The Center for Community Schooling (CCS) at UCLA

Dear hiring manager,

I am writing to apply for the position of research data analyst at the center for community schooling (CCS) at UCLA. I am a doctoral candidate in Economics at Rutgers University. My anticipated date of complete is Oct. 2023.

I have broad interests in economics of education, including policy evaluation. While working on research on education policy, I have been dedicated to studying and implementing various econometric methodologies that draw causal inferences from data. In my job market paper, I estimated the effects of for-profit college closures with the interaction-weighted estimator proposed by Sun and Abraham (2020) to address potential bias from implementing the difference-in-difference approach in a staggered setting. In my working paper, I use the changes in state compulsory schooling laws over time as an instrument for parent’s education and identify the effect on children’s criminal behavior as well as the treatment margin. My work demonstrates my ability to perform quantitative research and my suitability to serve as a data analyst that requires to deal with large data sets.

Furthermore, I learn how to perform quantitative analysis with the most suitable statistical software available. My work has involved wide variety of data sets, not only individual level of educational attainment, labor force participation, but also all social policy in state and federal level. These works have given me strong knowledge of merging different data sets and performing statistical analyses. Also, this process taught me how to conduct policy evaluations and develop policy implications by identifying who was affected and estimating how their choices were substituted.

In addition, I am eager to combine my expertise in quantitative research with my passion for research on education. The experience of studying the effect of education policy will help me to catch up quickly when doing research at CCS. Last but not least, I have great communication skills developed while working at Samsung as an assistant manager. I worked well with team members who all came from different majors. I feel confident that I can work well in the interdisciplinary project. Please contact me if you have any questions. I hope to hear from you soon. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Hyunji Ahn