Parents of the HS Class of 2019 (Part 1)

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
19221

It’s great catching up with everything happening to all the class of 2019 parents and kids.

As for us, well, the past few weeks have been quite eventful.

My wife had accepted the position of director of an institute at a Big Midwestern Public University (BMPU), and I was offered (and accepted) a teaching (non-TT) position, as well as support and connections to find a non-academic job in the area. The jobs would start at the beginning of Spring Semester.

So, in Early December we had our (first) goodbye party, D19 got home on 12/14, the movers came on the 17th and 18th and took most of our stuff, and we started camping out in our house. We went to the New City (without D19) that weekend to meet our move at our rental here, and to make sure that it arrived safely.

During the time we were away, D19 both got her nose pierced, and snagged a summer internship with a Neuroscience professor at U Chicago.

On Monday we flew back to Chicagoland, went back to camping out at our house, where we had a goodbye party, as well our last Annual Hanukkah (and second goodbye) Party in Chicagoland, and celebrated the New Year in Russian Style with our Russian friends.

On the 2nd, having kinda recovered, we loaded D19 and all her stuff, the most important and irreplaceable items we own, and the cat, and drove to New City. On the 3rd, my wife and I both processed the paperwork for our new jobs at BMPU, and Saturday morning D19 flew back to Midd, where she started J-term.

My wife officially started working that Friday, and I taught my first class on Tuesday. BMPU messed up, and I had no access to my email account, nor could I access the class roster or class software at that point, nor did I actually have an ID card. On the other hand, I do have a TA, even though the class is relatively small, so not everything is bad. We also live pretty close to BMPU.

So it’s been a crazy few weeks here.

D19 was sad at having to say goodbye to the house she had lived in for the past years, and to the area in which she has lived for over 14 years (we moved within the suburb in the middle). She went through the entire 13 years of K-12, and has known a large portion of her classmates for that long, including her best friend (they’ve been BFFs since kindergarten). On the other hand, they’ve all gone off to college, almost all of them are at residential colleges (an inordinate number are as LACs, for some reason), so almost none are actually living at home anymore.

She does like our New City, though, and is excited to be able to spend some time here when she visits. She also knows that she will be able to spend time with her friends over the Summer, since she will be in Chicago.

It was so great to actually spend time with her, and we were sad to see her go. However, she is really enjoying her time at Midd, and did very well in her first term. We are thinking of, perhaps, flying out to the East Coast over her Spring Break (or at least for a weekend of it), and spending the weekend with her in New York or Boston. Otherwise, we may not see her until May.

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I’m in awe of your kids and their internship finding skills. My daughter has scoured the school’s job/internship database and everything sent around by her college/department via email and she’s not qualified or not the right year in school for almost any of them. She’s a gymnastics coach. A year of college (semester really since apps are due very soon) hasn’t qualified her for much more than that, unfortunately.

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@milgymfam In all honesty, she has the benefit of having parents who are academics, and from the fact that my wife has worked with neuroscientists in the past. So she was able to tap into our network to look for the internship, and we could provide her with advice on how to approach PIs about potential internships.

Also, I won’t deny that when a PI has is familiar with one of your parents in professional settings, the chances that they will hire you are higher.

So there was a good amount of, I guess, “academic privilege” going on here.

But she still was the one who reached out to the PI, set up the interview, took the train out to Hyde Park, and did very well in her interview, and I am extremely proud of her.

I just realized that I am, once again, an academic… hopefully not for very long

19224

Thanks everyone for sharing your housing experience. My D will apply for housing next year but chances to get accepted will be maybe 50/50, that’s what i heard. Some sophomores do stay on campus, but that’s a stretch and some has managed to get accepted.

She and her roommate wants to live together in a 2 bedroom apartment but i think it will be tough to find something like that near the campus with reasonable price. Looks like they will have to share rooms with others. Will keep looking.

Hope everyone has quality time with your kiddo over the break. Love reading all the updates!

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It’s definitely harder for rising sophs to find career-oriented internships, especially paid ones. Some (many?) of the high schoolers and first year college students that we see post on CC with science-y summer research jobs are not getting paid.

Depending on what she is looking for, she should continue emailing/calling profs that are doing things that interest her…either at her school, or a school near home.

If there are internships that she doesn’t fit the age requirements, there is no harm in following up in late spring to see if there might be openings…sometimes things don’t work out with those who were hired (remember, college kids!!), and a company has an opening close to the internship start date.

