Nicola Cofelice ’14
Macroeconomic Policy and Financial Markets
Research Assistant, CaixaBank (Barcelona)
Nicola gave the following remarks to the new students in the Barcelona GSE Class of 2015 earlier this fall at a welcome reception in Bellaterra.
Before I begin, let me join the faculty and the School staff and congratulate all of you for having been accepted to the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics; I have to admit that it’s a pleasure to give you the welcome speech as Alumni speaker from the previous year.
I remember sitting where you are now exactly 1 year ago: I had no idea what lay ahead of me, what challenges I was going to face and the new friends I was going to make. Like all of you, I was at the beginning of a new path: in my case, I had been working as an engineer for 5 years when I decided to join the master in Macro. But still, I had plenty of questions in my mind: am I going to be up to the level of the School? What am I going to learn? Will I have time to go back home from time to time or is the rhythm of the Master going to destroy me J?
Now, after 1 year, I have been asked to share with you my experience at Barcelona GSE, and I will do my best to give you a few pieces of advice that may help you during this year:
First: Be open to sharing your knowledge and experience!
One of the main assets of the Master is not only what you can learn from the professors, but also what you can learn from your classmates, and what your classmates can learn from you. Some of you may already have working experience, some of you may come from a different background (political science, mathematics, physics, engineering, etc.) and you must take advantage of this cultural mix. The faculty will encourage you to study and carry out the assignments in small groups and after studying Game Theory, I understood that cooperating and helping each other is better than competing against each other (well, at least not during an exam, where you are not allowed to do that J). So my advice is to be open-minded and share your knowledge with others.
Second: Don’t be scared to work with data analysis software!
The Barcelona GSE is well known not only for the rigorous mathematical and statistical approach but also for the computational skills that you are going to acquire. You will have the possibility to work with different software (i.e. Matlab, Gretl, Stata, to mention only a few) and the knowledge of this software may help you find a job afterwards: companies and universities are strongly interested in candidates who are able to perform data analysis and work with numbers. If you work in a company, your future manager may ask you to help him or her in taking the right decision under uncertainty; and you will need to be able to process the information that you have available, both quantitative and qualitative. If you opt for a career at the University, you may develop a model to better understand the phenomena that you are investigating; in both cases you will need the programming skills that you can learn and develop this year. So, again, my advice is: don’t be afraid to get your hands “dirty” with data analysis software.
Third: Get involved!
This is once in a life opportunity, and you must take fully advantage of it! You have the unique chance to share this experience with people from all around the world, with different cultures, ages and backgrounds. This is something I found fascinating and my advice is to enjoy this opportunity. Although the Master is demanding, having a day off in a city like Barcelona will help you to recover your energy, and I am sure you will spend some unforgettable evenings and nights with your classmates.
All right, that’s all from my side. Once again, congratulations to everyone and good luck.