What can I do with a QSS degree?

QSS is an interdisciplinary program that provides its students with both technical skills, concentrated in statistics and computing, and a grounding in a social science.  Alumni who have studied in QSS, which prior to 2015 was named the Program in Mathematical Social Sciences, have built on their Dartmouth careers with activities that cover the map, ranging from university teaching to research, law, business, medicine, public service, and a variety of individualized careers.

Below you will find narratives from program alumni, describing their post-Dartmouth activities. The variety of these undertakings illustrates the breadth of the QSS curriculum and the creativity of the Dartmouth students who have studied in the program.

CLARA WANG '17 - QSS MINOR

Data Scientist

I'm currently a Data Scientist at Apple on the Cloud Infrastructure Business Organization team, where I help analyze compute and storage infrastructure. I regularly use R and apply the skills from my QSS data visualization class to present data in a beautiful, digestible format. Prior to my current role, I worked as the Lead Data Scientist/Researcher at a media start-up called Protocol, where I helped write data journalism pieces and conducted analyses of China's technology industry. I also worked on the Biden 2020 presidential campaign as a data scientist and was previously a Senior Applied Data Scientist at Civis Analytics on the political and healthcare teams. Across all of these roles, ranging across different industries and domains, I've been able to leverage skills I learned from my QSS classes. I am immensely grateful to my professors at Dartmouth for passing on their valuable knowledge.
(3/20/24)

Nick Angeramo '23 - QSS Major

Director of Process Improvement & Sustainable Energy Initiatives

After graduating, I began working as the Director of Process Improvement & Sustainable Energy Initiatives at Lane Valente Industries. My role consists of helping the company grow both internally and externally as we help companies nationwide develop electric vehicle charging infrastructure for their customers and vehicle fleets. Currently, I am focusing on standardizing our workflow at a national level, modeling our potential for future growth, as well as exploring new business opportunities in the sustainable energy space. The QSS major allowed me to explore my passion for clean energy while gaining the skills necessary to help the company integrate more quantitative analysis into their everyday operations.

LANDON ARMSTRONG '23 - QSS AND STUDIO ART DOUBLE MAJOR

founding engineer

I recently joined the predictive analytics startup DashlyHR as a founding engineer. We are currently part of the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator in NYC, developing our platform focusing on predictive analytics for construction workforce data to minimize risk and regrettable turnover within the industry. The quantitative skills I developed as a QSS major have been crucial to the work I'm doing now, which incorporates a blend of Python, R, and SQL. Right now, I'm building out the machine learning models that are at the heart of our predictive analytics. It's exciting to apply the data analysis and visualization skills I learned in my QSS courses, especially in the collaborative environment of an early-stage startup.

Zach Schnell '18 - QSS Major

Engineering Lead

Zach is an Engineering Lead at AngelList, which helps startups raise money and makes it easy to invest in private markets. He lives in DC with his wife Jessie Anderson '18.

Eli Pattison '22 - QSS MAJOR

Data Analyst

I now work as a Data Analyst for DraftKings in Boston. My day to day role requires drawing insights from large amounts of data, a skill that I developed through my QSS major at Dartmouth. Particularly, the technical skills that I learned in  Data Visualization (QSS 17) have proven incredibly useful. Much of my current role requires creating views and dashboards that present business data to key stakeholders within the company, and the coursework in QSS 17 helped prepare me for visualizing data in an accurate, easily interpretable, and visually pleasing manner. My role has also included a number of long-term, open-ended projects where I've investigated potential hypotheses to various business problems. The numerous data-driven projects that I completed in QSS classes at Dartmouth prepared me well for this aspect of the job, both in terms of the analytical problem solving skills needed to approach the problem and the technical skills needed to work with the data.

Jessica Wang '23 - QSS Major and Global Health Minor

Patient Experience Associate

Since graduating, I started work at Oak Street Health, a Chicago-based primary care company for older adults on Medicare. I'm part of the analytics and insights team within the patient experience arm of the business. In my role, I conduct analyses on experiential data and synthesize those results for business leaders as they steer Oak Street Health towards becoming a leader in value-based healthcare. My coursework as part of the QSS major has definitely prepared me to hit the ground running with an analytical thinking process and statistical gaze. The flexibility of the QSS major allowed me to focus on a combination of social science courses surrounding the healthcare system, and it has made me very comfortable with working at the crossroads of analytics and patient experience.

