FAQ¶

The questions below cover the practical mechanics of ASSIP 2026 — the daily schedule, data access, attendance, deliverables, AI policy, and the August 12 symposium. If your question isn't here, ask in Slack #help-meta or email Prof. Gao directly.

What's the daily schedule?

Monday through Friday, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm Eastern, fully remote.

9:00 – 9:30 am — async warm-up (read the day's pages in the textbook, pull latest from the repo).
9:30 – 9:45 am — pod stand-up on Slack huddle (RA sub-leader runs).
9:45 am – 12:00 pm — solo work or paired coding on labs/PSets.
12:00 – 1:00 pm — lunch.
1:00 – 5:00 pm — block of work, mentor sessions, or pod working sessions per the weekly schedule.
5:00 pm — commit-by-5 norm: whatever you have today is pushed to your branch by 5:00 pm ET.

The Wednesday mentor session with Prof. Gao runs 2:00 – 3:30 pm ET and is the one fixed weekly anchor.

How do I get WRDS access?

Your GMU NetID is provisioned by the College of Science during the June 18 orientation. The program office issues each student a temporary GMU credential that lets you log in to WRDS through Mason's institutional subscription.

Log in to https://wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu/ with your GMU NetID.
The first time, you'll be asked to accept the WRDS user agreement — read it; it's the same agreement you're already bound by under the Code of Conduct.
Set up SSH key access if you want to use the WRDS Cloud Linux machines (recommended for jobs that take more than ~5 minutes).

If your credential isn't working by Thursday of Week 1, email cosassip@gmu.edu Cc Prof. Gao. WRDS data stays on GMU infrastructure — do not copy it to a personal laptop.

What if I miss a day?

Missing one day is fine; let your pod RA sub-leader know on Slack the night before (or the morning of, if it's unexpected) and the cohort moves on. Tell your sub-leader what you'll skip and what you'll catch up on.

Missing more than one day per week, or missing the Wednesday mentor session, requires a heads-up to both your sub-leader and Prof. Gao before the absence — not after. Repeated unplanned absence may put your enrollment at risk because the program is full-time by design.

Genuine emergencies (medical, family) are handled through the ASSIP program office; email cosassip@gmu.edu and we'll make it work.

Where do I file my PAP?

In your project repo, at pap/pap-v1.md. The full filing procedure (copy the template, open a PR, get sub-leader review, get Prof. Gao sign-off, git tag pap-v1) is on the PAP template page. Update your card on the project tracker once the tag is pushed.

The substantive standard for the PAP is set in Chapter 7.3 of the textbook.

How do I prepare for the symposium?

Three concrete things, in order:

Build the poster to spec (48"×36" landscape, the structure in the poster template). Draft due Friday Aug 7, revisions due Monday Aug 10.
Practice the three-minute pitch out loud, in front of someone who isn't in your pod, at least three times before symposium day. Chapter 8.5 walks through the structure.
Run the pipeline from scratch on Monday Aug 10 — make clean && make all should produce every figure on your poster from raw data with zero errors. The dress rehearsal on Aug 10 is the last point at which we'll catch a layout problem before printing.

The symposium itself runs the full day Wednesday August 12, 2026, in-person at GMU's Fairfax campus with virtual breakouts for remote interns.

What's JSSR?

The Journal of Student-Scientists' Research (JSSR), published by Mason Publishing at GMU. Every ASSIP intern submits an abstract — 150 – 250 words, the same structure as your poster — and JSSR publishes the full set of abstracts annually as a single proceedings volume.

Format: 150 – 250 words. Structure: Question · Data · Design · Headline result · Robustness · Contribution.
Due: approximately early September 2026 (the program office confirms the exact deadline at symposium). Submission is through Mason Publishing's website; cosassip@gmu.edu circulates the link.
Co-authorship: you are the sole listed author of your abstract; Prof. Gao is acknowledged as faculty mentor in the acknowledgments line.
Optional full paper: students who want to write the full paper (which a smaller number of ASSIP interns do each year) submit through the same Mason Publishing pipeline by a later deadline.

Can I use AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot)?

