“Just thinking about helping your kid get into college is enough to make you want to stroke your (imaginary) beard and yell, ‘In my day we didn’t need to speak four languages, study cello at Julliard and intern at a start-up! We just babysat and called it a day!’ But before you preach about the obvious benefits of working part time (gas money, grit), consider what really matters to admissions officers. Here, some surprising expert advice.” …
The article conveys to me the distance between college admissions counselors and real people who have jobs because they need money, not to embellish their chances of getting into college.
I never encouraged my kids to get jobs before college. For two reasons: 1) during the school year they were already very busy, 2) during the summers they were going to camp (debate camp) or pre-college programs (art program in Chicago). Job? For what???
When they entered college, I asked them to find sources of income during summers to keep them busy and to provide some spending money for when they returned to school. It was a natural for my son to work (for pay) in a university debate camp. For my daughter, doing some woodwork was good experience since she was studying industrial design in college.
What a useless article. Note the ‘experts’ quoted are all paid consultants. All are a little out of touch with reality. My kids have all had summer jobs- their idea and I’m glad they had the experiences they’ve had.
Oh come on, I don’t think it’s necessarily all that bad. The point I got out of it, and which I think is valid, is that if a student wants to use their job experience as something to help them get in to their college of choice, they need to be able to talk about what they learned from it, how it helped them mature, and/or how it helped develop their interests, regardless of what the job is. The job itself is generally not all that important and is not necessarily going to pique an AO’s interest (by itself) – it is more about how this experience fits in to the student’s development, just as with any other extracurricular activity…
Regardless of whether one is trying to use it for college admissions, personally I think work experience can be extremely valuable in a young person’s development, and is worth pursuing for that in and of itself.
I do agree with the sentiment implied in this thread, as an anti-thesis to the linked article, that we as parents should not be thinking about everything in terms of our children’s college admissions chances, we should instead be focused on their development towards becoming independent adults able to support themselves, contribute to society, and live a fulfilling life. I believe if we focus on those things, college admissions will take care of itself!
Note that it’s from the UK so it may not apply … Also, those are high end private consultants so they’re mostly speaking to upper middle to uper class families.
Finally, in my experience, having a mundane job and keeping it DOES matter, either as a reflection of work ethics/ working class ethics, or as an opportunity to meet with people different from you in age, background, origin…
But as with everything, when it comes to highly selective colleges, what matters most is your ability to reflect upon your experience.
For my kids, it’s never been about college admissions. (Yeah, I know… hard for some to fathom. But there ARE parts of our family life that have absolutely nothing to do with college or college admissions.)
I think that encouraging your kids to get a job is one of the most important things you can do. Jobs are different than schoolwork. I’ve always been a huge proponent of kids having part time jobs.
As a teacher, my job is to encourage my kids, to give them extra help when it’s needed, to push them to do the best for themselves… the focus is all on them and their growth.
But my kids’ employers don’t have that same focus. Their emphasis is on keeping solvent, on paying their mortgage. My kids are expected to do the job they’re getting paid for.
As a teacher I’ll try to work around my kids when there’s too much on their plate; I’ll reschedule a test if I can if my kids are swamped. My kids’ employers don’t work that way.
All 3 of my kids have had jobs since shortly after their 15th birthdays… my son was walking dogs after 8th grade. I think it’s contributed in a huge way to the adults they are and are becoming. My youngest just started 2 weeks ago, and is already learning so much that school simply can’t teach her.
Work for pay is an amazing teaching experience for kids. It’s reality. It’s about responsibility and accountability. And - it might teach our future masters of the universe a little humility. It’s a good lesson to do a menial job - bus a table/ rake a lawn/ hammer a nail - so that you might have a little empathy for the person who does it for a living.
I agree with the link you posted that many in the ivory tower look down on work vs community service and since most of our kids are obsessed with college… in the end,community service might be the more utilitarian choice.
I am encouraging our son to get a fast food job this summer. Ultimately, he/we do not need the money and he is typically very busy but I think there is a lot to learn working a difficult job and interacting with the public. I think it will help him later in life, not necessarily in college admissions, but if it does somehow that would be great.
My kids all worked summers after they turned 16. They needed gas money and to learn to manage money in general. One of many life lessons totally separate from formal education. I could frankly care less how colleges “view” that parenting style. Our job was to raise our kids to adulthood capable of managing time, money, and their own decisions of which formal education is just one data point.
FWIW, I would suspect that the “highly paid” consultants quoted in this article most likely had served as admissions officers (somewhere) prior to going into consulting.
I know a lovely young woman who did very well in college admissions writing about what she learned from spending summers scooping ice cream.
Older son worked in computer programming summers and part time junior and senior years of high school. Younger son sold jewelry and worked one summer for me part time doing presentation drawings.
My daughter got a job at fifteen as a hostess in a restaurant. She worked to pay off the remaining balance for her study abroad program and spending money. One month after she returned from her program and caught up in school, she started working in the same restaurant again. I am on a very tight budget and was giving her $10 a week allowance and as you can imagine, that isn’t much to work with as a teen. The idea of college admissions never factored into the equation, as my daughter is in the group of kids who has to have a job if she wants spending money. I provide the necessities such as food, clothing, shelter, and she pays for the rest. Recently, she wanted a full length mirror as I don’t have one - nor do I want one as a middle-aged woman - so, she bought it herself. As momofthreeboys stated, she is learning to budget, save etc… These are all great life lessons regardless of your socio-economic level.
I will admit that I did buy a bike for her when she returned because I no longer have a car. Her bike is her mode of transportation to and from school and work. My daughter offered to pay me back, but I decided to give it to her as an early Christmas present. In the long run, this is probably a wash as I no longer have to buy bus passes for her.
Given that the article quoted entirely from private college counselors, it’s probably a view skewed toward their clientele, mostly wealthier families. So perhaps they are in essence answering a different question – whether an affluent teenager should get a job for the sake of improving admission chances.
So that’s a different question from the economic and/or parenting style issues.
I do think that that that the life skills and life lessons gained from holding down a job are invaluable.
I actually think that admissions officers do mentally think about kids that work because it is an aspect that isn’t reflected in a application where the emphasis tends to be on ECs and grades and classes and a basis for a conversation. Every interview my kids went on during the college search what they “did” as high school jobs came up during the interview which I found interesting…and my kids didn’t necessarily do anything out of the ordinary for our “area.” Although one son was a crew manager for migrant workers at a growing operation so “learned/augmented” all those years of middle school and high school language classes to speak and understand the language very well or at least at the colorful level of the workers. If nothing that job is/was interesting to some people in other parts of the country and was very difficult, hot, dirty, unglamorous work and gave him a heck of a farmer’s tan each summer. Another son was a caddy and that always came up leading to a lively conversation about the movie Caddyshack with admissions officers. Admins probably enjoy having a conversation about something different than how much a kid wants to attend that particular college. The whole point of those conversations if they are scheduled is for the admissions folks to get to know the kid outside of a data file where everyone can look the same and if the kid has a couple years under the belt of working, conversing and meeting and dealing with people other than their friends they will be more at ease socially.
- so, she bought it herself. As momofthreeboys stated, she is learning to budget, save etc… These are all great life lessons regardless of your socio-economic level.