Dear Members of the École Polytechnique Admissions Committee,

The Polytechnique tradition — the belief that the most pressing human challenges require the most rigorous scientific training — is one I encountered not through a guidebook but through reading. The alumni list reads like a map of modernity: engineers, mathematicians, physicists who reshaped the world. I do not presume to follow in those footsteps; I presume only to share the aspiration.

The Bachelor of Science at l'X is, to my knowledge, one of the few undergraduate programmes anywhere that treats scientific breadth not as a compromise but as a philosophy — the conviction that a researcher in any discipline is a better researcher for having deeply studied several. I share that conviction entirely.

My academic trajectory has been shaped by a similar philosophy. In Vietnam, I pursued mathematics, informatics, physics, and literature simultaneously — not because the curriculum required it, but because I believe each discipline sharpens the others. I ranked first nationally in my cohort, earned a Gold Medal in the Mathematical Olympiad, and built a research project on Vietnamese medical AI in the gaps between these commitments.

I am learning French with seriousness and pleasure. The intellectual culture of Paris — the seminars, the debates, the refusal to treat any idea as beneath examination — is something I have long admired from a distance. I am eager to experience it firsthand, and to contribute to it in whatever way I am capable.

Je vous adresse mes respectueuses salutations,