<p>It’s not that easy to get jobs on campus if it’s not work study from what my kid told me. He tried, as he was eligible to get a non work study job, but there are very few of those on his campus. Someone like SteveMA kids wouldn’t be eligible for work study either, as you need to qualify for FA to get it.</p>
<p>My college had 2 different programs: work study and student employment. Work study was need based, student employment wasn’t. If they wanted to hire you they could. Work study wasn’t counted as income when you filled out the FAFSA since it was need based, student employment was.</p>
<p>mom, that is how it is at my son’s school, two different programs, but each job has a specific designation. My son is not eligible for any job designated as work study and there are very few in the other category. He is at a small school so perhaps at a bigger school there are a lot more jobs available.</p>
<p>I worked 20 hrs/week in college. NOT good. S1’s college had a specific limit on how much students were allowed to work.</p>
<p>S2 has had work/study and student employment. Jobs were $8-10/hr, about 10 hrs/ week, though just because one gets a W/S grant for $2,000/year doesn’t mean that they will actually get enough hours to make that much $$. This year’s W/S job didn’t start til late October, buy which point S was beyond broke. He pays for books, personal expenses, local transit out of his earnings plus takes out a Stafford towards tuition/room & board.</p>
<p>S1 was able to parlay his programming skills into good $$, so he would work during the summer, have what he needed to cover expenses during the year, and then put some away for his start-up expenses after graduation. He was darned lucky and it was not your typical scenario.</p>
<p>CuriousJane–Truman isn’t a “reach” school. It’s auto-admit with a 27 ACT.</p>
<p>20 hours/week–what else are your kids doing–say they are in 3 classes/day and they study 2 hours/day/class, and being easy, they start classes at 9:00–they are done with class and studying by 6:00 PM. They would work from 7-10 a couple nights/week and work a couple 5 hour shifts on Saturday/Sunday. That is NOT hard to do for ANYONE except maybe an athlete. This would be VERY easy to do for someone that HAS to work or even someone that just wants extra spending money.</p>
<p>As for expenses–Jane, really, you are counting SUMMER food costs into your expenses for the SCHOOL YEAR. I think you are grasping at straws now…subway fare, no subways to worry about in 99% of the cities in the US…</p>
<p>
Well, SteveMA should have let on that she lives in Lake Woebegone, where “all the children are above average.” That explains everything.</p>
<p>At my D’s school, virtually all the on campus jobs are reserved for work-study kids. Outside of campus, it’s retail and food service jobs that pay a pittance and require time commitments (e.g., working a full lunch or dinner shift at a restaurant or a minimum of eight hours at a retailer) that don’t mesh well with classes and extracurricular activities. My D is responsible for most of her personal expenses and has had to cobble together several babysitting jobs totalling about 10 hours a week in order to fit work into her schedule. There’s no way she could have come up with twenty hours of work a week. And lets’ not forget that some of the students we’re talking about are in demanding fields that require labs, group projects, and tons of studying time. </p>
<p>As for the directional schools in CT–they’re cheap and are good choices for a teaching degrees, but mediocre choices for many other majors, plus they have heavy commuter components and big drinking cultures. Just not acceptable choices for my kids.</p>
<p>SteveMA- a 27 on the ACT is the 88th percentile.</p>
<p>While working 20 hours a week on top of 9 hour academic days is certainly possible it doesn’t leave much time for anything else. Your hypothetical student doesn’t have time to eat lunch. Forget about a weeknight lecture or simply socializing in the dorm. Make your student an athlete and it becomes almost impossible.</p>
<p>Summer costs matter because they reduce the amount a student can put toward tuition. If a community doesn’t have a subway how is your student going to get to their summer job? The cost to operate a car for the summer is certainly going to be more than $100 a month.</p>
<p>Steve, a 27 ACT is the 89th %ile, a school that uses 27 as their auto admit cut off will indeed be a reach for most students. The high performing suburban public school that my son attends has an average SAT of 1740, which is a 25/26 on the SAT. In other words most students at that school would not be auto admits to Truman. The average SAT in the country is 20. For most students in this country Truman is, indeed, a reach. </p>
<p>As for subway, substitute bus, or costs associated with a car or whatever. The reality, as many people have spelled out, is that most students are not able to find 20 hours of work on campus, even if they have workstudy. Working off campus often means some kind of expense. I included subway because that’s what I know. In your family and your location it may mean having a car or chipping in on gas for a co-worker you ride with. In other places it may mean the bus. However, many students who work off campus incur transportation costs, just like I did. </p>
