Outstanding students of high school graduation exam in 2025

The results of the 2025 high school graduation exam were officially announced by the Ministry of Education and Training on July 16. The highest-scoring candidates in the exam and the top performers in the admission combinations of the new Dong Nai province have emerged with impressive and admirable results.

Nguyen Thi Thuy Tien (2nd from left), a student of Tran Dai Nghia Primary-Secondary-High School (Ho Nai Ward), became the runner-up of the 2025 High School Graduation Exam in the new Dong Nai province, and also the candidate with the highest score among over 37 thousand candidates in the old Dong Nai province. Photo: Cong Nghia

Valedictorian with all-round academic excellence

Nguyen Quoc Thai, a student of Binh Long High School for the Gifted in An Loc Ward, became the valedictorian of the 2025 high school graduation exam in the new Dong Nai province. Thai achieved the highest score in 4 subjects with 37.75 points (Math 9, Literature 9, Physics 10, and Chemistry 9.75).

Nguyen Quoc Thai, valedictorian of the 2025 High School Graduation Exam in the new Dong Nai province.

As a student specializing in Math, Thai's scores were almost evenly distributed across the graduation exam subjects, even in subjects that were not entirely his strong suit, such as Literature, where Thai excellently achieved 9 points.

Sharing about the moment he learned his scores, Thai said that for Math, Physics, and Chemistry, he knew his scores immediately after completing the exams, as these subjects were multiple-choice. As for Literature, he was somewhat surprised, because this year's literature exam was open-ended, not entirely from textbooks, but it was a very emotional and highly topical exam.

With many years of continuous excellent academic performance, his learning ability was convincingly demonstrated by the results of the 2025 high school graduation exam. Thai said: "I have no secret other than serious hard work, the encouragement and care of my parents, and the dedicated support of my teachers. When I have difficult exercises or challenging questions, I always remain calm and highly focused."

"In the recent graduation exam, I felt that 2/3 of the Math questions were difficult to very difficult, and some questions were even so difficult that they made me feel 'dizzy' for a few minutes before I could calm down, especially the probability questions. Once I calmed down, I focused on solving each question one by one, prioritizing the easy and certainly correct ones first, and then moving on to the difficult ones," Thai shared.

Thai said that his parents are small business owners, but their love and care for their child are always immense and paramount. As the youngest child in the family, he has always been given maximum support by his parents and siblings in his studies, but without any pressure regarding academic achievement. After each exam, especially the recent high school graduation exam, his parents never asked "what was your score?" but only offered words of encouragement and a relaxed smile. With his convincing academic results and high school graduation exam scores, Thai shared his plans: "My older sister just graduated from Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics, so I am oriented to follow the path my sister took. I am also considering some new fields related to science and technology, which are new development trends for the country, so that later I can contribute to building the country in the new era in new fields such as: semiconductor integrated circuit design, artificial intelligence..."

The second highest-scoring candidate in the province came from a private school.

Since there was no public high school near her home, after completing 9th grade, Nguyen Thi Thuy Tien, residing in Binh Minh commune, decided to study 10th grade at Tran Dai Nghia Primary-Secondary-High School in Ho Nai ward, about 9km from her home. Not only Thuy Tien but also her two older brothers studied at this school and both achieved excellent results, winning many high prizes in provincial-level gifted student competitions and being admitted to top universities in Ho Chi Minh City.

In the recent 2025 high school graduation exam, Thuy Tien scored 36.75 points, including Math 8.5, Literature 8.5, Physics 10, Chemistry 9.75. With this score, Thuy Tien became the second highest-scoring candidate in the new Dong Nai province's high school graduation exam, and also the highest-scoring candidate among public and private high schools in the old Dong Nai province, because the 2025 high school graduation exam was the last exam held before the provincial merger.

Thuy Tien said that she was almost 100% sure of her scores for 3 out of 4 graduation subjects, except for Literature, which she was not very sure about. However, she was very surprised that she passed the graduation exam with such a high ranking. Thuy Tien added: "When I heard that I was one of the top-scoring candidates in this year's graduation exam, I was very surprised and happy. I always thought that there were so many candidates in this exam, so there would definitely be many candidates who were more excellent than me from specialized schools or other top public schools."

Thuy Tien plans to apply to Ho Chi Minh City University of Education and later become a Math teacher. Her desire to pursue this profession was guided by her brothers who are studying at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology. Her parents encouraged her to follow this path because it was her dream, and it also suited her family's economic conditions, as raising all their children to study at university at the same time might be too much for her parents.

Le Xuan Tho, Principal of Tran Dai Nghia Primary-Secondary-High School, shared that this is the first time the school has had a student achieve such excellent high school graduation exam scores. Immediately after learning the exam results, the school invited her to the school to share the joy and share study experiences with students preparing for 12th grade. The school will reward her for this achievement, and also commit to creating conditions for her to intern and work at the school if she graduates from the education major later.

Reported by Cong Nghia