ANNIE MA '17 - QSS MINOR

Educational Journalist for Associated Press

I'm a journalist covering education for the Associated Press. I rely on the quantitative data skills I learned in QSS to understand and write about the policy choices schools make and their impact on kids. Being able to understand the data that educators are relying on helps me write more clearly and authoritatively for a global audience. Because of the AP's wide reach in elections and polling, I have also been able to use my statistics and analysis skills in stories about public opinion and politics based on the data from those projects.

Evan Morgan '19 - QSS Major

carbon data

I'm on the carbon data team at Watershed, a startup that helps companies like Airbnb and Everlane measure and act on their carbon emissions. In practice, this means I look at a lot of business data, write SQL code to standardize it, and interpret the resulting carbon footprints. I'm grateful for the QSS program for giving me the data computation skills to get a foothold in industry at Mastercard, from which I was able to jump to doing work that matters to me at Watershed.

Ned Stabnick '22 - QSS MAJOR

Market Research Consulting

I work at Kantar, based in the Boston office, doing Market Research Consulting. My day-to-day work includes designing surveys, fielding data, and analyzing consumer insights for B2B and B2C businesses. Our purpose is to derive meaningful insights that help our clients develop products, devise new strategies, or monitor and improve their brand's health/reputation. What I learned through the QSS department prepared me well for a career in conducting research and analyzing data to have a material impact on businesses' and the strategies they employ. This work allows me to utilize the range of problem-solving and analytical skills I learned throughout my time at Dartmouth.

Bess Neiblum '23 - QSS MAJOR

business analyst

I now work a full-time position as a business analyst with Cicero Group in Washington, D.C. after interning with the company last summer in Salt Lake City. In my position, I conduct research and synthesize the results, work with client data, and work directly with clients. I'm constantly learning, but I have a foundation for all of these skills because of my QSS degree, which not only exposed me to a wide range of data analytic and research techniques, but also taught me how to convey the findings in a compelling way. My focus on psychology and sociology within the major also taught me valuable lessons about working with people, understanding their concerns, and figuring out the best way to help. QSS is a flexible major, and I've found that it's left me with the ability to be open-minded and adaptable in my career as well.

Cameron Guage '22 - QSS and Mathematics Double Major

Research Fellowship

After graduation I started working at Stanford's Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab). At the RegLab I study the ways that the government deploys machine learning and artificial intelligence to decide how benefits and burdens are distributed in society. In particular, my work studies how racial disparities arise in the algorithmic selection of IRS audits. My work builds directly on my experiences as a QSS student, from the data visualization skills and statistical reasoning abilities I gained in my coursework to the analytical practice I gained doing research with QSS faculty.

KATHERINE CHRISTIE '21 - QSS MAJOR

POLICY & RESEARCH ASSOCIATE

I work as a Policy & Research Associate at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab based in the Department of Economics at MIT. J-PAL North America conducts randomized evaluations, builds partnerships for evidence-informed policymaking, and helps partners scale up effective programs. Our work spans a wide range of sectors including health care, housing, criminal justice, education, and economic mobility. In my role, I provide technical assistance to implementing partners to increase their capacity for evaluation, synthesize and disseminate research findings for non-academic audiences, and support a large network of J-PAL affiliated researchers as they seek to answer policy-relevant research questions. My QSS experience has been crucial to my work; I am able to leverage my deep understanding of social science research methods, data collection, and analysis in my work every day. 

Joshua Freitag '23 - QSS MAJOR

Law School

I recently began law school at Boston University School of Law, joining the class of 2026. As a QSS major, I was interested in how quantitative research methods can shed light on systemic issues often looked at through qualitative lenses, something I examined in my honors thesis on perceptions of fairness in jury trials. I plan on pursuing a career in public interest law, and hope to continue using quantitative data to make new legal arguments and promote evidence-driven solutions to injustice in the American justice system.

