-generation firms target excellent students who dream of studying at prestigious schools.

The founders and the lecturers at the next-generation centers, both Vietnamese and foreign, are graduates from the leading schools in the US or countries with developed education systems like the UK and Australia.

The centers provide professional services, following the strategies designed specifically for each student. Tuition however at these schools is unaffordable for students from medium-income families.

In general, students begin preparing for their TOEFL and SAT exams two to three years before the time they apply for scholarships.

The preparatory training courses for the exams cost at least VND60 million (nearly $US3,000). The expenses are higher if students cannot meet the requirements and have to repeat the courses.

After meeting the required English skills, students attend classes where they are taught to write essays, prepare documents to prove their financial capability and prepare curriculum vitas. A training course on basic writing skills may cost VND8.5 million.

Ngan Anh