<p>At the end of day, even those highly regarded institutions still need full paying students, and that’s why there are so many students at Yale who never worked. Such is life.</p>
<p>RacinReaver,
"Miami, if your daughter is such a standout student, certainly a professor in her department would have a paid position for her to do research over the summer. "</p>
<p>-It is naive assumption. She was hand picked by one of her profs to be his assistant during academic year - paid job until she graduates. She has non-paid intership in Research Lab again during academic year. She has applied to do research over summer and it still remains to be seen if she gets it. Kids with connections and URMs are ahead of all others, there are very few spots available. D. has plenty of experience both paid and unpaid in research and her GPA=4.0, both of which do not guarantee anything at all and she is very well aware of it. She has no idea what she would be doing otherwise during summer. She does not need to take summer classes either, and that would be expensive in comparison, since summer is not covered by her Merit Scholarships that cover her regular semesters.</p>
<p>Miami, perhaps you daughter could see if her institution has a research program. I know that some colleges have established programs to connect students to research professors. I don’t know where your daughter goes to school but the school probably has a program like this, although it may be too late to apply.</p>
<p>If it is, often times professors will allow students to work in their labs free and independent of any type of program. She could directly email some professors and set up an ad hoc summer research position.</p>
<p>I own a small store in a small town. Lots of young women, friends of my daughter’s, have approached me for a job, and then let me know their available schedule, which is always laughable. They can’t work on x day because of piano lessons, or a hike or sporting activity; it goes on and on. Working is definitely their lowest possibly priority. Finally, this fall, a young girl came in and when I asked her availability, she said “well, when do you need me?” I hired her and predict she will go farther in life than all of busier friends.</p>
<p>Well, in some areas of knowledge work, the employees do frequently set their own hours. They can work anywhere where there is a broadband connection. We have many that spend several weeks in Asia to visit family and they bring a laptop and work at night even though they are technically on vacation. We have snowbirds that live in the South during the winter and in the office during the summer. People that can’t sleep at night can just log on and do their work or you can work in your car while waiting to pick up your child from school.</p>
<p>Of course the people that you are hiring aren’t at that level yet but they may be used to seeing their parents with very flexible work schedules and think that it’s the norm.</p>
<p>“Of course the people that you are hiring aren’t at that level yet but they may be used to seeing their parents with very flexible work schedules and think that it’s the norm.”</p>
<p>Such students, however, are putting a higher priority on their ECs than on getting a job. Obviously, they are fortunate to not to have to work or else their priorities would be reversed.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>They may be responding to what they believe should be the priorities for getting into their top pics.</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate but often times we have to do for show, things that we don’t want to do or have no interest in.</p>
<p>“They may be responding to what they believe should be the priorities for getting into their top pics.”</p>
<p>That may be why they are applying for jobs, too: Looking for resume decoration, not the money or experience that one can get from working a job. They want to fill in that “job” blank on their college apps.</p>
<p>I was trying to give some of the parents here a glimpse from the employer’s point of view. I like many of these kids, but I can certainly tell the difference between someone who needs and wants to work and will be a team player in my business from someone who thinks a job might look good on a resume or might be fun if it easily fits into their life. If your kids are seriously looking for a job don’t hurt their chances by giving them a long list of times they can’t be available. Just from an employer’s point of view.</p>
<p>Both of my kids worked regular jobs in specialty retail for several years in high school – essentially, from their 16th birthdays on. On a personal level, each of them found it rewarding. Both became very knowledgeable about the products their employers sold, and developed their own profiles in our community. The first regularly won sales contests, and was allowed to do artistically creative work sometimes that gave her an outlet for an interest in visual art that she couldn’t really pursue at school. The second child also worked as a camp counselor during the summer (which he loved) and had a regular volunteer job relating to his academic interests as well (assisting in a paleontology lab four hours/week, and occasionally giving tours of it to school groups).</p>
<p>Both had less success in college admissions than their “stats” and other objective indicators would have suggested, especially the second. Therefore, it would be hard to use their experience to prove that college admissions valued work to any significant extent. But both really liked the working (and the getting paid) anyway.</p>
<p>Dbate,
“Miami, perhaps you daughter could see if her institution has a research program.”
