My daughter is Sophomore and I am curious to know the advantages for doing paid work in high school.
What is the benefit?
I think its a good but overrated experience.
1 Like
The advantages - so many - just a few:
- Makes money
- Gains responsibility, especially if duties expand
- Pride / confidence from accomplishments
- Learns to be part of a team
- Glimpse of real life/the real world
- Develops time management skills.
- Builds a resume - when she goes for that internship in college (assuming she’s going to college), it’s going to give her a leg up vs. that kid who hasn’t worked.
And since we’re on College Confidential…if she gets “tenure” - meaning she sticks with it, there’s arguably not a better extra curricular for the application.
Just ensure she can handle it, her school work, and maintains a social life. Her school still matters most - i.e. GPA, strength of schedule, etc.
17 Likes
Look at each school’s CDS for admission. It should tell you how they weight work experience in the admissions process. Some schools weight as important.
Personally I think it’s pretty important. Learning how to work is a process in itself. No better teacher than just getting a job. Any job.
CMU for example.
7 Likes
It was non-negotiable that both my kids worked in high school, not for the money as much as for the experience.
Opinions vary, obviously, but I think it’s one of the best “real-life” experiences a kid can have. In addition to what tsbna listed above, it helps them learn how to work with a variety of personality types, what to do when working with someone who doesn’t pull their weight, how to resolve conflicts, how to negotiate with management (for raises and promotions), how to advocate for themselves, how to handle difficult customers. They are also able to get a taste of the general work culture, the politics, etc.
Most importantly, they get to polish their interviewing skills and begin to establish a solid work ethic. Again, opinions vary, but I can’t imagine sending a college junior/senior out into the interviewing/working world without having had any prior experience in these areas.
As far as whether colleges care, while I don’t think it would necessarily be a tipping point, I do think they appreciate a student who can handle a rigorous life. I would like to think that extra points may be given to applicants who maintain grades AND work AND play a sport AND keep up with the EC’s because that’s what real life will be like once they graduate college - juggling multiple things.
My daughters were both rarities in their high school. The vast majority of the friends were not required to work. A few got summer jobs, but nothing during the school year. Both kids also opted to work while going to college. I think once they started making their own money, they liked the independence it gave them and wanted to continue with it.
9 Likes
I think it builds character and people skills. For one of my kids, it meant deciding to choose a business major over a psychology major. Made quite a bit of money and learned about accounting and investing from their boss. Was accepted to a special program for business majors at their college, which provides a scholarship. My other child worked long days as a caddie and got a caddie scholarship of $5k.
4 Likes
How about these things.
-
They will earn some of their own money and perhaps learn some money management, and how to earn, spend, save.
-
They will have employment to list on their resume the next time they apply for a job…hopefully with a good reference.
-
Time management.
-
Working as part of a team.
10 Likes
Overrated in what way?
2 Likes
Adding…you don’t have to work in high school to add to your college application pluses. Look at all the other reasons listed above.
1 Like
If the household is in need of the money, then it’s a foregone conclusion (although from what I have seen, the decision seems to have little to do with finances, even in homes that are on the edge, financially.
1 Like
My D had a job at a sub shop in HS. What she learned:
- Interview skills. She was super nervous about applying for positions and interviewing but it’s a necessary life skill. IMO, helped with college interviews.
- Resume skills
- Team work
- Time Management
- Saving strategies
- How to do new hire paperwork and taxes
- Dependability
And she had fun to boot!
5 Likes
My S23 had his first job this summer. He HAS to work to earn money for college. We would have made him start summer work 2 years ago, but he had surgery and couldn’t risk COVID in summer 2020. In 2021, he had barely been vaccinated and some travel plans didn’t jive well. He also was initially having a difficult time reintegrating after being homebound for over a year. In hindsight, I wish we would have made him work anyway.
