I was born and raised in Warsaw, Poland in a working class family typical of a soviet bloc society.

I was always one of the best pupils in my class. My scholastic talents, amiability and inclination toward social service were appreciated by my peers, who on several occasions granted me their mandate in student government elections. High grades allowed me to get admitted to one of the best high schools in the capital. That fact played a key role in my personal development by giving me an opportunity to make friends with people who later became part of the intellectual elite of the country.

My early high school years fell on an extremely remarkable time in Poland's post-war history - the "16 months of freedom" brought about by the "Solidarity" social movement. People across the land had begun to reclaim their right to shape the various forms of community life. I and my fellow members of student government took upon ourselves to codify a set of rules that would defend students' individuality against the arbitrary decisions of teachers who often abused their power to force their personal preferences on vulnerable youth. During one conversation on the subject, my physics professor (who later went on to become a minister of education in one of  the democratically elected governments) summed up our efforts as an attempt to transform the learning environment of a typical high school into one that resembled a school of adult education. His point was not lost - few years later I switched to an evening school for working adults and obtained my high school diploma there. Once again in the history of mankind it turned out to be far easier for Muhammad to go to the mountain than make the mountain come to him.

I was well aware at the time of my graduation that the authoritarian regime borne by the nation had nearly all intellectual jobs in a tight grip to enforce complacency within the social system they headed. Being granted a position in state-financed academia and media was conditional upon displaying a satisfactory degree of obedience toward the ruling class. Despite my desire to pursue a university education, I decided to learn a trade that would both insure my ability to sustain myself financially and reduce my vulnerability to repression by illegitimate authorities. I enrolled in a vocational school to receive training in home appliance repair. At that time in Poland earnings for craftsmen, particularly ones who owned their shops, were much better than those of college graduates.

Following trade school, I decided to pursue my interest in business management. I was accepted into the Department of  Organization and Management at Warsaw University, the oldest academic institution in the former soviet bloc to grant degrees comparable to an MBA. It was a highly competitive admission process, with about 5 candidates per available "seat," based on entrance exams. My score placed me in the top tier of prospective students. In the Polish tradition—and to the great joy of my mother—this achievement was personally recognized by the Dean of the Department on the first day of the academic school year.

Actual classes were a big disappointment. It seemed like students were drowned in a deluge of words that did not necessarily contribute to making them more capable enterprise managers. I was not motivated to partake in such process, so I soon dropped out. I nonetheless still attended with great pleasure the lectures of  Krzysztof A. Lis, who, as a man both informed and passionate about the theory of business management, painted for me a palpable picture of the discipline. After the return of democracy to Poland, Dr. Lis became a member of the first government, where he was placed in charge of the creation of the Ministry for Privatization.

 Around 1987 the regime found it advantageous to vent out dissent among young people by letting them emigrate. Being just a foot soldier of the withering civic underground, unable to estimate the expiration date of  the soviet bloc; threatened by the compulsory draft to the armed services of a political system I detested and eager to see and experience the outside world, I decided to leave Poland. I went to Spain, where I asked for temporary refuge with the final goal of seeking asylum in the US.

I spent about a year in Spain waiting for admission to the US. During that period, my relatively good command of English enabled me to work in the office of one of the refugee agencies - the International Rescue Committee - as an interpreter/assistant caseworker.

One of the rules instilled upon me by my American friends at IRC was that newcomers should not become a burden to American society. If one felt like she could successfully complete college education, it was possible to do it while holding employment, and that's the way many Americans do it. My first priority after arrival was therefore getting a job that would earn me a living. Up till now, that's as far as things went.

There are various reasons why I hesitated with embarking on a course towards a college degree.  First of all, at that time I hadn't yet made up my mind as to my life's calling. College education is a serious investment which should not be misallocated. It should be made when the maximum of conditions upon which its success depends are in place, chief among them the resolve of the candidate. I had a passion for instrumental dance music (a.k.a. techno) and  wanted to give myself some time to see if I had enough talent to make some worthy pieces. I needed time, money and energy to do it, and the lifestyle of a fully employed person, with its leisure part of a day and a week, as well as disposable income, seemed to be more conducive to my creative goals than that of a student and part time worker. Aside from the music dream, I was convinced that opportunities existed for acquiring valuable professional skills in ways other than through college education. A career path of a network administrator or programmer could be entered via relevant certification. One could learn these narrow fields by reading books or taking advantage of interactive tools. Meanwhile my current professional advancement was taking steps from demolition man through copier operator to computer technician in the offset printing industry, bringing my income into the range of median American family, which, coupled with a low rent, allowed me to "have some life".