- D. is interning at Research lab and also has a paid job assisting one of her profs during academic year. She is trying to get summer job, which seems to be very difficult for everyone, no matter what qualifications and where they are.</p>
<p>I worked as a (summer school) teacher’s aide in my school (public) - in science department for 7 hours/ day. I got little over than minimum wages.
But all the science dept got to know me- As far as I know I got excellent recs( they tell me so !!)
I made enough money for all my college apps. </p>
<p>I have two LLs so far </p>
<p>I feel I made a wise decision.</p>
<p>^Any job offer to any position is always welcomed in our family. Of course, you made a wise decision.</p>
<p>Sometimes having that minimum-wage experience helps people make the most of other, more desireable opportunities. My employer runs a summer internship program for high schoolers that is highly sought after, the sort of thing that looks great on a college app. Plus, it pays the students. Most of the high schoolers taking part are bright and hard-working.</p>
<p>Then there was the kid–a rising high school senior-- I supervised about a decade ago. He hailed from a local high school filled with high-achieving kids. The very well-off parents expect their progeny to attend tippy-top schools. My intern seemed nice enough, but he certainly was no go-getter. He never volunteered to do anything, he needed a lot of instruction and reminders. My co-worker and I needed to spend a lot of time supervising him, but he seemed to be getting the hang of doing the work we needed him to do.</p>
<p>I’d scheduled some vacation time partway through the summer, and my co-worker was going to be doing business travel, so we drew up a detailed list of tasks for the intern to complete for the coming week. We went over the plan with him in detail; there was nothing he’d not done before. We emphasized certain deadlines. When we returned, not only was a lot of the work undone, we discovered he’d barely been present, yet he’d filled out his timecard as if he’d been working a full schedule. Serious, serious timecard fraud. Due to the nature of our work and employer, this was an especially, seriously bad thing.</p>
<p>He was fired, of course. Not paid. Subjected to scathing lectures up the command chain. Here’s to hoping he got his act straightened out. </p>
<p>Dbate, this is certainly not you by any measure, but I can see some high school kids thinking that getting into the program was the hard part, and not paying any mind to actually doing the work. My hapless ex-intern probably have been better off starting at a job and work environment that wasn’t quite as lush.</p>
<p>I started working as a tutor( self employed ) from 9th grade-I never made enough money to pay taxes, But I had enough to buy my own laptop. In this ecconomy I am greatful that I got a job. I think I am well prepared to handle money when I go to college. I also know that even in the most mundane work environment you have to give 100%.</p>
<p>I was totally envious when I heard, last summer, that my son’s friends were going off to one of those really expensive school programs and then taking elaborate exotic traveling excursions from there for weeks. My son stayed home and worked a summer job at an ice cream shop. He didn’t love working, but it was a fun summer nonetheless: making money and hanging out. Such is life in this affluent town.</p>
<p>In the end, my son has been accepted at 2 schools and waiting for others. His friends are still in limbo, (but I’m thinking money talks).</p>
<p>I hired an intern last summer who only worked at a retail store. He was a clerk at a wireless retail store. Without getting paid for it, he designed an inventory system for the store during his spare time. It created regular reports to flag which items needed to be re-ordered. He also came up with a package to marekt to incoming freshmen at his school. Just because it’s a minimum wage job, one could still show initiative and leadership. I hired him over other applicants because of extra projects he did at the retail store.</p>
<p>At the end it works for everybody. When D. did not get into her #1 program, although she got into college with huge Merit package, she did not hesitated for a moment, not a sad 2 minutes, went to her #2 and very happy junior there. I am glad she was cool about it, not worth loosing sleep about it. Place that takes your kid, will appreciate him and give him the best opportunities, no reason to try hard to break thru locked door when so many are wide open. All those little things (like job or no job…) will look so unimportant.</p>
<p>If everyone in the world had to work customer service at one point in their lives, the world would be a much better place.</p>
<p>They’d probably be a lot less rude if they had had to work customer service at some point. You made my point for me.</p>