Should I participate in the camp if I have no plans to do quantitative work beyond what’s required? Yes! The aim of the camp is to make all students feel comfortable approaching the statistics training in the first year of the program, which in turn, is a crucial foundation for the second year empirical paper and future work. Both of us are available over email over the summer and will be holding daily office hours during the camp itself, and we’re both happy to spend extra time working with anyone more nervous about the quantitative requirements in the program to make sure you feel comfortable about the pace of the camp and related assignments.
Should I participate in the camp if I am highly confident about everything math and programming-related? Yes! Quantitative training means different things at different places, and the department wants to make sure everyone is on the same page going into the statistics sequence so that time isn’t spent during the course reviewing foundational concepts. In addition, the camp will feature lunchtime workshops highlighting qualitative methodology in the department, which is a good chance to meet professors you may not know already and get a sense of the range of the department’s work.
How does this camp fit into the first-year statistics sequence? The purpose of the camp is so that you can hit the ground running in whatever statistics sequence you opt to take your first year– both in terms of foundational math concepts and computing in R.