"Without purchasing stocks or bonds, how would you turn a thousand kuai into ten thousand in a year? Of course, everyone desires short-term investments with high returns and low risks, but that is almost never possible. However, if you have enough time on your hands, I suggest making investments in education. From the perspective of growth and development, education is the blueprint for a hundred-year-plan. Investing in education will truly give you a very high return," says Huang Cheng, at her thesis defense for the 2013 Tsinghua University Scholarship for Top Students Award. 

Huang Cheng is currently a senior undergraduate student at Tsinghua School of Economics and Management. Throughout her defense speech, she replied to questions from the judge panel using professional economic language, while expressing her concern and enthusiasm for the subject of education. As an official acknowledgment to her outstanding academic performance and her rich experiences in extra-curriculum social work in the past three years, she was awarded the Tsinghua University Scholarship for Top Students in November 2013.

Upon entering Tsinghua University in 2010, Huang Cheng’s GPA has remained the highest among all students in the Department of Accounting for three consecutive years. She has also served as class president as well as the vice-chairperson of the Student Association of Science and Technology, and the deputy director of Tsinghua’s drama team. The basketball team she led won the championship of the 2011-2012 Ma Yuehan Cup Women’s Basketball Game. As a talented athlete in her own right, Huang Cheng was also the silver medalist in women’s high jump competition at the same event. Besides being a high achiever on campus, Huang Cheng has also participated in a number of entrepreneurial challenge competitions in Hong Kong, Japan and the United States. 

While all of the above achievements reflected on Huang Cheng’s dedication to learning, her eagerness and confidence expressed in participating both locally and globally, her main focus remains in the realm of education. 

Speaking of her childhood “obsession” of playing teacher, Huang Cheng laughed, “I really enjoyed the feeling of being a teacher. When I was little, I used to hang up a small blackboard at home, pretending to be lecturing in front of a group of students. I was interested in a career of teaching and education as a whole because working in education allows one to observe the growth of others. Education is in fact at the core of personal development for everyone.” 

With the money she earned from scholarships, Huang Cheng has been supporting a student in Jiangxi Province who was battling poverty for the past six years. They write letters to each other on a regular basis, encouraging each other along the way. When she learned that the student had been accepted by a university to study computer science, Huang Cheng bought him a laptop as a form of encouragement. 

Facing the immediate prospect of graduation, Huang Cheng had given up the opportunity to stay in Beijing and study for a M.A. in finance. Instead, she applied for a Tsinghua teachers program for graduate students, to teach in the west regions of China for a year. Although it is not clear what challenges will she face or whether she can make a real change by joining a program like this, Huang Cheng has decided to do something meaningful with her life, out of her passion for education, “the School of Economics and Management advocates for ‘governing the society by benefiting the people’. Since my interest is in education, I hope in the future I can realize my values by making contributions in that area.”