What Factors Have Led You to Consider Macalester College? Wh

I was born in an ordinary family in Vietnam but I moved in Bulgaria to live with my father at the age of seven.

I would like to bring everything that I have learnt about the world to Macalester and to share it with Mac students on a daily basis.

Living with 200 students from over 80 countries has given me the opportunity to learn about different cultures around the world through interaction with people with a great variety of backgrounds and life experiences. I think I was able to understand the many aspects of both cultures well enough to be selected to represent Bulgaria in the United World Colleges despite being Vietnamese by passport. As the traditional way of thinking in Bulgaria and Vietnam are fundamentally different, living as a Vietnamese in Bulgaria gave me another angle on the society around me.

My experience as a UWC student has allowed me to see my own background in a new light and now I appreciate much more the unique opportunities that I have had in my life so far and I hope that by sharing my experiences with other students I will be able to contribute to the Macalester community. By allowing me to discuss international issues with people all over the world, the UWC life has remoulded my approach to diverse communities. C experience as a lifetime commitment, I believe that Macalester can provide me with the ideal environment to implement UWC ideals into the real world. I want to make Macalester students start asking questions they haven't thought about before, seeing from the opposite's perspective and challenging common stereotypes and misconceptions that our society makes about people and cultures. In conversation with Bulgarians I had the advantage of seeing things from Vietnamese point of view and vice versa.