Mariana Osorio’s video soundtrack, an original song about how she travelled from one of Mexico’s most dangerous and impoverished states to study art and music in New York, clinched the win for InternationalStudent.com’s Travel Video Contest.

“I challenged myself to create something different with the hopes of continuing my dreams of studying in the United States”

In the video, ‘This Magic World’ Osorio sings about how she learned the violin “’cause I knew that it would take me to places I’d never seen”.

Her efforts paid off, she sings, as her musical skills allowed her to pass an audition to the City College of New York.

Osorio took home $4,000 as the top prize in the competition.

“I challenged myself to create something different with the hopes of continuing my dreams of studying in the United States, and using the prize to pay for some of my tuition,” said Osorio.

She will also become a regular blogger on the InternationalStudent.com’s Study in the USA blog.

The $500 second prize went to Siti Fatimah from Indonesia, who grew up in an orphanage and was determined to study overseas in order to become an obstetrician.

After several attempts to study abroad failed, Fatimah became a midwife, but is now pursuing a new path, having moved to Sweden to work as an au pair. “This is going to be my stepping stone towards studying abroad,” she said in the video.

“I was pretty stubborn to study abroad to achieve my dream,” she related. “I always believe that my dream of studying abroad to become an obstetrician will come true.”

An architecture student from South Africa, Michael de Beer, took home the third prize for his video that explained how his study of urbanism made him want to travel and see to see what urban environments mean for people in different cultures.

See all the winning entries from the 2016 InternationalStudent.com Travel Video Contest here and the finalists here.