<p>Hi guys,</p>
<p>I have a question- how hard is it to pay for a Wellesley education? I applied ED because I thought that Wellesley was affordable. Today, however, I learned that I'm not to receive a cent from the finaid estimate. <em>sigh</em> I can't say that it isn't feasible for me to pay, but my family doesn't have a extremely high income either. I'm afraid that I'm going to have to work every summer... and sacrifice my study abroad options so that I can scrape by for college. </p>
<p>Are there any current Wellesley students working/paying their full tuition fee? Is it hard? What kinds of people don't go on the study abroad trips? Are my fears legit?</p>
<p>Whoa, what do you mean ur not to recieve a cent from the finaid estimate???</p>
<p>Damselfly, Can you give me your facebook ID or something?
I applied for finaid too, but since i'm sitting in india, i havent yet recieved my package - and now you're making me reallly nervous.</p>
<p>damselfly,</p>
<p>Obviously, I can't talk about your specific situation because I don't have all the details (and no need to feel like you have to divulge financial specifics), but I just wanted to say that there are a lot of students who work during the school year. I was on financial aid and I had an on campus job throughout my 4 years. Also, I worked every summer as well.</p>
<p>Work study students on financial aid have preference for on campus jobs, but there are plenty of non financial aid students who have on campus jobs as well. Also, a good number of students work jobs in the ville, such as at the Gap, Ann Taylor, etc. etc. Another good source of income is babysitting for families in the area. Cash in your pocket and no taxes taken out!</p>
<p>As for study abroad, if you are on financial aid, then your finaid carries over with you. It sounds like this would not be your case as you didn't receive any aid. I didn't study abroad because I was a science major and it's a little more difficult to go abroad. While a good portion of the student body goes away their junior year, there are many who don't. I know that the CWS has information on paid summer internships that students can apply for and do, some which are overseas. I don't think there's any stipulation of financial aid for these opportunities.</p>
<p>I'm trying to think of the people who I knew were definitely not on financial aid (I rarely knew either way) and the subset of those who never had some sort of paying job over the summer or during the year. Granted I've never done an exhaustive survey, but so far I've come up with zero.</p>
<p>Now there are two kinds of jobs you can get: jobs that you do for the money and jobs that you do because they are good jobs to have. The former are things like retail, babysitting, dining hall, desk worker. The latter are things like grader, tutor, computing consultant, lab assistant- the sort of thing you could put on a resume when applying for a job after college, or gets you well acquainted with people in a department, etc..</p>
<p>I do know of one student whose parents are not contributing and she does not get financial aid- so yes, she works for the full fee. She works a lot, and has several jobs, though most of them are in the latter category: the good-jobs-to-have category. She also was somehow taking 6 units one semester last year (choir+ music lessons + five classes) plus several time intensive extra-curriculars and doesn't need sleep or food like some kind of freak of nature (I had several discussions about this with her and she insists food and sleep are unnecessary- as is spare time). I don't know exactly what she makes or pays.</p>
<p>I didn't go abroad because of my major. Just under half the Junior class goes, really. But they try to fix it so tuition and all that doesn't change to make abroad more affordable. If it's something you already have your heart set on, don't chuck out the materials you get sophomore year straight away.</p>
<p>I have heard (okay, this is an ambiguous guess) of some students who don't get much FA the first year, but reapply and get more later on from Wellesley. Perhaps you should look into this.</p>