Landon Armstrong '23 - QSS and Studio Art double major

strategy consulting

This past summer, I interned at Sotheby's in New York City, as part of the Streetwear and Modern Collectibles team. Over 10 weeks, I contributed to post-sale processes for an auction celebrating the Nike Air Force 1's 40th anniversary and helped prepare for an auction spotlighting Michael Jordan's 1998 NBA Finals Game 1 jersey, which sold for $10.1 million. My QSS major enabled me to excel in data-driven tasks, ranging from social media analysis for engagement growth to data wrangling for comprehensive sales reports. Next year, I will continue to leverage my QSS degree as I join Altman Solon, a TMT strategy consulting firm, building both quantitative and business skills that I hope to later apply in the art world.

Sarah Solomon '21 - QSS Major

Analyst on Congress and the Legislative Process

After earning a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown University, I now work as an Analyst on Congress and the Legislative Process at the Congressional Research Service. In both graduate school and my current job, I constantly utilize the research skills and critical thinking I developed as a QSS major. From Quantitative Political Analysis (GOVT 10) to Sports Analytics (QSS 30.01) to Major Thesis Research (QSS 81), every QSS class gave me a new way to think about the world. More than anything, I learned how to tackle uncertainty and evaluate the quality of evidence presented to me. Thank you to all of the awesome QSS faculty for your support, dedication, and incredible insight!

Sachin Ganesh '22 - QSS Major

Risk Management Analyst

For the past year, I have been working at Goldman Sachs as part of their Market Risk team. Our job is to quantify potential losses that can occur under different economic scenarios and ensure that the firm is not exposed to outsized losses when markets move against its positioning. My job combines both macroeconomics with technical skills which is at the heart of the QSS program. The interdisciplinary nature of the curriculum prepared me to think critically about the drivers of financial markets, strengthened my technical skills to efficiently analyze data, and gave me a framework to effectively present and communicate my findings to my team.  

Michael Mazzola '23 - Economics major and QSS minor

Private Equity Analyst

In July 2023, I joined Parthenon Capital in Boston as a Private Equity Analyst. I'm responsible for helping source and execute middle market transactions within the healthcare and financial services sectors. On the job, I use both qualitative and quantitative skills during the investment process. Many of the problems I solve on a day to day basis are applicable to concepts and problem solving skills I learned during my time as a QSS minor. To name a few: I regularly deploy statistical models when analyzing company-level financial data, construct buyout models, and implement business process improvement that is informed by common statistical models and theories. 

Al Nafea '20 - QSS Major with Arabic Minor

Head of Growth

In 2021, I joined LoudCrowd, a rapidly growing marketing SaaS start-up in Austin, Texas. LoudCrowd helps brands grow their presence on social media and earn more revenue out of their content creators. I report to the CEO on a number of different growth initiatives, many of which involve both quantitative and qualitative approaches to problem solving. QSS has enabled me to approach data (i.e. website SEO data, client retention numbers, sales funnel projections) and craft actionable solutions to enable accelerated growth. As one of the only employees with a rigorous background in quantitative reasoning (thanks to QSS), I have become an invaluable asset to the amazing team at LoudCrowd.

Devan Fink '23 - QSS Major

Baseball Operations Strategist

Shortly after graduating, I started my career in the Baltimore Orioles' front office as their Baseball Operations Strategist. In this position, I work with people across all baseball departments, including scouting, analytics, and player development. My primary responsibilities include providing my input on roster moves, player evaluation, and ensuring our compliance with Major League rules. My QSS degree has proven to be quite beneficial to my work with the Orioles. Through the major, I gained a deeper understanding of the statistics that underlie team decisions and also developed the necessary technical skills to perform in this role. I would highly recommend QSS 17 (Data Visualization), QSS 20 (Modern Statistical Computing), and, of course, President Hanlon and Professor Herron's QSS 30.01 (Sports Analytics) to any prospective QSS major who may be interested in embarking on a career in sports.

