Ten students were awarded Taiwan TOEFL Scholarships on Thursday, with each receiving US$3,000 from the US Education Testing Service (ETC).
Among the winners were 17-year-old Chao Ling-ya (趙翎雅) and 24-year-old Lin Hua-yi (林華毅).
Chao, who graduated from Taipei Municipal First Girls’ Senior High School and studied at National Taiwan University’s Department of Physics, will enroll at Harvard University this fall.
“I am not better than anyone else, I am just lucky,” she said.
Chao said she was often the odd person out in a physics department dominated by men, but she does not believe gender should be a barrier to studying physics and she hopes to one day become a renowned physicist like her role-model Wu Chien-hsiung (吳健雄), who is known as Asia’s Madame Curie.
Chao’s interests are not solely limited to physics; she is also interested in biology and economics.
“Harvard is a very dynamic school and I hope to discover more interest [there],” she said.
Lin graduated from National Chengchi University’s Department of International Business.
Scoring a 107 on his TOEFL Internet-base test, Lin will enroll at London University in the UK and study eastern European economics.
Lin said his grandmother always hoped that her son would be able to go abroad to study, but financial troubles had prevented his dad from being able to leave.
“Grandmother once said she would carry my dad to the airport on her back if he was able to go abroad to study. This year, I’m going to carry grandmother on my back [to the airport] so she can see me go study abroad,” Lin said.
Lin said he plans to learn Polish and he hopes to return to Taiwan and work for the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
“I grew up in Taiwan, I’ve received a Taiwanese education, I eat Taiwanese rice and that mandates that I return to serve [the nation],” Lin added.
TRANSLATED BY JAKE CHUNG, STAFF WRITER
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