After finishing the last exams and papers in June, I worked as an intern for three months for the biggest Italian banking group in Vienna, where I monitored credit risk portfolios of countries in the CEE region. Although this internship was not related to development at all, it provided me with valuable risk management experience, which was useful for becoming a trainee in the Risk Management Directorate of the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg. After the traineeship ended, I continued at the EIB as a Risk Management consultant and I am currently supporting the Global Emerging Markets Credit Risk Database. The database is a consortium project, which pools credit data from 11 multilateral development banks (EIB, IFC, EBRD, ADB, AfDB, IADB, IsDB, etc.) in order to calculate risk estimates for development projects in emerging markets. It is as far away from the field as possible and very abstract work, but for me it is fun and I learn a lot. My contract expires in October 2016. Quello che sarà, sarà!
MESCI was a great experience, because of the very heterogeneous group of students, who came from all over the world with very diverse cultural and academic backgrounds. I enjoyed discussing and working with all of them. The curriculum consisted of a mixture of very theoretical lectures in the first semester, followed by very practical ones in the second. If you have a background in economics, it should be fairly easy for you to follow. Start looking for internships very soon and apply for as many positions as possible. (The EIB provides a lot of traineeships, not only for EU-citizens, but also for people from neighboring regions as well.) Best of luck to all of you!