<p>Hey, me again.</p>
<p>Juuust wondering, are international students allowed to stay the summer in the US and work? Or do you need a special visa for that? And the school dorms aren't open?</p>
<p>You have to vacate the dorm the next day after the last day of finals.
Plus make plans to store your belongings for the summer.
You have to make your own arrangements to live off campus until the fall unless you are working for the university and they have summer housing.
You’ll have to pay to live there, of course.
In addition-
Depending on the college, students have to leave the dorm over the Christmas/Winter break.
You either go back home for the month or are invited to stay with a friend in the US until the school opens in January.</p>
<p>hum, well, that’s kindof a bummer! Hopefully I make great friends first semester so I don’t have to wrack up 1k for flights haha! </p>
<p>Thanks for the answer!</p>
<p>Most of the colleges provide on campus housing for internationals students during summer too. They understand that many Internationals have no where to go. :)</p>
<p>I like you, you’re very helpful in making me feel better haha! thanks! I hope that’s the case with most of the colleges I’ll be applying to</p>
<p>Don’t get worried about these things right now. These issues get settled once you are on campus. Sometimes people get research opportunities during the summer. Some get chance to work on campus. There are various ways to get a housing on-campus during summer. You might have to cook your own food but that won’t be a big deal. :)</p>
<p>I hope so, because flights are so dang expensive these days, I’d like to save all my pennies.</p>
<p>The more international students are at your school (preferably on financial aid), the better the odds that they can accommodate you over breaks. </p>
<p>At my own school it’s possible to stay in campus housing all year round but it’s a huge hassle. Only a single dorm stays open during winter break and everyone who wants to stay on campus has to move into that dorm. Winter break housing is generally unpleasant because
(1) there are no kitchens in the dorms and the dining halls are closed.
(2) the regular residents leave their belongings on the room, which means that winter break residents get absolutely no storage space whatsoever.
(3) there’s no regular housekeeping or maintenance work. the bathrooms get pretty gross (because no one feels responsible for cleaning them) and if your heat goes out, well, you might have to wait until after the snow storm is over before someone will take a look.</p>
<p>Summer housing during the regular summer break session is not an issue. The problematic part is the gap between the end of summer housing and the beginning of academic year housing, when a lot of maintenance work takes place in the dorms. Our residential life office is willing to work with students who don’t have an option to leave campus, but we might have to move several times during the three-week inter-session period.</p>
<p>Break housing is unpleasant but available at my school. Unfortunately that’s not true everywhere. Some colleges cannot let students stay on campus during breaks at all. If you are about to head to college, you can inquire about the situation at your specific school. If you are a future college applicant, the availability of year-long housing might be one of your criteria for choosing colleges.</p>
<p>thanks, b@r!um! What college are you at? I know that Columbia says you have to vacate the dorms… But generally these are the schools that if you get a full ride, they cover your travel expense. So if i can get into one of them, i guess all year housing won’t be a big criteria in choosing… But the other colleges…well, i hope i’ll be able to work with them when the time comes</p>
<p>It’s been awhile since I went to college as an international. I didn’t go home for 11 years, so I stayed on campus all 3 summers of undergraduate, before and during grad school. Generally you bond with the poorer internationals, who have to stay back, particularly in the summer. My college always arranged a summer job and off campus housing. I hung out with one Pakistani and one Israeli (who was escaping army conscription). During the summer, you will also probably hang out with more of the locals, which can be good or bad, depending on whether the college is in an intellectual city like Cambridge or some redneck town. I generally worked till about mid-July and then went to visit friends or family in other cities. You will usually be invited by someone home during winter or you find some of your friends from home in another major city like Boston or NY and go stay with them.</p>
<p>I see! Hopefully if I get accepted to a US college, and a college other than Harvard who pays for flights as well in FA, summer housing and jobs can also be arranged. Even though, my parents might make an extra sacrifice to bring me home because they already don’t like the thought of me being so far away from home.</p>
<p>But for the winter and spring breaks, that would just be lovely, going to visit friends I’ve made in college.</p>