Jane Hentschel '23 - QSS MAJOR

healthcare consulting

I am working at Trinity Life Sciences in NYC next year! It's a healthcare consulting firm that I worked at last summer and really enjoyed. The work combines quantitative skills with healthcare and science knowledge in a really interesting way. I absolutely feel like the QSS major has prepared me well for this job because it has given me the quantitative skill I need, and my QSS concentration was in global health, so I was also already working with data in the healthcare space in my research projects.

MAXWELL BLUM '23 - QSS AND MUSIC DOUBLE MAJOR

INVESTMENT ANALYST

As an Investment Analyst at Ludwig Cancer Research, I harness a unique blend of analytical technique and creative insight to manage and grow a $2 billion endowment for the non-profit foundation. My role entails rigorous analysis of financial data, modeling potential investments, and guiding capital allocation, aiming to maximize the endowment's impact on groundbreaking cancer research. Simultaneously, I leverage my leadership skills and personal experience with Crohn's disease to serve on the Young Professionals' Committee of the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation's NY Chapter, striving to support others with similar challenges. My Quantitative Social Science (QSS) training proves invaluable, equipping me with the ability to dissect complex data and inform strategy in both personal and professional realms. 

Robert Doherty '22 - QSS Major

Business Analyst

This past October, I joined McKinsey & Company in Denver, Colorado, as a business analyst. My work at McKinsey involves assisting businesses, governments, and non-profit organizations in solving complex problems, improving performance, and driving growth across all industries. So far, my QSS experience has been extremely helpful in my daily work from wrangling messy client data to drawing performance insights using many of the statistical methods I learned during my QSS thesis and classes. Moreover, the QSS major has equipped me with the skills to effectively communicate these insights to both my team and clients.

Jason Zavras '22 – QSS MAJOR

Research Associate in the Greka Lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

This past August, I joined the Greka Lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, MA. Since its founding in 2004, the Broad has accelerated biomedical research and helped improve human health through its commitment to identify the root biological causes of disease and find new opportunities for therapeutic intervention. As a QSS major, I became interested in quantitative methods (statistics / machine learning) and their application to understand many different fields – including population health, genetics, and biology. In my current role as a Research Associate, I apply these quantitative frameworks to analyze data and investigate the mechanisms underlying rare genetic diseases.

Harish Tekriwal '22 – QSS MAJOR

Director of Business Development

I am the Director of Business Development at TekRefurbs, an IT refurbishing and recycling firm. My family started the company back in 2005, and my QSS degree has helped me bring the business into the 21st century. In my time at the company, I have helped automate our online pricing and inventory management systems, saving thousands of working hours a year. I have also helped us implement a new bulk purchasing method using "regular expressions" in R and Google Sheets, which helps us minimize errors in our supply chain. These are all tasks that I wouldn't have been able to accomplish without my QSS background. QSS gave me the tools to not only evaluate large data sets with ease, but also to actualize the outputs of those data sets for my business. Additionally, the social science classes I took within QSS prepared me well for my role. The public policy classes I took through QSS gave me strong writing and speaking skills, which allowed me to manage multiple teams from Day 1. I am grateful for the combination of analytics and management skills I learned in the QSS program.

Nicholas Zhang '22 - QSS Major

Business Analyst

I'm a Business Analyst at MarketBridge. I just started this summer, and I felt that my time learning how to conduct quantitative research in the QSS department really helped with an analytical job like mine. In particular, QSS 015 was my first foray into R and RStudio, which I use on a daily basis at my current job for tidying and exploring client data. I also really appreciated the data visualization course which I use to present my findings to clients and management. It's also the course that got me interested in data science work!

I currently work in marketing effectiveness projects, meaning I use econometric models to assess the efficacy of different levels of marketing spending on different outcomes like conversions or new contracts. We pride ourselves on providing quantitatively-based solutions to clients with solid statistical reasoning, and I'm grateful for the opportunities that the QSS department opened up for me.

