Hello, everyone!

I am Stamen – a Bulgarian student in the MSc Business Informatics program. As this is my first post, I think it is quite reasonable to share why I chose this type of program, this university, what my expectations were upon my arrival in Utrecht and were my expectations adequate.

First, I want to address my choice of program. I have a quite technical background – double major in Computer Science and Information Systems. In my senior bachelor year I just realized that I don’t feel like programming 40-50 hours per week J Instead, I wanted to broaden my education on the management part of the IT. That is why I was looking for a program which combines Business Administration and Computer Science. The Business Informatics program turned out to be the perfect match – good academic program in a really good university.

The second thing I want to share is the pattern the classes impose. All my classes combine theoretical, practical and research part in a balanced way. I find this really nice, because I have the opportunity to use my theoretical knowledge and apply it in the practical assignments and still to do some research, addressing not so well known topics. For example, a course I really enjoyed was the Software Product Management, where we had to build a consultancy report for a company. The process was really demanding, but it was great pleasure when the product manager, from the company we build the report, contacted us to tell us that it is a really great report and some of the recommendations will be immediately applied.

There is one really basic thing, considering the educational system itself, which I really want to address as well. The academic year is divided to quarters, each of which consists of ten weeks. Each quarter, students have a list of several courses, from which they should choose two (actually, students might choose three or more, but two is the advised load). In this manner students can be focused on only two subjects. My non-Dutch colleagues and I find this a really good improvement of the academic calendar.