BusinessBecause visited Sweden’s prestigious Stockholm School of Economics in January on a day Handelshögskolan (its name in Swedish) was covered by a heavy snowfall.

Speaking to us before a packed undergraduate classroom, former Harvard psychology student Rocky Vega revealed why an Ivy League grad willingly headed to Northern Europe for a Masters in Science.

Besides mastering Swedish, Vega would also like to “speak more intelligently” and “make confident and intellectual sounds” about the financial and economical field.

Vega also writes for The Daily Reckoning, an online publication offering a “literary economic perspective, global market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas” to its subscribers. 

Students at the Stockholm School of Economics can benefit from the school’s “strong academic foundation”, and learn “how to integrate these principles in special projects”, according to Vega.

For example, on the day when Swedish healthcare giant Apoteket was re-regulated, the firm’s deputy CEO came to Vega’s class for strategy and consultancy inputs.

That’s how students learn to join the academic pieces to real life situations, says Vega.

Writing a book about his ideas is on Vega’s to-do-list in ten years’ time, and no doubt his “accomplished, brilliant and humble” classmates at Sweden will garner a mention.