<p>In my area it depends on the job, too. Most fast food and retail pays very little and I doubt a student home for the summer only would have a great chance of getting hired, anyway. There are plenty of people already here working those jobs. But, it is possible to find opportunities to make more if you are creative and look hard enough. IMHO, making the federal minimum wage is not much of a goal even for a student.</p>
<p>“There are plenty of people already here working those jobs.”</p>
<p>Making the federal minimum wage should not be a goal, but having a job (or two) at minimum wage is better than none.</p>
<p>Well, of course. Maybe I’m missing your point, though. If you’re just saying that there aren’t enough teenager jobs because the economy sucks, we agree. My kids have managed to find better than min wage jobs though. I was actually kind of surprised by one of them because I thought it would be tougher but the interview went really well. Lucky, I guess. The other had a strategy and it worked.</p>
<p>I’m glad someone started this thread. My DS has been working at the same place for a year, but does not get a lot of hours or a regular schedule, although he does make more than minimum wage. It would be difficult for him to get another job and coordinate the schedules. His earnings will go for incidental expenses at school as we do not plan to provide a allowance. He may decide after this fall that he needs to work on campus and/or during breaks.</p>
<p>As @broadway95 stated, some students are fortunate to have many opportunities available to them, but others, depending on where one lives, may not be able to find a job paying above $10 an hour in order to save approximately $3000 by summer’s end, no matter how hard they look.</p>
<p>I agree that adults who work year round take up jobs that teenagers were sure to get during the summer months, thus making it harder for students to save $3000.</p>
<p>@Flossy I am glad that your children were able to find work, especially paying above the minimum wage. It is now mid July and my niece is still trying to find a summer job after numerous applications, including fast food places, and pounding the pavement. Sometimes, I guess luck does come into play.</p>
<p>Jeannemar, thats a good point you bring up about schedules. My situation is probably one of the most unique on here. The way I got my job was I posted an ad on craigslist offering babysitting. A lady near me called, and it just so happened that she also runs a daycare from her house. After babysitting her kid a few nights a week for a couple of months she said she really liked me and offered me a position in the daycare. Luckily for me its been almost 3 years since then and shes a stable source of income for me especially, since she alwsys has room for me when I come. Having this experience from the time I was 16 helped me in getting my above minimum wage job at another daycare center. </p>
<p>Now the 2 jobs thing isnt easy as my second job is by my school so I have to commute; however, my boss was supportive of the fact that I am home for the summer and smushed my hours into 2 ten hour days, so I only work by my school thursday and friday and I work Monday thru Wednesday and Sunday at home. I am able to get about 50 hours a week because my job is non traditional daycare hours. However, it certainly is not easy!</p>
<p>Very creative @Jazzii and it definitely cannot be easy, but you are making it work for you. I am going to take your craiglist idea and give it to my niece. Thanks.</p>
<p>Creative is a big part of success at this, btw. Filling out applications is a crapshoot. There are just too many applicants and there are college grads making lattes. So yeah.</p>
<p>I’ve found it’s who you know that will help your kids get something relevant, otherwise, most kids will end up with minimum wage jobs that means nothing to their career. I was lucky to get my criminal justice major daughter - she just finished her freshman year - a 10 week job doing criminal background checks for a company we work with @ $10 per hour. If it wasn’t for a friend of mine at work, I suspect my kid would be flipping burgers this summer. We are looking to get her an analyst internship next summer with a local police department. </p>
<p>In addition to creativity, another key is looking early. My kids try to line up summer employment over Spring Break. </p>
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<p>I am not saying I wouldn’t do the same thing but your post illustrates the large advantage kids have when they have someone advocating or calling in favors for them. I see this where I live too–most of the kids who land summer research jobs at the local university get them through their parents.</p>
<p>Someone finally brought up the ‘Who You Know’ factor.’ My DD have had some great summer opportunities for the last few years and I would like to believe that her performance at school and writing ability were key to getting these opportunities. Granted, her recommendations did come from professors who were very well known in their fields.</p>
<p>But as @CatnP posted, it is always good to know someone. @sally305 I do find this to be a big advantage in my DDs favor.</p>
<p>" twoinanddone wrote:
If you really need the money, you skip the family vacations and family weddings. If you know about them in advance and can arrange it, you go, but maybe you can’t do both.</p>
<p>I agree with sally305 that if $300 - $400 is going to make or break you then the school probably isn’t affordable enough to begin with. "
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I didn’t make up the story problem of how to earn $3000 in a summer. That seems to be the number a few colleges, even ones that meet full need, require for the student to kick in (the school recognizing the family can’t contribute at all). Maybe that $300-400 IS going to make or break the student, but the school expects that amount. I’d imagine some kids need much more than $3000 and others less. My children’s schools expect a lot more than that (from me) so it’s up to me to decide how much the kids have to kick in. I’m good with it being nothing, but then they’ll have no spending money or book money at all since I’m only paying the posted amount on the bill. Maybe they won’t have enough and I’ll have to contribute more or they’ll have to get jobs during the school year. I suspect one child will blow through her savings (about $2000) before Christmas and will need to get a job. I believe the other will end the year with most of her $2000 still in the bank.</p>
