<p>unsure as where to post</p>
<p>from what ive heard, the work study program is disappointing</p>
<p>20 hours a week maybe at mininum wage(even at 10$ 20 hours is unlivable)</p>
<p>so who has experience with work-study and could it be worth the time of someone in need of money , living off-campus?</p>
<p>Work-study is NOT intended to be used as a “real” job. The primary goal of work-study is to simply provide you with a little extra cash to put towards your living expenses. At most colleges, the number of hours you can work a week is capped - at Mount Holyoke, our year-long average is only supposed to be 10 hours a week - and yes, the pay is very low ($10 is actually higher than any of our positions). But for most students, that’s fine, since they aren’t intended to use the position to help pay rent or anything like that.</p>
<p>For you, especially living off-campus and wanting to work more hours, work-study is probably not the best option for you. You may want to find a “real” part-time job in order to earn more.</p>
<p>$10 an hour is unlivable? What do you expect to make?</p>
<p>My S was given 20 hours of work study. I think that is too many hours and be a full time student. What do you think?</p>
<p>chinablue- Doable with efficient time management. It’s up to your S to figure it out.</p>
<p>chinablue - also, whether it’s doable depends on what kind of job he gets…a lot of people I know have a work study job in the library - they basically sit at the info desk and do homework while checking out books to people.</p>
<p>Also depends on the college. At places with a really heavy workload, 20 is way, way too much. At Mount Holyoke, most students take 16-20 credits a semester, and we have an incredible amount of reading to do, so 20 hours of work on top of that would be really unreasonable for most students. I had a few weeks where I was working double hours one semester and it made midterms and absolute nightmare.</p>
<p>Don’t forget that while he may have been given funding for that many, he’s likely not required to take advantage of all of that - he can opt for a less intensive job. Of course, if they’re counting 20 hours as a necessary part of his financial aid package, that creates some other problems, but I would still advise against it in most cases.</p>
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<p>When I was living off-campus, my living expenses - which were cheap for my area - were about $1,000 a month. Living in regions like the South or parts of the West might make $10 seem like a lot due to the lower cost of living, but good luck getting by on that in the Northeast. That’s well below the poverty level. If you’re an off-campus student and need to cover all your own housing and living expenses, you need to find something considerably higher.</p>
<p>I’m a full time student and I work 20 hours a week, but I’m in graduate school and we have to. And like someone said, if you got a library workstudy then that’s not too bad. I had a general college position that was exactly like a work-study (but I wasn’t eligible for work-study) and it was in the office of Continuing Education. Not only was it a lot of tedious tasks so I couldn’t get any work done, but it was boring.</p>
<p>But $10 an hour is pretty low in a lot of areas – for example, a student at Columbia, NYU or Fordham would laugh at $10 an hour. Even if you worked 20 hours a week, that’s only $800 a month <em>before</em> taxes; after taxes it would work out to probably around $400-500 a month. I’m a graduate student here and I get paid $30 an hour, which seems like a lot. In my hometown it would be – technically my hourly pay is more twice than my brother’s, who works a full-time non-school job – but in New York…it’s not. Even $800 isn’t enough to cover rent.</p>
<p>to mch2011:this is what i assumed, id likely have to find a full time job to make it work out</p>
<p>to applcannot:10$ an hour for only 20 hours a week is unlivable if youve to pay rent
this is only 800$ a month , while rent is what 600+, 7$ at 40 is 1120, somewhat livable</p>
<p>to chinablue:i dont think itd be enough, but work study isnt meant to be considered an actual job, so it sounds adeqaute
50 hours would be pushing it</p>
<p>the posts served to clarify what id thought , work study simply wont cut it for me, ill likely have to run 40 hours at an actual job, which will be hell, im sure, but doable</p>
<p>You might try asking about work/study on the financial aid forum. There are some advantages to it (over a non-work/study job) in terms of future financial aid. Your best bet may be to take the work/study job plus another job to make up the extra hours of work you need to support yourself. The exception would be if your 40-hour job paid more per hour than your work/study job, of course. Best of luck - you are clearly someone willing to work for your future!</p>
<p>well alamemom, the thing is if the work study is unable to supprot my lifestyle, theres no point in taking it at all and itd be better to just take normal job with erratic hours(not many of those) that pays decently to make up for it</p>
<p>obviously for me , work study just isnt enough</p>
<p>The problem with outside (non WS) jobs is that they can negatively impact your financial aid the subsequent year. For a dependent student there is @ $3750 (plus a little more for FICA and tax allowances) protected income allowance in FAFSA. Any income over that 50% of it will go to the EFC the next year. (unless the parent income is low enough to qualify for the automatic 0 EFC). WS income is all protected income so does not affect the EFC at all. </p>
<p>For instance if you earned $4000 in a WS job and $4000 in an outside job then it would have no affect on your EFC. If you earned the full $8000 in an outside job then your EFC would increase by 2000. Something to consider if you are eligible for need based grants such as Pell, ACG, etc. If you are not eligible for such aid and working non WS would not cause you to lose any aid, then it would probably not concern you.</p>
<p>My daughter has had WS and it paid a little over $9 an hour which, where her school is, is more than she could probably earn in an outside job (if she could even find one - she is discovering jobs are few and far between this summer).</p>
<p>The advantage I was talking about was wonderfully explained by swimcatsmom, above. (Thanks, swimcatsmom!) She, and the other experts that are over on the financial aid forum, have GREAT advice for questions like this.</p>
<p>to swimcatsmom: i go to ul and the tuition is more or less automatically paid as i got a full ride, so i dont have to worry about financial aid too much, also it wouldnt be like 8000 dollars, itd be more like 20,000 dollars a year, but thank you for a valid point</p>
<p>if it were small money id go with work study, but i have to keep myself alive(and screw loans, no) so the increase in money while suffering no increase in what ive to pay is worth it</p>
<p>incidently how many hours does she get, and is the outcome over 1120 like i mentioned bove(7usd<em>40hours</em>4weeks), if it is , well, im impessed by that program</p>
<p>dont mean to simply bump the post but i wanted to try to get one last wave of input before i cast it to the forsaken second page of the topic</p>