I'm quite proud of my professional development, whose current stage can be described as "digital prepress technician." It has been achieved almost entirely through my own unassisted learning effort and reached a level which I estimate to exceed that of fresh graduates of associate programs in the field. Year after year I was moving to positions of ever growing responsibility in ever bigger companies. Nonetheless I never considered being a prepress systems operator or even a manager a final stop of my professional career track. It was always something I did for living. It's just that I've never set a deadline for the next step. Well, there are clear indications that the time is now. The job pool in my professional area of specialty, its high-tech character notwithstanding, is shrinking. Factors involved are: declining demand and corresponding printing industry consolidation (at least 4 large firms that I used to work for have ceased to exist), price competition from other regions of the country and the world, Internet media and alternative printing technologies. Few job openings that still occur call for operators with 3-5 years of experience, and that apparently means 10 years of experience and top skills amount to "too much. " Employers don't want to pay premium for more than than they can get away with. A younger person or a fresher immigrant to whom a mid-scale position represents the upper limit of his currently attainable job market options will stay at a business longer than someone who not only has been further upscale already but also looks like he is intellectually capable of  moving to bigger and better than prepress things altogether. Such individual, if his abilities, interests and opinions diverge from those predominant among his work mates, can be a source of discomfort rather than best fit in a social group that is a commercial company. I have nevertheless decided to use the adversity described above to my advantage and let it be the final straw which breaks the tie with provisional arrangements that lasted too long and sets me on the course towards achievement of my life's major goals.

I believe it is commendable to make living by delivering a product that serves the customers well. I see big need for good policy development and implementation on behalf of this nation and many others. Humanity is in quite a bad shape. The problem is too many people don't have enough money to live a decent life. At the same time quite a few amass fortunes whose magnitude is hard to comprehend by the rest of society. Coming from a nation who yearned for capitalism to return and govern the economic domain of our lives, for a long time I tended to yield to the argument that high financial inequality is the result of adherence to the principle of economic liberty and naturally occurring diversity within human population. Yet recently I have arrived to a point where I am ready to be a guided by the assumption that this state of affairs does lend itself to a moral judgment and the verdict is: wrong. One of the beliefs most widely shared among the people in United States is that the opportunity for a well-to-do life is available to anyone here. The more accurate description would be that opportunity is not officially denied here to any group, yet it still needs to be brought within the reach of everybody. Since most of people rely on wages for their income, ways should be found to direct the evolution of the economy towards smaller profits and larger salaries. We have to bring about a situation where employers are forced to pay higher wages. Wages are prices paid for work and as such determined by balance between supply and demand. In order to increase them the demand should be increased and supply reduced. Demand would grow if the number of enterprises were higher. A number of enterprises would go up if more people had access to all resources required to create and run a successful business. Those resources are: entrepreneurial abilities, information necessary to perform a business plan calculation, and capital. It's been a while since one of the components of entrepreneurial abilities - education - was considered something that should be made available to anyone who has the capacity and willingness to acquire it, and corresponding, though probably not adequate, government programs have been established. I propose that similar action by the state be undertaken for the remaining conditions of enterprise creation. As far as information is concerned, the data necessary for coming up with a reliable business plan should be made available by a legal requirement to make all accounting records available for read-only access by the public. the transparency ideal should apply not only to the state and non-profit, but to the private sector as well.  Finally, new paths to financing should be opened up with eligibility criteria focused on likeliness of success, not presence of collateral. Funding would come from taxation focused on the highest income bracket. Doing so would bring great benefits to many at the small cost to a few. Justification for such action can be found in two out of six purposes of the US Constitution declared in its preamble -  "promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty." One might say that while all Americans live in liberty, too few partake of its "blessings."  Access to all factors of enterprise start-up will move opportunity from the domain of mass myth to a realistic option available to all people who can make a use of it.

In order to determine the feasibility and possibly devise the methods of implementation for the conceptions outlined above, I want to study economics. It seems that the venue appropriate for this pursuit would be an institution of higher learning whose focus is set on pushing forward the boundaries of mankind's knowledge and supporting people who want to wholeheartedly apply themselves to finding the best possible answers to fundamental questions occupying their minds. Such establishment's faculty are confident enough in their excellence to draw stimulation and delight from interacting with skeptical, inquisitive students and even give some recognition to those students' pre-existing views. My contact so far with the people at the School of General Studies confirms the reputation-based opinion that your college is the kind of gateway to the treasury of human knowledge I'm looking to take. When I decided to take an active interest in the possibility of studying at Columbia, all I was hoping for was that I would be treated on par with younger students. Existence of a division specifically dedicated to accommodating the needs of adult students like me exceeds my expectations and lets me believe that the fit between the requirements of a demanding degree program and my personal capabilities and circumstances will be assured in a effective and sympathetic manner. An important factor which has stirred up a great deal of my excitement about the idea of studying at Columbia was the perspective of finding myself in a learning environment illuminated by some of the most influential practitioners of the field of economics in the late XXth century - Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs. I hope it is not impudent of me to claim common ground with such accomplished men, but I do feel that I share a moral foundation with professor Stiglitz when he criticizes the social outcomes of the current reign of rampant global capitalism. I would be thrilled to hear how professor Sachs, with sensibilities such as those revealed in his "End of Poverty" book, sees the results of the recasting of Eastern European economies, given the remarkable role his counsel played in that historic process.

If I don't live up to my high expectations of making a large scale positive impact, a major in economics provides a good starting point to a few alternative career paths, such as that of an expert working for trade unions, government, investment industry or other parts of private sector.

For these reasons I am asking for admission to the School of General Studies for the undergraduate program in economics.