Maddie Sach ' 21 – QSS Major 

Corporate Development Associate 

Starting in September, I will be joining The D.E. Shaw Group as a Corporate Development Associate. The Corporate Development team develops firm strategy, seeking to identify new investment opportunities, expand the scope of existing strategies, and package and sell investment expertise. As an associate, I will use both quantitative and qualitative methods to research and implement new investment approaches. I will have the chance to apply my skills in rigorous, analytical problem solving that I developed as a QSS major. 

Kasey Rhee '21 - QSS MAJOR

Ph.D. in political science

This fall, I will be starting my Ph.D. in political science at Stanford University. I was also selected as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, an opportunity that I would not have without the close mentorship of QSS faculty. While at Dartmouth, I've especially enjoyed QSS courses' small class sizes, statistics instruction, and emphasis on hands-on projects. Thanks to the program, I was also able to conduct my own survey experiment and write a senior thesis about changing race relations in our country, the research interest that first motivated me to pursue graduate study.

Arvin Kumaran '21 - QSS MAJOR

Investment Banking Analyst

I will be working as an Investment Banking Analyst at Shea & Company in Boston, MA. Shea focuses on middle-market high growth enterprise software M&A and buy-side transactions. In this role, I will be able to utilize my QSS background in data visualization (QSS 17) and my knowledge of the power of data science to identify strong tech companies to work alongside with.

Katherine Christie '21 - QSS MAJOR

Business Analyst

I will be working as a Business Analyst at Public Consulting Group on the Education Strategies team in Boston. The Education Strategies team works with districts and state education agencies to identify problems and deliver solutions to improve education systems across the country. In this role, I will have the opportunity to utilize my QSS background, particularly my knowledge from QSS 17, QSS 20 and QSS 54 to help the team make data-driven decisions and recommendations. 

Sanjena Venkatesh '21 - QSS Major

Medical Education

For as long as I can remember, I've looked forward to a career in medicine. So, next fall, I'm excited to begin my medical education at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. While I'm unsure where exactly this path will take me, I hope to one day practice in an academic setting—learning, teaching, and caring for patients. 

Junyang Cui '21 - QSS Major

Fundamental Analyst

Starting in August, I will be joining Citadel Securities as a fundamental analyst. I interned with the firm last summer, performing a variety of duties relating to market analysis and trading pitches. I am happy to be returning to the same team. I will have opportunities to apply the quantitative skills from Dartmouth QSS classes to analyze financial markets data and make trading decisions. 

JAKE STERN ' 20 – QSS MAJOR

Record Label A&R

After a brief stint at a music/tech startup, I now work in A&R (Artists and Repertoire) at Atlantic Records with an emphasis on quantitative research, analysis and evaluation of both new potential signings and existing artists on the roster. The QSS degree has been invaluable to my journey in the music industry, allowing me to view what was once purely a qualitative field through a quantitative lens.

Natalie Knight '19 – QSS MAJOR

Data Analyst

I am a Data Analyst on the Advanced Data Analytics team at Fidelity Investments in Boston. I work in equity research, but my team does work across all asset classes. We leverage alternative data alongside AI and machine learning techniques to support research analysts and portfolio managers. We develop creative, data science-based solutions to complex questions, and every week looks a little different. I spend most of my time working alongside fundamental research analysts to assess a company or sector. My studies in the QSS department prepared me well to perform quantitative analysis, and explain my solutions to a primarily non-quantitative audience. I regularly use many of the technical, analytical, and communication skills I learned through my QSS classes in my current role.

James Wen '19 - QSS Major

Revenue Strategy Analyst

I am currently working at United Airlines on a Revenue Strategy team. My colleagues and I analyze and predict booking trends for the entire airline. The QSS major at Dartmouth has helped me post-graduation in a multitude of ways. The program gives students a thorough technical background in applied computation. Everyone that graduated with me left Dartmouth with a solid expertise in R and/or Python. Having these skills definitely contributed to my job security while working for an airline during a global pandemic. QSS also enables students to tackle large scale data questions regardless of field. The courses offered combined with the thesis program provide students with an opportunity to not only grow their computational skills but also their analytical, research, and presentation skills, all of which have personally benefited me in the professional world.

