Katarzyna

I am Katarzyna and I come from Poland. I am the Head of Evaluation and Monitoring at The Brussels Binder. Prior to that, I was a Senior Programme Advisor at the European Innovation Council Task Force for the European Commission. Currently, I am pursuing a Mid Career Leadership Masters in Public Administration as a Mason Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Governance.

The past few years of my life have been spent working primarily as a lobbyist at various think tanks in Europe. During the course of my work, I wanted to study the American method of dealing with public policy problems. At the same time, I was looking for a means of using my expertise in IT in business. The ideas of what I wanted to do seemed to be very incongruous with each other. However, after a very long discussion with Dr. Hubert Silly of the MBA Center, I decided to apply for a joint program between Harvard and MIT where I would spend the first year at Harvard doing the MPA and then the second year at MIT to complete my MBA. I got accepted to the program and currently, I am undergoing my first year of classes at Harvard.

Finding a program that would fit my ideas for my studies was perhaps one of the toughest parts of my application process. Originally I planned to do an MBA from INSEAD, believing that an MBA was the only choice forward. But the conversation with Dr. Hubert Silly opened my eyes to the various choices that I still had in front of me. As such, I decided to investigate more. Finding the MPA program, I faced my second problem which was financing. Two years in the US is an expensive affair. However, thanks to the quality of the application that I managed to present with the help of Dr. Hubert Silly, I got a full scholarship at Harvard.

As a liberal arts major, I also had a tough time during my GMAT where I had to deal with a lot of mathematics and logic. Fortunately, MBA Center helped me out with the preparations for the test and I managed to get 690, a pretty decent score for me, if I may say so.

arrived at Harvard on July 19 and am in the first few months of my stay at the Harvard Kennedy School of Governance. So far it has been an enriching experience with a lot of activities and exchanges with students with diverse backgrounds from across the globe. The campus is steeped in history and it is one of the most prestigious colleges in the world. The classes are intense and there is a lot of exchange of ideas and thoughts. It is one of the most inspiring places to be taking classes in.

When students begin to look for programs for studies, they are inundated with a lot of advertisements and rankings for numerous programs. The MBA world, especially, is a very market-driven world. As a prospective student, you will need to take a step back to truly understand what you need and want and not what is imposed on you. As someone who had decided to apply to INSEAD for an MBA, it took me a long conversation with Dr. Hubert Silly to realize that perhaps that was not a good choice for me. It is important to talk to knowledgeable people like him before deciding on your course of action to ensure that you get the right program for you. Another advice I would like to give is to start your preparations long in advance. I found the MBA Center in 2017. However, I firmly believe that had I been more organized and found them before I would have started my classes a year ago