<p>My son originally got a Work Study program offer. Then, he won an outside scholarship competition worth a few thousand dollars. </p>
<p>When I inquired the University about the financial implication of winning this scholarship, they gleefully informed me that the W-S offer withdrawn. </p>
<p>Are campus jobs only available as part of the W-S program, or can he still get one if he wants one?</p>
<p>There are non W-S jobs available.</p>
<p>My non-work-study kids have had no trouble, zero, zip finding campus jobs. The only problem my recent graduate ever encountered is that the university capped her hours when they figured out she might technically qualify as a full-time employee. (One quarter, she had four different jobs, although never more than three at a time, and clocked up to 28-29 hours some weeks.)</p>
<p>S1 sent resumes to a couple of on-campus postings through the jobs website and had an offer the day before O-Week began. It was not a W/S position.</p>
<p>My son will have saved up enough money from his paying internship this summer before he leaves home to begin his journey at U Chicago that will comfortably cover all personal expenses for the whole school year outside of tuition, fees, room & board. So, he does not really need a campus job for the financial reason. If he were to look for one, it will be because the experience somehow enriches him or related to his chosen field (economics) like working on projects, etc. Are there campus jobs that fall into this category that he can get without the W-S aid? He studied on his own extensively in the area of economics/finance and won national competitions, awards, scholarship etc - so he knowledge base in his chosen field is quite extensive even though he will only be a freshman this fall. Will this help?</p>
<p>Well… In the end, it’s his initiative, but I am just trying to stay “clueful” in an unlikely event that I may get a chance to “nudge” him a little bit unobtrusively…</p>
<p>I would encourage you or your son to have a look at the following websites:
frogs.uchicago.edu
studentemployment.uchicago.edu
The FROGS website lists research opportunities, fellowships, and grants available to students in the College. Student employment is a list of current job postings (you can search specifically for non-work-study jobs as well) for students on campus. These websites are great to browse for a good sample of the student jobs and research assistantships and opportunities (many are economics-related or held at the Both School of Business) that will eventually be available to your son.</p>
<p>Is there an optimal time to start looking for campus jobs? I saw on the student employment site that job postings are removed after sixty days, so I would guess that it’s a bit pointless to start looking until early August. But I could be wrong.</p>
<p>And, additionally, should I wait until I register for courses and know my schedule to contact the employers? Conventional wisdom says that I should contact them as soon as possible, but since there’s less than a week between the time I register and the time I start classes, conventional wisdom poses a bit of a problem.</p>
<p>I’d suggest contacting jobs that you are interested in to see if you might schedule an interview when you get to campus, but let them know that your class schedule isn’t firm yet. Do NOT pre-schedule any interviews during orientation week until you know your exact o-week schedule; you’ll have many things to do during the week, and the schedule can vary quite a lot from whatever mock-up schedule you get in the mail ahead of time with house activities thrown in. You’ll still be way ahead of the game starting to think of things before school starts, though- the mad rush for campus jobs is around 4th or 5th week of autumn quarter :)</p>