<p>After reviewing tons of data and trying to budget a hypothetical four years at Penn, I have arrived at these raw facts:</p>
<p>I will need to earn $2-3,000 over the course of the school year (on top of work-study) and find a summer job going into my junior and senior years that will pay $3-4,000. These are basically constant. They will not change.</p>
<p>Before I take the plunge, I want to hear stories. I want any current/former Penn students who had to finance themselves in a like manner to tell me how it went. I want to know how draining, exhausting it was. I want to know how it impacted your social life, academic life, campus participations, internships, everything. And I want to hear from more than just LegendofMax.</p>
<p>^Penn summers are actually closer to 16 weeks–if I go back right before classes start next semester, I’ll actually have 17 weeks. Crazy. And I end the second to last day of finals. The summer income shouldn’t be an issue. Just from my calculations though, making $2,000-3,000 on TOP of work study during the school year doesn’t seem doable. If you made $10 an hour (generous) and worked 10 hours a week, it would take 20-30 weeks to make that money, and the school year is about 30 weeks. But when you already have the hours you’ll be working to cover your work study contribution, that just doesn’t seem feasible.</p>
<p>Why do you think you need $2,000-3,000 on top of work study? (Most people do work study, by the way). You’re going to be on a meal plan that will give you dining dollars, so you really don’t need cash.</p>
<p>Work study is part of the “grant”, so if I just don’t do it I effectively lose $3,100 that they “gave” me.</p>
<p>But anyways, if summer is like 15 weeks and the school year is 30, I’m doing the math and ending up with 7 more weeks. How realistic is it to get short term jobs during breaks? Do they pay? Do employers want to take on students for these short intervals? Would it once again be too taxing an experience?</p>
<p>In a nutshell, I have to earn, “on average”, $5,750 each year to keep up with the average cost they gave for meal plans, personal expenses, housing, and books. This includes summer, school, and “break” earnings…on top of work-study.</p>
<p>Once again, I would greatly appreciate stories from Penn students’ experiences.</p>
<p>Do you live nearby? A friend of mine at Villanova keeps a job at home (in NJ), works a few weekends here or there, and works full time during breaks and summer. This helps with her other expenses. Maybe you could do something like this?</p>
<p>My friend works two jobs for a total of 25 hours a week at Penn. While he is pretty busy it’s absolutely doable, and he still goes out on Friday’s on Saturdays and is active in two or three different clubs.</p>
<p>How much is your friend earning?/How much does your friend <em>need</em> to earn for the whole year? I’m going to jump the gun and say you don’t know.</p>
<p>I’m looking for someone with experience having to earn $5,000+ per year at Penn.</p>
<p>I think I made a little over $6500 last year before taxes (just got my tax returns, whoo!), and that was working part-time during the school year (around 8-12 hours per week) and full-time during the summer. Definitely manageable. I work in a microbiology lab, so the work is related to my major which is a bonus.</p>
<p>Ugh, yeah. I mean, federal/state taxes take a good chunk out of your paycheque but you can take comfort in knowing you’ll get it all back in April. The city tax on the other hand is gone forever… I think it’s almost 4% (depending on whether you’re a resident or not)</p>
<p>I’m not sure if you’ll be able to find somebody to hire you for a week or two at a time during breaks, but you should be able to find some sort of work online. For example, I have a few friends that work for ChaCha and they just look up answers to questions whenever they have free time. They make about 20 cents per question and get a check after they earn $100 (they also said that their pay seems to average around $9-$10 an hour). . .I’m not sure if this will be enough, but it could certianly be a way to earn a few hundred bucks over breaks.</p>
<p>It all depends on how you’re arriving at your numbers, how much aid you have, how much free time you want, and whether or not you have to pay for all your own food/clothes/entertainment/whatever. Getting $5k on top of work study is easy when you factor summer earnings into everything, if that’s what you’re asking. Getting $2k extra during the year is doable if you can hold a couple of jobs on top of your classes.</p>
<p>Finding work during breaks is doable – I did this too. A few times, though, I stayed on campus and worked research assistant positions that I normally had during the year anyway. The cool part about the breaks is that it’s a prime time for racking up a ton of hours that you normally can’t do during the active school year.</p>
I think it’s almost 4% (depending on whether you’re a resident or not)</p>