<p>Is the amount that Smith advises for costs not billed accurate.</p>
<p>I've been given a Campus Work Award with which I can earn a maximum of $2,100 for my first year. According to the letter I can use that to cover costs that aren't billed to my student account.</p>
<p>These include books, travel to and from Smith College, personal expenses and house dues (this is according to the general terms and conditions that came with my letter).</p>
<p>My question is will the amount I earn from my campus job be enough to cover that? </p>
<p>I'm hoping to hear from students that are either at Smith now, have left in the last few years or parents who have kids there currently.</p>
<p>It will of course depend on how much your books cost and how much your travel costs (and how many personal expenses you accrue), but I would say that’s pretty sufficient. </p>
<p>Let’s say you use it for books and laundry:
Books, just to throw a figure out there, might run you $300 a semester
Laundry, if you do three loads a week at $2.70 for a complete wash and dry cycle, every week for a 14 week semester (counting your vacation time): $115 per semester </p>
<p>So that’s $415 per semester or $830 for the year. Which leaves you with $1270 for the rest of the year. Which is plenty, especially considering you’re a first year so you don’t need the money for “going to the bar with friends” personal expenses, but for going to the movies and buying toothpaste and printing and so on. Basically, after books and laundry it’s a budget of around $50 a week for the whole year, which I think is plenty.</p>
<p>To be clear, though – you don’t get that $2100 in work study unless you put in the equivalent amount of hours at your job throughout the year. I don’t know what the campus base rate is any more, but if you get a “typical” first-year job in the dining rooms you’ll only be making the minimum. (To be fair, most jobs at Smith only pay the minimum. And you don’t have to work in the dining rooms as a first-year, but it’s the easiest job to get. Many other on-campus jobs go to the upper classes before the end of the prior year.)</p>
<p>Thanks. The amount I get from work-study will be about 90% of what I have to cover personal expenses so I just wanted to make sure it would be enough, so basically if I’m careful I should be fine :)</p>
<p>@borgin</p>
<p>I will be putting in the equivalent hours to earn the $2,100. Even at minimum wage (which is $8.25/hour according to the website) I don’t think the hours I’d be working would be too bad.</p>