Welcome to the MFin Class of 2018/2019 student blog! My name is Andrei Cretu and I will be one of the students who will share his experiences over the 18 months I will be attending the MFin Program at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
A couple of months ago, as I was preparing my application for the MFin Program, I was an avid reader of the MFin Student Blogs. To be honest, I still am as I have subscribed to the other classes' blogs. I found the blog to be a valuable source of information as the posts were very interesting and the writers made me feel like I was already in Cambridge, experiencing their lives as graduate students at MIT Sloan. Now things have changed. I have the opportunity to write from my own perspective and I truly hope that I will make other readers empathize with my view and feel the same way as I did.
I will go very briefly about myself. I was born and raised in Bucharest, Romania, which is also known as "The Little Paris" – you can guess why from the picture attached below that I took a couple of nights ago. I graduated with a BSc in finance and I have been working for more than 2 years now (including the internship period) in management consulting at the Bucharest office of McKinsey & Company. I am a finance enthusiast, sports aficionado, movie buff, photography lover (I cannot wait to take pictures of The Great Dome, Charles river, Boston boulevards etc.), traveler and a Latin dance devotee.
This is my first post on this blog. Actually, this is the first time I am writing on a blog, so please bear with me as I most probably don't have the gift of a novelist or a journalist. But I can promise I will do my best. It took me a while to think about what should I write in my first post. Then I decided – I have to write about people, the people that I started to know after I was admitted to the MFin Program, who will become my classmates in approximately 3 weeks.
You could probably wonder why am I writing about my colleagues since I did not even meet them in person. Even if we did not meet yet, we got introduced with the help of social media. One of our future colleagues, Léana Traing, had the great idea of setting up a Facebook group for the MFin Class of 2018/2019. Many members joined the group in just a few days, so I decided it would be a good idea if we would have a WhatsApp group where we could be more informal and share everything we wanted to without spamming too much (okay, we did spam too much, but only occasionally).
OK, but why the title "Engaged community, collaborative spirit and future friendships"? The first two, engaged community and collaborative spirit are two of the great features that MIT Sloan offers to its students. Through getting acquainted with my future colleagues with the help of the aforementioned groups, I got to experience these two features even before starting the program. Since March, I have been getting in touch with people from all over the world, exchanging thousands of messages – I can remember that I was waking up and I had +200 unread messages on the WhatsApp group – planning different activities after we arrive in Cambridge (e.g., go to see the Boston Celtics playing in the NBA, attending a tennis game at the US Open – there are a lot of Federer fans here – organize a trip to NYC or, an idea that was brought up today in the discussion, to San Diego, doing a cooking night etc.), asking questions about the visa process, housing (there are some funny stories on this topic), tuition, classes, paperwork and so on and so forth. I got to admit that most of the times we kept the group informal (we even created some funny images using our profile pictures – the credit goes to Alexandre Harry and Fabian Medina, haha), but whenever somebody asked a serious question, someone would jump in immediately to help with answers. Thanks to another future colleague, Alexander Einarsson, we will organize a meeting together at the end of June, when everybody will be in Cambridge – I am very much looking forward to it as it will be a great networking event for us.
In just a couple of months I have virtually met people with whom I share the same passions, same ideals, same beliefs, my future roommate during the summer (thank you again, Hassaan, for finding that room for me when I needed it most), people that will become my classmates and most importantly, my friends. I mentioned just a few names so far, but I can assure you that all the colleagues I got in touch with so far are great and each one of them has something unique. Last, but definitely not least, since this is a post about people, I cannot forget to mention and give sincere thanks to all of the MIT Sloan staff that answered my questions, understood me when I had a difficult situation, helped me with my e-mail, MIT account, setting up this profile to be a contributor to the MFin Student Blog and in many others occasions.
This could turn into an endless post, so I will try to conclude now. I am so grateful that I was given the chance to attend the MFin Program not only because I will get unparalleled education at the best school of finance, but also because I will be part of an engaged community with a collaborative spirit, where I will make long lasting friendships. That is why I am so eager to start the program and meet my colleagues in person as soon as possible.
I hope to keep you updated with valuable insights as frequently as possible.
Welcome to MIT Sloan, a really special place. I hope it becomes your second home, as it was mine, and you have a wonderful, worthwhile experience as an MFin.
Thank you very much for your nice words, Harriet! Looking forward to welcoming MIT Sloan as my 2nd home.
Thanks for starting to share your experience through this blog. As an aspiring student, I would love to know the current life of the master students.
Hi Andrei! I loved reading your first post and I am excited to read more as you embark upon your experience here at MIT. I look forward to officially welcoming you to MIT Sloan in just a few short weeks.
Many thanks for your interesting post. Have a good time at MIT.