Princess Elisabeth of Belgium Is Going to Grad School at Harvard

Starting this summer, Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth will join the long list of royals who have decamped to the United States. But unlike Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the future queen’s stay will likely be temporary. On Tuesday, the Belgian Monarchy announced that Elisabeth is planning to enroll at Harvard Kennedy School of Government to get a master’s degree.

“She recently passed the entrance tests for the Master in Public Policy,” read a statement on the monarchy’s website. “This two-year master’s degree will complement her university education after her bachelor's degree in history and politics at the University of Oxford (Lincoln College). The Princess was also selected for an Honorary Award from the Fulbright Program, the US State Department’s international educational exchange program.”

The 22-year-old princess is first in Belgium’s line of succession, as the oldest of four children born to King Phillippe and Queen Mathilde. Before beginning her studies at Oxford, Elisabeth attended UWC Atlantic, a boarding school in Wales sometimes referred to as “Hippie Hogwarts” and spent a year training at the country’s Royal Military Academy. Though she left the academy after a year, she continued to return for summer training camps and was sworn in as an officer last September.

According to the Fulbright commission for Belgium and Luxembourg, 25 students are given grants for graduate study in the United States annually. The program, which began funding students from Belgium in 1948, aims to foster cooperation and academic exchange.

The tests Elisabeth passed likely included either the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), along with an exam proving her proficiency in English. In addition to those qualifications, the Harvard MPP program also asks applicants to provide “evidence of quantitative proficiency” in the form of success in undergraduate level mathematics, economics, and statistics courses.

The princess is not the first member of the Belgian royal family to attend graduate school in the US. In 1985, her father received a master’s degree in political science from Stanford University, following two years as a student in Palo Alto.