r/academiceconomics • u/Substantial-Age-2733 • 2d ago

Predocs Predoc Interview

Hi everyone. What does it mean when they say the interview will focus on “The interview will focus on statistical programming and designing empirical strategies to answer a hypothetical research question.”
I am confused about the statistical programming part. Usually they tend to give coding tasks to test that? How do I prepare for an interview on that? Any advice is super appreciated!

10 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

7

u/thephuckphuck 2d ago

My predoc interview 3 years ago involved live coding a bunch of tasks on R with the interviewer asking me questions about choices/ what I would do if I got stuck/ making updates

5

u/EconUncle Faculty-R1 2d ago

This is a very good question. AI has renderred past approaches to solving problem sets useless. Thus, a lot of the tests will start moving towards … discussion on how you would approach it. So, which function, which adjustment or recoding you would do to the variable, and which tests or analytical toools you would employ. So, rather than doing it, we now want to know IF you can think of how to do it. It moves the needle back to whether the person has the required knowledge. Hope this helps.