Lastly, for summer internships as a rising junior, many deadlines, especially business-y ones, are actually in the fall - Oct 31 and Nov 30 are common (so in 9-10 months for our kids that are college frosh right now). Students should use their college placement offices, but also sites like indeed.com, and linkedin. All should have a linkedin profile…now.

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@Mwfan1921 she has looked at unpaid internships too, even though that will leave her very short when it comes to fall since she’s supposed to make $3,000 this summer. She isn’t eligible for any internships in her field because she hasn’t taken the right foundational courses yet, and they’re not for rising sophomores anyway. Plus a few require students to pay for their own (international) travel for unpaid internships. She doesn’t have a linked in. I can talk to her about that but her resume will say what exactly (I guess she will find out as she has an appointment at the career center first week back)- she has coached gymnastics and volunteered a bunch doing menial tasks. That’s it. I will pass along the info about starting earlier in future years. All of the ones that are long-standing school partnerships have February deadlines but she’ll likely need to branch way out. We are moving 1,000 miles just after summer starts, and we don’t know where yet, so finding “local” opportunities is kinda a lost cause this year. She’ll be lucky to find a new job and cover some of her requirement.

Editing to add that she’s a linguistics and foreign language major, so stem-y internships are not for her (from both sides of that equation) and business-y ones probably not either? There are linguistics internships, but like I said… they are for rising juniors and seniors mostly.

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All makes sense. The benefit of having a Linkedin profile is that one can directly contact hiring managers vs. contacting someone/getting a response (or not)/sending a resume…it’s more efficient and has a higher likelihood of response, IMO but YMMV. LOL.

Sounds like a big move coming up, good luck!

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Sorry, not relevant

19229

Do rising sophomores really get internships (paid or unpaid)? S19 needs to get on that. He has no idea what he’s interested in when it comes to a career. Still too early for him. I assumed that internships were really for the older kids. He wants to come home at least for this first summer. It would be great if he made some money but it’s not crucial. He made $3000 bussing tables last summer and has spent a whopping $400 and that included books, eating out, laundry, taxi fare to and from the airport for both breaks, Christmas gifts for the family, and a $100 pair of running tights. He’s obviously not spending much.

What have your older kids done during this rising sophomore summer? He’s planning on going in to the career center and seeing what they suggest in terms of reaching out for internships. I know it might be a little late for some but I think those October due dates are more for the big internships for rising seniors. At the very least, I think he should plan to talk to some Bowdoin alums in Chicago and some people in our town about their careers so he can start getting a lay of the land when it comes to career options. He loves the idea of working for NASA one summer and his math prof gave him info on that. It will wait for another summer though.

He also has a $3000 stipend from Bowdoin for one of his summers to do whatever he wants. He could travel with it, do some big volunteering thing that doesn’t pay, or take an unpaid internship. I don’t think he should use it this summer but he’s going to ask at the career center how kids have used it in the past.

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A lot of kids from D19’s college get internships, starting even during freshman year for some of them, but it is kind of an internship oriented college which benefits from location. D19 herself for this summer though is more interested in a paid job in or near our hometown than an internship.

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@Nhatrang , my D17 is in LA at LMU so I can sympathize with the housing situation. I give her $1250 per month (12 months) which covers rent, utilities, and groceries, but it is tight. She’s also sharing a bedroom, 4 girls in a 2BR apt. It’s a very very nice apt, pool/hot tub/gym kind of posh and more luxury than they need, but in terms of location near to campus you either get kind-of-crappy-yet-still-very-expensive (right around campus) or nice-and-new-and-expensive (10 min away in Playa Vista). Next year she will be a senior and wants her own BR so she will probably go back to the closer to campus, older apts. Our goal is to keep her at what I can pay for from the 529, which is the amount of room and board for an on campus apt. It’s not easy; it takes work to find something in that budget. She also looked at houses last year which would have been right around the budget and gotten her own BR, but it was extremely competitive and after a couple of falling-throughs they gave up and went to an apt. The process started in Feb (for houses). I don’t know if it is as competitive and cutthroat in Berkeley, but that was a very unpleasant surprise last year.