<p>If the student can’t make $3000, I’m not sure it is the right school for him/her, but it may be that every school expects at least that much. What if the student only earns $2000? He may not be able to pay tuition. If the student can’t make it where he/she lives, maybe they have to get a job elsewhere, where the school is located, at a summer camp, at a grandparent’s. I worked some pretty unpleasant jobs as a teen, picking potatoes, waiting tables for a caterer (weddings and stuff), in an office 40 hours/wk doing sorting and delivering packages and licking envelopes. Here, McD’s and Subway are always hiring but everyone wants to work at the grocery store.</p>
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Colleges can’t “require” students to do anything. They don’t care where the money comes from. If great aunt Betsy sends in the $3000, does the college go “oh no, the student had to EARN that himself, sorry we can’t take it”?<br>
Again, the schools can’t “expect” anything. They can put down some numbers on paper. What the student and his/her family do with those numbers is their business. Neither S or D’s schools have ever even said anything of the sort, but maybe that’s because our EFC is > than the COA, so they just expect that we will come up with anything over their scholarships and loans somehow. </p>
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A student’s summer job is one of the few times in life where one often does not need a steady paycheck or promise of longterm employment, which opens the door to many ways of earning $3000 besides taking a near minimum wage job or even beyond the traditional route of having someone pay you an hourly rate. </p>
<p>For example, if the kid is tech savvy, he might start a website about a hobby that he knows really well, something that he’d enjoy writing about and others would want to use what he created. I did this a few years ago. After a few months, the site averaged more than $3000 per week. My site expenses at that time were only the $8 per month I paid on hosting. Or if he wants a less risky venture, there are many short term projects available to anyone who bids on sites like Elance or Guru.</p>
<p>If he is into math/economics, he might look for arbitrage opportunities in nearly any situation where money or goods are exchanged. At one time I averaged more than $3000 per week doing this. Many opportunities still exist, but it is not advantageous to post details.</p>
<p>I used to date a woman who really enjoyed finding unique clothes at thrift shops. Her friends and many random people we ran in to complimented her on these outfits. She turned her hobby into a business by putting what she considered to be great thrift shop finds on Etsy for more than she paid. She didn’t make enough to live on doing this, but she would have made more than $3000 over the course of a summer.</p>
<p>I could list many more examples. If you think outside the box of having to find a traditional job, there are countless possibilities, many of which would be more enjoyable than a near minimum wage job and would provide more valuable experience than such a job. </p>
<p>My D has a full time minimum wage job for the summer and she’ll make just about $3000. Fortunately she has merit scholarships that cover full tuition plus a good chunk of her housing expense and is not dependent on summer earnings. When I was in college I always had two minimum wage jobs (roughly 70 hours a week between the two), but I was able to do that because my primary job was a standard 9 to 5 M-F, making it easy to pick up restaurant/movie theatre/weekend retail type jobs. My D’s job has odd hours and her off days are not weekends, making it difficult to add another job. Not to mention that she applied for many jobs (and interviewed for several) before landing the job she has, so she feels lucky to have one dead-end, minimum wage job.</p>
<p>sylvan, You are (deliberately?) misreading or misquoting what I wrote. I said that seems to be the amount the schools ‘gap’ the student and the school doesn’t care where it comes from, it expects the student to cover a certain amount, usually around $3000. Borrow, earn, beg for it, but the school isn’t providing that amount. I guess the schools assume that if the student is claiming to have no funds for college, there are no funds for a vacation or family wedding trip? </p>
<p>The original post was asking if it is even possible for a student to earn $3000 in a summer and I inferred the question was also whether the schools were being unreasonable to expect students to come up with that amount. Many people have said it is possible but it takes some hustle, luck, and sacrifice, including, perhaps, sacrificing a family vacation. I said my own kids aren’t earning $3000 this summer because they don’t have to, they have big plans for me to pay for their college. Their colleges are fine with that plan and aren’t going to exclude them because they didn’t earn the money. It is also true the school isn’t going to give them the money.</p>
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Why would the school be making any assumptions whatsoever regarding vacations or family wedding trips? I’m lost here. Isn’t it the EFC that the schools go by? I assume that the gap occurs because the school can only come up with so much, not because they are sitting around deciding who can or can’t take a family vacation.</p>
<p>Well, schools make a lot of assumptions. The EFC is based on the assumption that the family made this much so they should have been able to save that much. It’s not usually reality. You think the school can’t come up with another 3-thousand dollars. Really? I think the school is trying to make sure the student has skin in the game. “We’ll give you X, but you are more than capable of contributing this small amount. Thanks.”</p>
<p>My son is a tennis pro at a club, does tennis drills for women’s groups on his own, gives private lessons, strings racquets, and tutors. He’ll easily take in $6,000+ this summer.</p>