<p>As for including the summer, you stated that a student attending Truman could easily earn enough to contribute $9,000 towards tuition, room and board, plus cover what Truman estimates as $5,000 in other expenses across the year. Since that already seems like an optimistic amount for a freshman or sophomore to earn, I figured you were covering summer expenses such as transportation to and from work, and food when away from home. Are you figuring that it’s reasonable that most students be able to contribute $9,000 and $5,000 and summer expenses? What do you think is a reasonable amount, after taxes, for an 18 year old to earn?</p>
<p>Steve, I’m happy that your kids have the opportunities they do, and I hope to follow some of your advice and achieve the same result for my kid, but to imply that the experience of your children, with their 97th %ile scores and their privileged upbringing, is “normal” and that anyone whose experience is different is wrong or irresponsible is absurd.</p>
<p>“The high performing suburban public school that my son attends has an average SAT of 1740, which is a 25/26 on the SAT.”</p>
<p>Technically, auto admits have a higher threshold than average students. In Texas, auto admits have to be in top 10 percent. </p>
<p>Auto admit using a standardized test is an interesting concept. UT Dallas has a score of 1200 (M+CR) or 1800 for all three areas or 26 in ACT. However, their class rank is set to top 15% in State of Texas high school, slightly lower than state requirement at 10%. So your school is doing a lot better since 45% or so probably can get into UT Dallas since there are probably that many who may have scored 1800? The score threshold for auto admits has been set up to account for schools that are higher performing where a rank is not reflective of the caliber of the student.</p>
<p>S2’s work/study job this fall was off campus. Costs $$ and time for public transit to get there. He does not have a car. That was not part of our CountingDown Family Contribution. There are very few non W/S jobs on his campus, though he did have one freshman year (washing dishes @ the dining hall). He has never had a typical summer/school year-type job turn into as many hours as he was promised. That includes jobs on-campus, off-campus and at home. </p>
<p>If one is doing an unpaid internship/research at some place other than home during the summer, a lot of folks wind up picking up a job at night to cover living expenses. Still gotta eat and have a place to sleep!</p>
<p>In our area, it costs $13/day to take public transit from our house into Washington, DC (bus to Metro station and reverse). That adds up when it’s not a paid gig.</p>
<p>My 20 hr/wk job was at the dining hall – 4-8 pm weekdays, and I picked up weekend shifts whenever possible. A lot of my classes had study groups or group projects that met during my normal working hours – because the other kids were headed off to sorority/frat parties in the evening (big SEC school). Professors were strikingly unconcerned about the conflict and told me to miss work. Um, not possible. Got a D on a major project because every meeting was during a time I had to work. Got high As on every other test/assignment in the course.</p>
<p>Heck, getting a gig with Google Summer of Code wouldn’t even come close to meeting SteveMA’s expectation of a student earning $8-9,000 over the summer.</p>
<p>“20 hours/week–what else are your kids doing–say they are in 3 classes/day and they study 2 hours/day/class, and being easy, they start classes at 9:00–they are done with class and studying by 6:00 PM.”</p>
<p>My son does a sport, is in two clubs, plus is a rep on student government. He also has a social life. And, imo, those types of things are an important part of college life.</p>
<p>Popping the popcorn and pulling up a seat…</p>
<p>CountingDown–where did steve say earn $8-9000 over the summer???</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Let’s see…CuriousJane interpreted what you said along the same lines that I did. </p>
<p>$3,000 = student summer earnings
$4,500 = 50% of $1,000/mo of parents’ EFC, which parents expect student will earn from the 20 hr/week job times nine month school year </p>
<p>This assumes $3000 and $4500 NET after taxes and Social Security, since we have to pay colleges out of take-home income. Also assumes that none of these earnings are work/study, which are treated slightly differently for taxes/SS. </p>
<p>Add back in Social Security/Medicare taxes – $7,500*1.0765 = $8,073.00</p>
<p>This does not include federal/state taxes, which a student will have to pay because this level of earnings exceeds the standard exemption amount (roughly $5500).</p>
<p>So yes, it does seem you expect a college student should be able to throw $8-9k into the pot.</p>
<p>Most colleges expect a student to contribute $2-3000 year towards college expenses. That does NOT count against the parents’ contribution. It’s in ADDITION. Our FA packages broke out what was “our” contribution and what was the “kid’s” contrib to get a total EFC. At many schools, Stafford loan packages for students eligible for FA are part of the aid, not a bonus amount to help reduce parental EFC. Staffords can reduce parental/student EFC if there is very little/no financial “need.”</p>
<p>I’m going to spin off a thread about working during college, because I think this is fascinating, but I also feel as though we’ve taken poor lmkh’s thread way off it’s original topic. Sorry about that lmkh!</p>