As for internships, this older D17 came home and worked her first summer, earning money for spending the following school year. Restaurant server–nothing career related. Her soph summer she did summer school and a study abroad, and is only looking at internships now as a junior. DS19 will likely do the same for his first summer, come home and just earn money, and work on internships in later years. We might try to see if we can find something semi career related through connections, and there is a 2 day shadow process at our local childrens hospital that he will take advantage of. From what I have found, yes the big corporate internships have a fall application process, and our kids as freshies don’t qualify for many of those. Other internships open up now.

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My D16 used her school’s stipend for an unpaid internship the summer before junior year. Summer before senior year got a nice paid internship. The summer before sophomore year she worked in a paying not internship type of summer job. She looked into some internships for that year, but found that most of the ones she would be interested in went to rising juniors and seniors

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@wisteria100 i think that’s pretty typical. I’m having a hard time convincing my H that kids don’t get internships after freshman year. He keeps saying- so he shouldn’t try at all? Ugh.

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D19 is trying to get an internship this summer, but wants to come home and not stay at school.

We feel an internship can help in many ways: clarify career goals, understand business and the professional work environment, get experience in Word/PPT/Excel, and more.

So far she has identified a few opportunities that are open to rising sophs…there were more but some deadlines are well past. We shall see what happens!

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I’m going to push for D19 to stay in on campus housing all four years because all of her friends will be off campus by junior year but on campus is cheaper for her. She is blessed with a four year housing scholarship so even if off campus housing is cheaper for everyone else, it will cost her. She will likely be off campus for senior year if she’s saved up to pay for it herself.

She updated her resume and applied for some internships over break. She’s looking at REUs (undergrad research opportunities), but I don’t think she’ll actually apply because all of them require two letters of recommendation and she hates to ask for those. At her school, it is not unusual to have a paid internship after sophomore year and some get them after freshmen year. But it is a very STEM-heavy college & area. Her major isn’t engineering or computer science so her odds of getting a paid internship are low. She’s still trying & going to the career fair later this month to see if she can make a good impression in person. I’ll be encouraging her to set up a LinkedIn profile this summer & start earlier looking for summer in the fall.

Some of her friends have local part time jobs in their fields already. They got out to the fall career fair & had interviews partway through last semester. Two of her STEM friends are actually doing full time co-ops this semester already after only one semester of college. Crazy.

In her college area, some companies offer not only pay but also housing (and some cover lunch too) for their engineering/ comp sci/ data science/ cyber interns.

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I think it’s pretty unusual and hard to get a paid internship after freshman year, unless your kid is at a type of school described above, has connections or is in a business or STEM field (even then it’s unusual around here). Also, kids who need to make money are at a disadvantage with regard to internships. Both my kids need to make around $3000/summer and even my D17 who is an English major has had trouble finding internships - she didn’t the summer after freshman year, just worked as a nanny and a life guard. She’s finally really started working with the career center at her school and has been applying over this break. However, my concern with her is that she is less confident than she needs to be and sells herself short. When she reads the job description and sees the qualifications, she discounts them if she doesn’t meet every qualification. She doesn’t realize that some of the things can easily be learned by doing a little research or teaching herself. There are a lot of Turner/CNN/HLN internships in Atlanta that I think she’d be great at but she doesn’t feel she’s qualified. I told her “the point of an internship is to learn, not to know everything before you get there.” Ugh!
The good thing is that even if she just gets an unpaid internship for this summer, I think she will be able to get grant money from her college to help subsidize what she needs to earn.

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@elena13 Good luck to your D! I hope she puts herself out there and finds something!

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I once saw some research that found men apply to jobs if they meet 1/2 the stated requirements, whereas women only apply if they meet 80%+ of them. Crazy, and shows we need to help our D’s know the real deal! I doubt I could find that research again, but perhaps it’s google-able.

Good luck to her and hope she finds something great that she thinks she is underqualified for ?

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@milgymfam Your D should really get on LInkedin. Then, she can search for people who went to her college and see where they work and she can research those companies and then reach out to anyone who works somewhere she would like to work. Doesn’t hurt to reach out and introduce herself. S19’s hasn’t done that yet but it will be part of his plan at some point - if not this summer then next summer.

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Thanks @homerdog and @Mwfan1921 . I will definitely keep trying to get her to go for things and help her try to sell herself (although I’m not very good at myself). I just know she can do some of these jobs! Plus, there aren’t going to be many jobs wanting her to analyze 19th century British literature, which she’d also be great at. :smiley: