QMSS Hackathon 2026

Join the Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS) program for our 3rd annual Hackathon! A hackathon is a fantastic opportunity to practice your data cleaning, data analysis, data visualization, and data interpretation skills & leave with a data analysis project that you can post about on a professional portfolio website, write about on your resumes, and talk about during job interviews as an example of what you know how to do. In QMSS's Hackathon, we will use real, publicly available data to answer real, socially-relevant questions so that you can see the true power of the data cleaning, analysis, visualization, and communication skills you're developing in QMSS (and other!) courses.

The best part? You don't have to do any preparation this year! You just need to register, show up on the day, and you'll have a chance to fully complete a project by the time the event is over. You will work collaboratively with other students to break down the datasets in ways that YOU find most interesting and valuable. The data will be real, relevant, and timely social science data. 

Students will have an opportunity to self-select into a project that fits their skills and interests. We have intentionally designed this event to be accessible to students from QMSS - including students CURRENTLY taking QMSS 201 or 301 and not yet finished!

Students who fully participate in the event will receive a completion certificate to add to your resume, CV, and LinkedIn profiles, and you will get access to all of the available projects and any necessary data to take home and continue working on to build your data project portfolio. We will provide free food throughout the hackathon to keep you fueled as you hack away at the data!

A laptop is required for this event - please let us know at qmss.program@umich.edu if you need access to one in order to participate in the event!