By Stefan Chavez-Norgaard MPP 2019
Each master’s program at Harvard Kennedy School has different application prerequisites, including the number of years of work experience required to apply. While applicants to the Master in Public Policy (MPP) Program are not required to have work experience, the most competitive MPP applicants have two to three years of professional work experience. Many graduates of the MPP Program will tell you that having work experience prior to enrolling enhanced their HKS experience.
Read below to hear from Stefan Chavez-Norgaard MPP 2019. Originally from Boulder, Colorado, Stefan spent around 10 years on the east coast of the United States before returning home. Now, he works as a teaching assistant professor of public policy at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, where he teaches courses in urban politics, ethics and public policy, public policy analysis, and more.
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What did you do after completing your undergraduate degree and before coming to HKS? How many years did you work?
After graduating from Stanford University in 2015 where I majored in urban studies and public policy, I worked for two years before coming to HKS. For both of those years, I lived and worked in New York City. During my first year, I worked as a research fellow at the Ford Foundation, focusing on equitable urban development. After a year, I switched jobs and worked in New York City government with the NYC Department of Transportation (NYCDOT).
Why did you apply to HKS after entering the workforce?
I very much enjoyed my experiences at the Ford Foundation and NYCDOT. However, it became clear to me that it would be difficult for me to advance within these, and other organizations, with only a bachelor’s degree. Moreover, while at both of these workplaces, I looked to mentors and supervisors that had pursued advanced degrees (in multiple cases at HKS!). Looking to these mentors that I respected helped me envision possible professional pathways that an HKS master’s degree could create. I also missed the intellectual vitality of the academic setting, and sought to gain new skills that only a classroom could provide. However, I learned an immense amount of knowledge while working during those two years, which I also attribute to my professional success. These skills included negotiation, public leadership, training in ethics, and more.
How valuable was it to gain work experience before graduate school?
I am forever grateful for my years of work experience pre-HKS. This time in the workforce gave me practical knowledge about how professional organizations function and also the politics and hierarchies inherent to the American workplace. It also helped me learn how much I still needed to learn: about negotiation, power, relational intelligence, and quantitative methods and data analysis. Perhaps most importantly, my work experiences gave me the clarity to know why I was enrolling in HKS, and the opportunity costs associated with a master’s degree instead of being in the workforce. Put simply, the time between undergraduate and graduate school was essential and gave me the insight needed to navigate HKS with more sophistication and purpose.
“Put simply, the time between undergraduate and graduate school was essential and gave me the insight needed to navigate HKS with more sophistication and purpose.”
How did HKS prepare you for the work you’re doing now?
HKS prepared me for my current work in numerous ways. I’m now teaching MPP students and so the HKS core curriculum remains a close and longstanding inspiration to me as I think about and design my courses, research projects, and institutional collaborations. HKS courses also gave me lessons in experiential learning and creative, inclusive pedagogy that has proven invaluable in my own teaching practice. Finally, I remain close friends and professional collaborators with numerous different HKS students, faculty, and affiliates.
What advice would you give to prospective students interested in applying to HKS?
I would encourage prospective students interested in applying to HKS to do so with measured considerations of the costs, benefits, and opportunities of coming to graduate school. If you have a specific sense of what skills you’d like to acquire and how you’d like to leverage HKS, it can be a tremendous way to ‘level up’ within your organization or sector, or to strategically ‘pivot’ to a new sector or professional space.
However, I might caution against attending HKS, or graduate school in general, if you’re simply seeking to escape your current professional status quo or if you aren’t sure of why you plan to attend. Graduate school is challenging, expensive, and fast-paced. There’s a saying at HKS that the school is a “candy shop,” with so many incredible curricular and professional-developmental offerings that it can be dizzying. It behooves you to know why you’re here, and what you hope to gain from the experience.