Genna Liu '19 - QSS and Economics double major

Marketing Analyst

I am working at Analysis Group, a Boston-based firm that provides economics litigation and healthcare consulting. Over the past few months at AG, I have helped conduct economic analysis for marketing, intellectual property, and finance cases. On the cases, I assisted in literature review, survey design, argument development, and data analysis. The QSS major has helped me develop the research skills needed to for this position. For example, Data Visualization taught me ways to work with and effectively visualize data through R, a programming language that is commonly used at AG. Writing a QSS thesis also provided valuable experience in all stages of the research process, enabling me to critically think about the problems at-issue and map potential ways to address each question.

Ziqin Yuan '18 — QSS & Government double major

Consultant

I am currently an Associate at L.E.K. Consulting's Boston office, where my colleagues and I collaborate with teams across the country to help companies and non-profits solve their business strategy questions. At work, I use the research skills I developed while working on my QSS thesis to efficiently gather data and understand its implications. So far, I have found the transition into my role much easier than it may have been, since the QSS major's coursework and my thesis had already exposed me to the imprecisions and nuances of data collection.

Andrew Wolff '18 - QSS Major

Business Analyst

I am starting in late September as a Business Analyst for McKinsey & Company in Dubai and will then move to the firm's Washington, DC office after one year. At McKinsey, I will be consulting for corporations, governments, and non-profits to help them with tasks such as improving operations, launching new product lines, or completing organizational transformations. I previously worked for McKinsey as a Winter Business Analyst Intern over Winter 2017. During that internship, I used my QSS experience in statistical analysis and data wrangling everyday, and was put in charge of the primary quantitative analysis for a public sector transformational study. With my QSS experience, I conducted my own statistical analyses and effectively communicated the results to my team and to the clients. McKinsey's quantitative focus was a big reason why I chose to return to the firm full-time, and I intend to use the skills I developed through the QSS major in my daily work. 

Sam Forstner '18 - QSS Minor

Business Analyst

I am working in Boston in the Analyst Development Program at Liberty Mutual Insurance. As an insurance company, Liberty possesses massive amounts of data, and this role gives me the opportunity to apply much of what I learned in QSS including statistical analysis, data manipulation, and data visualization. My work revolves around tackling complex quantitative questions and communicating my results effectively, and the QSS minor played a big part in preparing me for this job.

Alexander Agadjanian '18 - QSS major

Research Associate

Since late June, I've been working as a Senior Research Support Associate at the MIT Election and Data Science Lab (MEDSL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The lab focuses on collecting, managing, and disseminating election data at various levels going back decades, as well assessing U.S. election administration. I use my coding and analytical skills learned through the QSS major on a daily basis. For one project, I've been creating a dataset for state office races from the 2016 election, for which I've pulled datasets from state websites, found efficient ways to turn them into usable form, and further cleaned and prepared them for release. In other cases, I've analyzed and visualized data on the quality of state-level maintenance of voter lists, as well as examined over time trends in voting wait times and what might shape these experiences for voters. Lastly, I've begun to take/audit quantitative methods courses at MIT, for which QSS's math, coding, and econometrics requirements have prepared me immensely. Apart from the job, I've continued refining several undergrad research projects in QSS-related areas, and recently presented my QSS honors thesis research at a political science conference.

Michael Perkins '18 - QSS Major

Technical Account Manager

I am working as a Technical Account Manager at a startup, LinkIt!, in the education technology sector in New York City. The company specializes in data warehousing, assessment solutions, and analytics for K-12 schools and districts made up of schools. Only a few weeks into the job, I am already managing over forty clients, each a New Jersey school district with between hundreds and thousands of students. My job involves providing pre-sale demo and pilot set up, onboarding clients through a customizable integration and implementation process, and serving as a liaison between clients, partners, and our product development and data teams. We use SQL to manage the data, so I spend a lot of time writing and adapting SQL scripts to overcome clients' obstacles as they arise.

QSS endowed me with the social, technical, and organizational skills needed to thrive in a professional role that is both client facing and analytical/technical. I encourage any student with an interest in QSS, startups, or living in the city to reach out to me with questions or just to chat.

