Hanoi, Vietnam

Linh Hoai Pham

Student’s background
“I come from Hanoi, Vietnam. I’ve always liked ICT, so logically that was my major in high school. After high school I enrolled at the Genetic University in Hanoi. There I chose to pursue a major in electronics/ICT, but during that same year in college, my mother suggested that I had to try to go study abroad.”

• Why did you choose GROUP T?
  “My mother had met Johan De Graeve, GROUP T’s president, in Thailand. Convinced that this presented a great opportunity for me, she brought up the idea of studying at GROUP T, especially since they also provided a master in ICT.”


• How do you like it?
  “This is already my third year in Belgium, so I’m really used to life here. In the beginning though, I felt a little lonely, being the only Vietnamese around. Consequently, it took a while for me to integrate here and feel at home. But now I live at a ’kot’ together with mostly Belgian students.” “The only thing I really miss here is an opportunity to learn Dutch. After a long day of classes it is nearly impossible to follow Dutch courses at ACE for another four long hours. If GROUP T could make it someway obligatory to get one hour of Dutch classes twice a week, it would help the integration a great deal.”


• Personal Experiences
  “When I first arrived, I was really impressed by the scale of the town. Leuven is rather small compared to Hanoi. Another thing that struck me was how fast everything went during the classes, I had to get used to the pace here. But, apart from the pace, the teaching methods aren’t much different from what I was used to in Hanoi.”