DGSer Lê Duy An (K1) has just completed five weeks at the Summer Science Program (SSP) - one of the oldest residential STEM education programs in the United States, with an admission rate of only around 10% from thousands of applicants worldwide. SSP offers high school juniors hands-on, rigorous, and collaborative experimental research opportunities in cutting-edge fields such as in Astrophysics, Biochemistry, Bacterial Genomics, Cell Biology, and Synthetic Chemistry.

“What drew me to SSP is its long-standing tradition of giving students the chance to do real research.” Choosing Astrophysics - a field closely tied to his passion and dreams, An directly collected and analyzed astronomical data, wrote code to process results, and submitted reports to the Minor Planet Center (MPC), contributing to the global body of scientific knowledge.

For An, SSP was not just a summer camp. It was five weeks of living and learning alongside 36 talented peers from around the world, where members would readily pause their own work to help debug a friend’s code, clarify a complex concept, or simply listen when someone felt overwhelmed. He vividly recalls the awe of watching fellow students confidently win a debate against an MIT professor - something that happened more often than he could have imagined. “SSP showed me what an ideal scientific community looks like: where talent goes hand in hand with kindness,” An shared.

Walking alongside An on this journey was the encouragement and support from his DGS teachers - Ms. Claudia, Mr. Chris, Mr. Mark, Ms. Phương, and Mr. Ping. Their mentorship, guidance, and simple words of trust gave An the strength to go further. “Thanks to the wholehearted support from my teachers at DGS, I pushed myself harder during the application process,” he said.

Coming back from SSP, An brings home not only new knowledge and experiences but also a profound lesson: “In science, collaboration is the key to success, no matter how talented you are.” For An, SSP can be summed up in three words: Challenge - Collaboration - Discovery.

And this is also the very spirit that DGS strives to nurture and walk alongside each student with, so that every learner has the chance to reach for their own stars.