When I first started taking quantitative and technical courses at university, it was mostly as a challenge to myself. The grades in first and second year don't count, I thought, and thus I can take interesting courses even though I might be totally rubbish at the them. What I didn't realise is, that I had unknowingly taken the first step onto a very slippery slope. 

It all started with me, to my great surprise, not being totally rubbish at technology after all. On the other hand, because of some excellent teachers and very engaging courses, coding soon became the best part of my entire degree, and I was keen to take as many courses about Python, R, and Computer Science as I could. 

The slippery slope next drove me to search for opportunities outside of university courses that would allow me to do social science research using data and code. Using the technical skills I had acquired in uni courses, such as the Q-Step course "Measuring your Social World", I was able to assist a PhD project by building a web scraper for Google Maps and analysing the scraped data in R. In another research project, I even became a published author in the field of bias in name ethnicity classification! The article I helped write as part of a small team can be found here. 

My quantitative fate was sealed when I was accepted to do an MSc in Social Data Science at the University of Oxford in 2023/24. There, I will further work on answering social science questions using the methods I learned as part of Q-Step and Computer Science courses. During the application process for this programme, I was greatly supported by Q-Step staff, who were able to give me very valuable advice and knew me well enough to write a letter of recommendation for me.

If you are thinking about enrolling on the Q-Step programme, even just as a challenge to yourself, beware: it might be a slippery slope towards searching for more and more opportunities to use your newly acquired technical skills. Don't worry, however, it's an enjoyable ride!

First published: 5 June 2025

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