Zachary Schnell ’18 - QSS Major

Database Analyst

I am working as a Database Analyst at Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) in Arlington, Virginia. The company works with major organizations to help them understand their data and, in turn, make data-driven decisions. As an intern at APT last summer, I worked with a leading insurance provider to automate their data feeds. My present role sits between software engineers and consultants; I simultaneously work internally with databases and interface directly with clients. QSS showed me how to handle this hybrid—not only how to ingest sets of big data but also how to communicate the real-world implications of data. This attention to skillsets enabled me to serve as the lone database analyst on a client team last summer, and I look forward to further applying the skills in learned in QSS in my full-time role at APT.

Kendall Ernst '18 - QSS Major

Buisness Consultant

I'm currently working in D.C. as a Business Consultant for Applied Predictive Technologies, a data analytics software company owned by Mastercard, after interning there my junior winter. I also interned in the summer as an Investment Banking Analyst for J.P. Morgan. My role involves a combination of database coding, statistical analysis, and client communication. The skills I gained as a QSS major have been extremely applicable to my current role—having experience working with real data has given me an understanding of the challenges associated with data work and how to think about solving these problems. Studying QSS also provided me with a strong background in statistics, which has helped give me confidence when communicating with clients and answering questions about methodology.  

Clara Wang '17 - QSS Minor

Applied Data Scientist

I'm working as an Applied Data Scientist on the health care team at Civis Analytics. I use programming languages that I learned through my QSS minor like R and Python in my everyday work, and I constantly apply the skills I learned from my QSS data visualization class to present data in an understandable format. My work mainly consists of analyzing large amounts of data to answer client questions, such as predicting who is likely to lack health insurance. The work is both challenging and engaging, and I wouldn't be where I am without my QSS minor.

Annie Ma '17 - QSS Minor

Data reporting intern

I just started at The Oregonian for the summer as a data reporting intern. I'm still figuring out my exact project assignments, but the first few days I've been looking into government salary data and have felt very prepared thanks to the QSS program. I think the work overall might skew a bit more towards Python and my computer science background, but the ability to think critically about data and how it might answer and reveal certain questions has certainly been an advantage in journalism that I've learned from the minor. 

Caroline Allan '16 – Economics and Engineering Sciences

Associate Consultant at Keystone Strategy

I graduated in 2016 before QSS began to grow.  I had a great experience taking Data Visualization (QSS 16) on a whim my senior year with Professor Horiuchi. I took this class because it was recommended to me by a friend, who ad told me that learning R was a great decision she made in college to prepare her for her career in investment banking.  The skills I learned in QSS 16 are by far my most used skills in my job as an Associate Consultant at Keystone Strategy, a consulting firm where I started working in 2016 after graduation.   Keystone specializes in strategy and economic consulting in the tech industry and my office is in Boston.  At Keystone, my role has ranged from valuing the user base of a social media company to analyzing the source code for a videogame publisher. Working with large tech companies in a consulting role, my Keystone colleagues and I are constantly met with the challenge of handling large amounts of data and presenting insights derived from it in a compelling way. The QSS department's focus on these challenges prepared me well to perform in my career after graduating from Dartmouth.

Adam Charnin-Aker '16 (Took QSS 30.01 Sports Analytics)

Assistant Director, Pro Scouting

After a couple of years in big data consulting, I now work for the Yankees with a focus on player evaluation and acquisition, among other responsibilities. Much of my work involves projecting how players will perform in the future and identifying players who can contribute to a championship roster. My time in QSS 30.01 Sports Analytics with Professor Herron and President Hanlon helped lay the groundwork for my understanding of how data can be a powerful tool in the player evaluation process when combined with what your eyes are seeing on the field. The guest speakers from around the sports world who visited our class were also very insightful and furthered my interest in pursuing a career in baseball.

