The story of leaving Hungary for Scandinavia and how CBS changed my life.

My so-called CBS journey began long before the start of my first semester. It was already during my senior year of upper secondary school that I decided I wanted to experience the Scandinavian atmosphere and began to research more about the universities in Copenhagen and Stockholm. So why Denmark? And why choose to go to CBS? This is my CBS story in a nutshell.

My name is Mate, and I am from Hungary. The question of “Why Scandinavia?” and “Don’t you like the sunshine?” come up more frequently that you can imagine. However, the answers are always the same. In spite of the sometimes rainy weather and moody summers, Copenhagen and CBS have so much to offer that they can easily outweigh the cons. I promptly fell in love with the Nordic atmosphere while travelling in Scandinavia during my professional gymnast career. After that, I decided that I must experience living in this culture, so I jumped on to my computer and literally typed the following into the search field:

“Best business schools in Scandinavia”

The results were rock solid. Copenhagen Business School is clearly an outstanding place in the Nordics, and so my destination was decided. Just eight short months later, I found myself in the middle of Copenhagen Central Station.

The beginning of my CBS journey was characterised by assimilating into the Danish culture (mainly at Nexus) and exploring the vast amount of opportunities and student societies that CBS offers. You can imagine that coming from an upper secondary school of 700 pupils to a 20.000+ institution was a shock for me but this quickly turned into amazement and enthusiasm.

Studying at CBS connects me with many like-minded and highly driven people. Besides the curriculum, the amount of motivation that hits me is truly a core component of the “CBS-culture”. As a result of this, I have become a “yes-man” in the sense of taking all the opportunities that this new environment provides me with. I applied for countless student societies and quickly started to engage with other extracurricular activities as well. The biggest impact on me was clearly made by CBS Talks. CBS Talks is one of the biggest organisations at CBS and specialises in arranging educational and inspirational events for the students by inviting CEOs and famous entrepreneurs to share their journey, knowledge and experience.

After spending a year with CBS Talks and arranging the events, I developed a close connection with the organisation and its members. I wanted more. I wanted to engage even more in the development of the organisation. I expressed my feelings to the management of CBS Talks, and they made a surprising offer. I was nominated to be the next president of the organisation, which I have since proudly accepted. After taking on this new role, I have been committed to work unstoppably on maintaining and developing the added value of CBS Talks to the academic lifestyle at CBS.

So what does it all have to do with my CBS journey? At the beginning, CBS was “just” the place I attended classes or studied, but ever since I have actively engaged myself in the student life, CBS became the place for everything; entertainment, education, social get-togethers; a kind of second home.

CBS has granted me a new way of thinking and has opened a world of opportunities and people that I did not even know existed. As a result, I have secured an amazing job at one of the most prestigious Danish firms, Maersk, as a student assistant which has enabled me to expand my professional network significantly and make many new valuable friendships. In addition, I have taken the first step into my future business life and laid the very basic foundation of my career.

In short, I have come a long way from standing at Copenhagen Central Station that day. I moved away from my comfort zone in Hungary to Copenhagen, a place I had never visited before and where I knew nobody. However, after two unimaginably, exciting and eventful years, the picture of my potential future has become more colourful than ever.

As a last note: CBS only provides you the resources and a necessary incubator for your development, the other half of the story depends on you. Make experiences outside the classrooms and ensure that by the end of your education or semester, you will also have a CBS Story to tell.