<p>^ lmkh’s intent is being served quite well with this discussion. How does one make up the budget and whether it is realistic to assume a kid can earn some of the costs is an important factor.</p>
<p>I just want to say that S was never able to find a regular summer job in our area, although he signed up with several temp agencies AND aggressively marketed his services as a tutor. He was not alone, as I know at least one kid who went back to his college town in another state because he could get work there. He knew a few kids who had jobs they had held in HS, and one or two others who had jobs through family members.</p>
<p>steve, it’s a pity that your posts have such a condescending tone to them- which I’m sure is inadvertent, since you have so much good information to communicate. But a 20 hour a week on campus job for a full time college student is both A- virtually impossible to get at many colleges which cap the number of hours a student can get and B- makes it extremely difficult to keep up with course work, not to mention all the other extras going on at college. My kids had seminars that ran into the evening (so your example of a typical day where classes all end at “quitting time” is erroneous); any project work that needs to be done in a workshop or laboratory or involves time at a campus studio for the arts or for music labs gets scheduled between 8- midnight- and often a student takes what they can get.</p>
<p>Can a needy student find a way to juggle a 20 hour work week if that’s literally the only thing keeping him or her in college? Absolutely. Would any of us who have worked in college recommend setting a family budget that relies on the kids 20 hour a week contribution (if such a job even exists, which in many places it does not?) - Don’t think so.</p>
<p>My kids attended colleges in large urban areas. So yes- they had access to jobs off campus. But if your kid is spending an hour each way on the subway or bus to then work a 5 hour shift four days a week, then back to the dorm- I mean jeez. Or even worse- a four hour shift 5 days a week! More time in transit.</p>
<p>So most kids want/need those on campus jobs-- and if the college caps them at 10 hours, then what?</p>
<p>I think your summer work estimates are also unrealistic.</p>
<p>But hey, it’s great if this has been your children’s experience- and my hats off to them for finding such lucrative campus jobs. But the typical food service/shelving library books jobs at most colleges don’t pay anything near what your budgeting would require.
And you are wildly underestimating study time for kids working tough majors at highly competitive colleges. My kids would have been out on their rear ends academically with the hours you cite- let alone not having time to explore the leadership opportunities on campus which ultimately led to lucrative jobs once they graduate.</p>
<p>didn’t read the whole thread but agree with the posters who have said to minimize debt. I just worked this week with a young lady who recently graduated with a degree in one of the arts, got a job working in her chosen field - making less than $20,000 per year. Applied for a car loan but was turned down because her debt to income ratio would be 104% with the loan. The only other debt she has was her $100,000+ student loan. Debt has a way of creeping up and getting bigger and bigger. This girl will live her days in her mother’s home since there is no way she could afford to live even in a modest apartment on her own. Buying her own home will be out of the question on her own. In retrospect, this family had other less expensive choices but in the heat of the excitement of the college choice it is easy to get wrapped up in the moment. No one focuses on the aftermath and really gives these kids full disclosure of what they are getting into with these loans. We sat down with our kids and an amortization schedule to let them see exactly what different amounts of debt would look like. So far no loans for either of them. Not at first choice schools but at fine schools where they are getting a great education and are both happy. Stick to your guns with no loans. Once you start for one, it will be hard to say no for the rest of the kids.</p>
<p>Agree that loans have a nasty way of limiting life choices and following you for a very long time. One parent confided in me that she was reluctant to endorse her D’s choice of spouse because of his significant (6 figure) college & grad school debt. They hve gotten married anyway and have since added to the debt by selling his condo & buying a nice house in a great neighborhood as well as two new cars. She is fortunate that her job pays well but sadly will have to go back to work shortly after her maternity leave because they have so much debt.</p>
<p>I feel very fortunate that because H & I had so little debt, I was able to remain home with our kids for many years after they were born. This was something H & I valued and we were able to live off his income and even purchase a home (which we rented out). We could never have lived off only one income with a crushing load of debt.</p>
<p>I agree that incurring unnecessary debt is a bad idea, especially if there are good schools where your child can get a good education with NO debt.</p>