Garrett Schirmer '16

Sports Analytics

I may be a bit of an outlier here in that I neither majored nor minored in QSS and actually only took one QSS class during my entire time at Dartmouth. That one class was Sports Analytics (the first time it was ever offered), co-taught by Professor Herron and President Hanlon during my senior fall (15F). Personally, I came into the term dabbling with the thought of exploring a career in sports analytics and was hoping that this class would help me decide if that was a path I’d realistically enjoy. The course ended up providing clarity on that front and being more rewarding than I could have ever expected.

While attending the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference at the end of the term with Professor Herron and President Hanlon, I was fortunate to connect with some representatives from the Cleveland Indians (MLB). After a few conversations and interviews, I was offered a business analytics position working with their Business Strategy team. A year and a half of honing my analytical skills with the Indians (and dealing with the ups and downs of a World Series loss) prepared me to pursue my dream of working for my favorite sports team, the Tampa Bay Lightning (NHL). The foundational knowledge I gained from the Sports Analytics class, coupled with my experience with the Indians, allowed me to land the business analytics job I’d been hoping for. Now working as a Data Systems Analyst with the Lightning, I’m using advanced statistical modelling to aid key business processes, such as dynamic ticket pricing and sales forecasting.

Working for a professional sports team has always been a career dream of mine, but I’d be lying if I said I expected it as my first job out of college. However, I have never felt out of place. Today I’m using the same analytical techniques, probabilistic modelling, and data handling practices that I picked up in QSS. Beyond the content I learned during the ten weeks of Sports Analytics, I’m even more grateful for the doors it has opened for me. Despite having taken only one QSS class, I can safely say that the department has changed my life for the better.

Alexis Savini '14 - MSS Major

Corporate startup team

I'm working at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP on their corporate startup team. KTS is mostly known for their IP and patent work, so it's interesting to be on a smaller team within the firm that is doing something different from everyone else. We work with a lot of Bay Area startups, mostly medical device companies that need help with forming a company and finding funding opportunities. So far I'm really enjoying it - the corporate team is pretty small, so I've been given a good bit of responsibility and am definitely learning a lot. I'm mostly doing a lot of formations (which is honestly just a lot of paperwork), but in the end I'm transforming a guy with an idea into an actual company, which I think is pretty cool. We work with a lot of UCSF and Stanford professors and grad students, so a lot of the technology we get to see is pretty amazing.

Matthew Boyas '13 - MSS Major

Business Analytics Associate

I did an MA in Statistics at Berkeley and am now working as a Business Analytics Associate at ZS Associates, a sales and marketing consulting firm, in their New York office.

 

Joseph Tanenbaum '13 - MSS Major

MD-PhD student

I am currently an MD-PhD student in the MSTP program at Case Western Reserve University. My PhD work is in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics where my research focuses on the association between increased market penetration of novel healthcare delivery systems and changes in population health. The QSS program (or the artist formerly known as MSS) was instrumental in helping me develop both analytical and critical thinking skills. The encouragement to develop a strong foundation in statistical methods while simultaneously pursuing studies in social science theory and application helped prepare me for my graduate school work and for my career moving forward.

 

Danny Kim '11 - MSS Major

Venture capital and entrepreneurship

The MSS program equipped me with a rigorous data-driven framework to think about exciting yet puzzling empirical questions in the business world. I am currently a PhD student at MIT focusing on venture capital and entrepreneurship — a career path I decided to pursue after doing a fascinating networks-based research project in a MSS class. I'm so thankful for the MSS experience at Dartmouth!

Joe Ornstein '09 - MSS Major

PhD Student

I am currently pursuing a PhD in Political Science at the University of Michigan. My research focuses on the intersection of political science and economics. Prior to graduate school, I worked as a Research Assistant at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC

Anne Irvine '06 - MSS Major

Senior Data Scientist

I had the incredible experience of teaching two MSS courses at Dartmouth in the Fall of 2011, and I recently completed my PhD in Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. I have just started work as a Senior Data Scientist at RedOwl Analytics, a Baltimore-based startup that is developing a software product that performs sophisticated social network analysis for our corporate customers. My focus is on natural language processing, but our core product is very much in line with the social network analysis research and coursework that I completed as part of my MSS degree nearly ten years ago! It's amazing how impactful the MSS curriculum has been on my career thus far.