HSE University-St Petersburg Holds a Series of Olympiads for Applicants from Vietnam
HSE University-St Petersburg held a series of intellectual competitions for high school students from Vietnam. There were 900 applications from gifted students from various provinces. Winners of the olympiad receive a full scholarship to study at HSE University.
INTO HSE is an annual competition held in several areas of study. In Vietnam, the team of HSE University-St Petersburg held the olympiad on the subject 'Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication'. Additionally, students of 10th-12th grades could participate in the Mathematical Olympiad organised by HSE. The events took place in three educational institutions: special schools named after Le Hong Phong and 'Le Khiet', as well as the high school 'Cau Giay'.
According to Kseniia Nicheuhina, director of the Centre for International Education at HSE University-St Petersburg, each track of INTO HSE corresponds to HSE educational programmes. International olympiads are an important stage of selecting gifted applicants from various countries. Winners of the intellectual contest are entitled to preferential admission to quota places provided by the government of the Russian Federation.
Kseniia Nicheuhina
Director of the Centre for International Education at HSE University-St Petersburg
'Olympiads are interesting to students and teachers in all countries. An advantage for admission is an incentive to participate. For school students who are choosing a university, the opportunities which we offer (scholarship for tuition fees and English-taught programmes) are a big plus. An older generation of the Vietnamese have a good impression of the Russian education, as many of them studied at the universities of the USSR, and they still remember the Russian language', shared Kseniia Nicheuhina.
Intellectual competitions by HSE regularly take place in the CIS countries, for instance, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. In the future, we're planning to expand the geography and conduct the selection of applicants in India. For international school students, it is another chance to dive into the university academic life.
Ksenia Khramtsovskaya
Leading Specialist at the Centre for International Education
'For HSE University-St Petersburg, olympiads are, first of all, a chance to find talented international applicants for bachelor's programmes. Organising the olympiads, we try to show school students a part of academic life, which awaits them if they enrol in our university. Thus, for the trip to Vietnam, Ivan Kulikov, senior lecturer at the St Petersburg School of Art and Design, joined our team. He conducted a workshop for students on creating their own fonts. The participants were genuinely interested in communication and showed creative initiative during the classes', emphasised Ksenia Khramtsovskaya, leading specialist at the Centre for International Education.
Ivan Kulikov, senior lecturer at the St Petersburg School of Art and Design, highlighted how involved students were in the workshops.
Ivan Kulikov
Senior Lecturer at the St Petersburg School of Art and Design
'The students made a good impression: all of them were highly educated, and they even paid us some kind of homage. The number of people who signed up for the workshop surprised me. The school students listened carefully, repeated the techniques of font creation and adapted on the fly. The trip was eventful and pushed the time boundaries. Even though we spent just a week in Vietnam, it felt like a whole month', shared Ivan Kulikov.
Some school students, as the members of the delegation from HSE University-St Petersburg highlighted, showed great Russian language proficiency. At some Vietnamese schools, this subject is included in the curriculum.
Kseniia Nicheuhina reminded that apart from INTO HSE and the Mathematical Olympiad, international students had other opportunities to get scholarships for the university educational programmes.
'Annually, we receive applications from the winners of the HSE International Olympiad. It is another event of our university for high school students held in Russian, which includes about 17 subjects. Besides, there is the Olympiad of the Association of Global Universities called 'Open Doors'. Following the results of the olympiad, as a rule, a lot of master's applicants enrol. But in recent years, school students who win the olympiad also got an opportunity to apply', summed up the director of the Centre for International Education.