Yes — with disclosure, verification, and never on confidential data. The full policy is in Chapter 6.5 of the textbook and in Section 4 of the Code of Conduct. Short version:

Disclose specifically, in writing, in your PAP, poster, and JSSR abstract.
Verify every number, citation, and code snippet against your own implementation.
Never paste WRDS data, GMU credentials, or family-identifying info into a public LLM. Use the on-prem GMU Azure APIM endpoints (GPT-5.4, 4.1, 4o, Maverick) for anything sensitive.

Do I need to know Python before Week 1?

No. AP Statistics-level math and a willingness to break things are the only real prerequisites. Week 1 starts at "what is a list in Python," and the textbook's Chapter 1 lab walks you from a blank .py file to a working LLN/CLT simulation. The pod sub-leaders are excellent at unblocking syntactic stuckness.

What you cannot skip: showing up every weekday with your laptop open and the previous day's notebook ready to discuss.

Do I get college credit?

Yes — 3 GMU College of Science credits for completing ASSIP. The grade is determined by the symposium poster, the PAP timestamp, and your sub-leader's evaluation of your work over the eight weeks.

Whether those credits transfer to your home high school or undergraduate institution is determined by that institution's policies, not by ASSIP or Prof. Gao. Email the program office (cosassip@gmu.edu) for the official transcript and bring it to your registrar.

How much does ASSIP cost?

The published 2026 costs are:

Application fee: $25 (non-refundable).
Tuition: $1,299 for the full eight-week program.
Full waivers are available for students who are Pell-eligible or qualify for free/reduced lunch at their school. The waiver application is on the ASSIP website; the program office reviews it.

Email cosassip@gmu.edu for waiver paperwork; ask early so it's resolved by the start date.

What does 'remote only' mean for our group in 2026?

Prof. Gao's 2026 slot is officially REMOTE only — every meeting, every mentor session, every pod stand-up runs on Zoom. You do not need to travel to GMU's Fairfax campus except for the August 12 symposium (and even that has a virtual breakout option for remote interns who cannot travel).

Remote does not mean async; the program is still full-time, 9 am – 5 pm Eastern, with mandatory cohort sessions. You need a reliable laptop, a reliable internet connection, and a quiet place to work for the eight weeks.

What if my project's results don't replicate or come out null?

Excellent — that's a finding. Most of empirical finance is null results, and the August 12 audience knows this. Your poster's value comes from a credible question, a credible PAP, a clean specification, and an honest report of the result. If you reject H₀, fine; if you fail to reject H₀, also fine — but only if you can quantify how precisely you failed to reject it.

Chapter 7 of the textbook makes the case at length. The shortest version: "underpowered" is not a synonym for "no finding"; it is itself a finding about how much more data the question would need.

Can I use my own data or topic instead of one of the five tracks?

Yes, with Prof. Gao's sign-off in Week 1. Off-track topics need to:

Have a data source you can actually access within the first two weeks (no "I'll ask the Fed for it").
Have a specification you can run in the eight-week window.
Have at least one anchor paper you can read by Friday of Week 2.

Some of the best projects in past cohorts have been off-track. Some of the worst have, too. The difference is usually whether constraints (1) and (2) were realistic. Bring the proposal to the Wednesday-of-Week-1 mentor session.

What happens if I can't finish the poster in time?

Tell us early — by Wednesday of Week 7 at the latest, ideally earlier. The program office and Prof. Gao have several routes for students who are close to done but not quite there (a partial-results poster that focuses on the design and the data; a synthetic-data poster with the synthetic-results notice; a delayed JSSR submission).

The thing that does not work is showing up on Aug 12 with no poster. Tell the cohort early; we'd rather find the smaller deliverable that works than have a no-show on symposium day.

Who is the boss of this — Prof. Gao or ASSIP?

Both, on different things. Prof. Gao runs the empirical-finance content, the mentor sessions, project sign-off, and the day-to-day standard of the cohort. The ASSIP program office (Dr. Amanda Haymond Still) runs admissions, tuition, waivers, credit, the symposium logistics, JSSR submission, and any code-of-conduct concern that crosses outside our mentor group.

The Mentors page has a "who to ping for what" table that resolves most cases. When in doubt, Cc both — better to over-Cc than to miss a deadline because the email went to the wrong person.