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Don Nguyen

Biography

Don Nguyen soaked up the intensive summer seminars he was able to attend as a Young Scholar, taking classes at Duke in chemistry, biology, algebra, tropical medicine – and then he asked for more. With his adviser, he shaped a final seminar at Brown University on philosophy, East and West.

In high school, Nguyen volunteered for three years at a local hospital in the maternity and surgical wards. He started college at Emory with an interest in a future in medicine, however, after his freshman year, he changed his studies over to Economics, particularly health and policy economics. He is also a dedicated athlete who began learning Tae Kwon Do as a pre-schooler and recently earned his fourth-degree black belt. Though only first encountering golf as a sophomore, he made the varsity team as a junior.

This combination of aptitude and hard work has served Don well in his formal schooling too. He became a National Merit Finalist, and his English teacher, Valera Reynolds, says Don “enjoys the challenges of learning and works assiduously to achieve his goals.” Ms. Reynolds has also been intrigued by Don’s creative flair as a writer. “He learned to surprise me,” she says, “and to bolster his piece with an entertaining opening or jolting conclusion that made reading and evaluating his efforts something I happily anticipated.”

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