In the summer of 2018, I was lucky to have the opportunity to become a summer scholar in the University of Chicago. One month in Harris School of Public Policy expanded our vision and equipped us with professional knowledge and insights needed for our future studies and career development. Courses that I was especially interested in were quantitative analysis in public policy and introduction to programming in R. The former introduced us to the basic toolkit of policy analysis including sampling, hypothesis testing, regression and instrumental variables, and the latter taught us how to retrieve, clean, visualize, and analyze data. We also enjoyed extra-curricular activities outside campus. On Fridays, we were offered chances to visit American government to better understand working in the public realm, and we took advantage of the program to explore downtown Chicago. It was an unforgettable experience and further strengthened my determination to pursue advanced studies in public policy.
ZHANG Yanru
