Summer jobs for liberal arts students?

<p>What kind of jobs can a student with basically no job skills get in your city? I want to help my D understand what that "student contribution" would mean if she doesn't choose her full COA option. I ended up living at home and working in restaurants when I could even find work. Her older brother painted houses last summer. I doubt there are any options where she'd earn enough to live away from home and save the required amount.</p>

<p>Here is how I approached it with our son…</p>

<p>Option 1…work any summer job that allows you to bank $2-$3,000. Do that after frosh and soph years. </p>

<p>Option 2…choose the school that costs $15,000 less per year. After frosh year, do a 6 week archaeological dig in Greece on our dime, after soph year do something similar on our dime, say a 5 week Geoloical Field school in Wyoming.</p>

<p>Son chose option 2.</p>

<p>I think the only real option if she doesn’t want to live at home/with relatives is to be a residential camp counselor. Not an easy job, but many people I know who like kids have done it for the summer between freshman and sophomore year.</p>

<p>The best summer jobs are on campus. Editor, proof-reader, researcher; all humanities professors work on their books and articles and publications during the summer. The development office hires kids to gear up for the annual campaign or to work on planning for a major capital campaign. The Deans hire kids to write and update policies for the various handbooks and manuals which are distributed in the Fall. Admissions hires kids to handle the summer tour glut. The Public Affairs office hires kids to manage the paperflow stemming from all the required statutory and regulatory statistics which need to get sent in. The office of Institutional Advancement needs people to do data analysis. My kids did the gamut from fact-checking to foot-noting. Cheap sublet from a student heading home for the summer (or one kid rented a room in a fraternity which cost next to nothing.) Your D will need to start early and be assertive- the good jobs may require knowing software which she doesn’t know, but she just has to say, “I can teach myself Raiser’s Edge” or get a friend to teach her photoshop or whatnot to become proficient.</p>

<p>Good jobs, pay better than anything mine could find locally.</p>

<p>My son’s college runs a summer program of conferences and classes and hires kids to basically be hotel clerks. They have to man the desks 24 hours a day, answer attendees questions about the Boston area, make pots of coffee, change out bed linens and do some of the set up for the conferences. My kid really enjoyed it. The pay was fairly minimal but included room and board at a very nominal cost and one free meal a day.</p>

<p>When I was in college I worked in one of the libraries in the summer. I liked it so much I worked part time during the school year as well.</p>

<p>Ironically, my kids saved the most money when they worked as residential camp counselors.
True it is hard work, for little pay, but you dont have to feed them & there aren’t many places to * spend* money.</p>

<p>Mine works one or two (or maybe three) jobs on campus and rents a sub-let. That means she doesn’t bank a dime. But if she came home she wouldn’t get a job. There are none here for young or old. She’s happier staying at school then coming here and being bored out of her mind and feeling like a child.</p>

<p>Frazzled kids worked in labs as research assistants and got great experience, but most of what they earned was eaten up by living expenses. I do not know how many of these jobs are readily available anymore, though, as we know several professors who have lost the research grants that they used to fund undergrad and graduate research assistants in past years.</p>

<p>Then there’s babysitting.</p>

<p>We hired college students to help us with our special needs child over the summer. Not many students (or adults) want to work with a severely disabled child once past the young and “cute” stage, but for those who are willing and able the experience can be invaluable for certain majors and career paths. At least when we were hiring, the pay wasn’t bad, either. This can be a good job for psychology or education majors, but many families with autistic children will eagerly employ pre-meds or language majors as well.</p>

<p>Once experienced it is also possible to get jobs going on vacation with families as an extra pair of hands to help with a disabled child. </p>

<p>Or working as a companion for an elderly person.</p>

<p>I’m in engineering myself, so there are a lot more options, but I know that here at Carnegie Mellon (and at a number of other schools) there is a specific program for humanities students where they can take unpaid internships and the university pays them a stipend so that they can afford to do so. This is usually available to each student for one summer only. We also have something called SURF (summer undergraduate research fellowship), which is a program that pays students to stay on campus and do research with faculty for the summer. Many colleges have similar programs, and while many students who receive SURF grants are in the sciences, humanities students do as well. That said, none of these options generally pay a lot - enough to live on, but not to save. I had a research grant last summer, which was enough to live on but not enough to save much of anything, really.</p>

<p>*Once experienced it is also possible to get jobs going on vacation with families as an extra pair of hands to help with a disabled child. *</p>

<p>That is a great idea.
You could also get certified as a respite care provider.
<a href=“http://www.respiteforme.com/become-a-certified-provider[/url]”>http://www.respiteforme.com/become-a-certified-provider&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Probably too late for this summer, but my D taught at The Breakthrough Collaborative for 3 summers. There are a couple of locations in our city, so she could live at home. She banked about $2,500 per summer.</p>

<p>My summer-only job is as a photography assistant. </p>

<p>I work my other jobs year round. </p>

<p>I’m confused by your OP. Is there a reason she isn’t working during the year? Fwiw, I make enough at my jobs to pay my living expenses and fill the gaps in my tuition. I just have to work a few jobs to piecemeal the funds together.</p>

<p>I went on simplyhired.com and typed in Intern. Then looked at the requirements. This is for Boston. Lots of unpaid internships available. I think the ones below are all paid. Some sound pretty terrific. Some (like filling up rental cars with gas at Logan Airport - not so much). </p>

<ul>
<li>Global Operations Summer 2013 Internship, State Street Bank</li>
<li>Direct Sales Representative: Sales and Marketing Internship (Commission) - Phoodez, some kind of catering company</li>
<li>Summer Internship- Development - Construction- Real Estate, McDonald’s Corporation</li>
<li>Investment Banking Intern</li>
<li>Loss Prevention Intern - TJ Maxx</li>
<li>Retail Management Development Internship Program - Nordstrom</li>
<li>Finance Intern - McDonald’s </li>
<li>Summer Position - Vehicle Service Attendant - Hertz, Logan Airport</li>
<li>Co-Op Internship Opportunity - Great Western Financial</li>
<li>Hertz Manager Trainee Intern - all majors considered</li>
<li>Consulting Analyst Intern - prefer engineers, then computer scientists, than math/science/stats, then economics</li>
<li>Intern, Telecom Research- Pyramid Research</li>
</ul>

<p>There is stuff out there that can help turn today’s liberal arts student into a employed professional tomorrow.</p>

<p>^^^ OP isn’t interested in unpaid internship, but in JOBS the daughter would have be able to find/get to pay for her required amount of financial contribution. </p>

<p>Haystack, a great approach! A fabulous idea more of us parents should adopt when discussing these things.</p>

<p>Our daughter worked a summer job that incorporated her interests…the environment.
[Jobs</a> that make a difference. | Fund for the Public Interest](<a href=“http://www.fundforthepublicinterest.org/jobs/citizen-outreach-staff]Jobs”>http://www.fundforthepublicinterest.org/jobs/citizen-outreach-staff)
She worked long hours, was promoted, and learned what it took to fund raise. The skill sets to manage other students, communicate verbally and in writing were valuable.
She then took that wheel-house of experience and worked in fundraising for her college during the school year.
All of which helped shape her college resume, and assisted in securing a job after college.
It’s doable. Your child may surprise you…
~APOL-a Mum</p>

<p>How much is her contribution? Even working a basic retail job, most kids should be able to earn $3000 over the summer–probably with 2 or 3 jobs–which is what we did when we went to college. Find a seasonal job at an amusement park, life guarding, summer rec program, etc. They tend to pay well and give a lot of hours. I’m curious why she has no job skills?</p>