In 2002, Brânză won the gold medal at the Junior World Championships in Antalya after prevailing over China's Tan Li. She was praised for “a remarkable tactical mastery for a seventeen and a half year old girl”. The same year she took part in her first senior major competitions. At the European Championships in Moscow she reached the quarter-finals before being eliminated 9–15 by Lyubov Shutova. At the World Championships in Lisbon she made it to the semi-finals, where she was defeated 6–15 by Germany's Imke Duplitzer and came away with a bronze medal. She would later call it her fondest victory, because she was very young at the time and was there without her coach, with only her sabre colleagues as companions.