Lelo Nxumalo

March 13 2012 will go down as the best day of my life for it is on that day that I received news of my acceptance into the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The subject line of the acceptance email read "Good news from MPA/ID Admissions". In the body of the email were the words: My colleagues and I very much hope you’ll join an exceptional group of people by answering the echo of President John F. Kennedy’s call to “ask what you can do.” One congratulatory note read: Regardless of where you choose to go to grad school, you now know what the rest of us have known all along. You most certainly have what it takes to be an Ivy leaguer. Congratulations again. Harvard certainly is the best of the best, and you deserve it! I look forward to meeting my peers in the fall, and I feel more enabled to answer the call, and pledge to do what I can to affect positive change not just in my native Zimbabwe, but where ever life will take me. Thank you to all those who believ...

I applied to 12 Economics programs, 8 PhDs, 2 MAs and Harvard's Master in International Development program. I have heard from 6 schools. I will be posting the outcome after all the decisions have come in. However as decisions have been coming in I have also been thinking about what I would really like to do. 5 or just 2 more years of schooling? Needless to say forfeiting paid work to get an education is a bold but commendable thing to do. If I were to matriculate into a PhD program it would have to be one that enables me to merge my interests in finance and economics - much like the financial economics program at Booth or International Economics and Finance at the International Business School at Brandeis. Those who know me well know that I spent my final year at Hampshire college researching financial deepening in Africa. My stint at the IMF has also piqued my interest in macro-financial linkages especially in the aftermath of the Great Recession. There exists so much informat...