I cannot overstate how beneficial his summer job has been. He has learned all the usual lessons, and then some. He dragged his feet on finding a job and we had to force him into it. He didn’t particularly like his job, but we made him stick with it for the summer. He went and worked hard. He couldn’t wait to quit but they told him he can come back anytime, and a bonus showed up on his last paycheck today! We strongly encouraged him to work a bit during this final school year, but said it wasn’t required. Much to our surprise he really took initiative to find a better paying, easier job that he starts this weekend, and is so enthusiastic to be earning a bit more money. He already knows he’s expected to do a paid internship every summer in college.
I can’t believe the change in this child. It reinforced our belief that everyone should work a low-paying job dealing with the public at some point. If he had been doing extensive volunteer work, we wouldn’t require a job (but we can’t afford that anyway). S26 is already on notice that he’ll be working every summer starting next year, in order to put money away for college.
If we were in a better financial situation, we’d probably be more flexible but still require lots of volunteering, or a job for spending money.
12 Likes
My kids worked starting freshman year in high school. Four of them started at a local garden center, my 24 and 26 year old worked there from age 14 until the graduated college (full time summers, part time in high school during the school year). My 19 year old worked there all summer (plus her other job). After a few years they were opening, closing, making schedules, my son did deliveries in the big truck which he liked, customers with questions were directed to them. One huge plus was never having to find summer jobs while in college. One of my kids had dance 5 days a week and ran xc/track in HS so she just babysat and tutored, got her first “real” job summer of junior year but has been employed ever since (she’s working at her 4th restaurant). Once you’ve had a job, it’s easier to get a job.
4 Likes
Gives them a big reality check so they’ll see and appreciate first hand what it’s like to work a low end sometimes labor intensive job for not much money…helps them earn spending money and also see for themselves how hard it is for grown adults to make ends meet on a minimum wage job.
It solidifies why going to college is a good idea. And gives them a sense of perspective and appreciation for what they have.
10 Likes
I’ll add to all the good points above:
Frames the value of things – 1 hour of work buys 1 lunch at the deli. Hmm, maybe preparing your own brown bag lunch might be worth the trouble.
Any task feels different when it has a purpose, and most jobs are about a known outcome. That too can help one find direction.
6 Likes
We required our kids to work at 15. Summers. The occasional weekend. For S it meant not doing all the travel baseball he could have done. The lessons they learned were enormous. Like others have said, it helped their self confidence. Learning how to deal with different types of people including adults was huge. S even wrote about his experience in one of his admission essays. Both kids went from not knowing anything relative to their jobs when they started to becoming “in charge” until the manager comes back. Great leadership experience.
My kid didn’t need to contribute funds toward college, but the summer before freshman year, they didn’t follow through on plans for a summer of research which would likely have led to a published paper. So when they had no plans, I said, “You’ve done nothing to plan for this summer, and it’s not as if you didn’t know where you were going to college since last December - no excuse. You can darn well get a JOB, working in a supermarket. The pay is decent (summer resort area in desperate need of workers), it’s air conditioned, the place seems to treat the help well, you can earn your own spending money so that you won’t have to ask us for money and have to tell us how you’re spending it, and you can learn how one gets money, which will inform your spending decisions.”
Kid worked hard, earned maybe 8K, was fried to a crisp at the end of each shift. We matched it and made a Roth IRA deposit to the max kid was allowed, but gave the kid all that they had earned and helped kid open a bank account with a branch near the school, get a bank card, etc. Interestingly, when a school trip abroad came up for right after freshman year, kid said, “It would take me a month of working at the supermarket to pay for this one week trip. It’s just not worth it to me.” I was so happy to hear this. Kid had never thought this way, never considered the work that we put in, to pay for kid’s stuff. As it turned out, school offered a very substantial scholarship for the trip, so kid did go, but kid’s entire attitude toward spending was re-set by that one summer of working in a supermarket.
7 Likes
I thought the jobs my kids got were the best things ever for providing perspective. My '19 did not work during high school. Had a really rough time in high school with mental health challenges and barely made it through to graduation, but made it and said “I’m never doing any more school ever again.” Got a job at Starbucks after a COVID gap year. Was terrified at first and super stressed out, but learned how to be part of a team and work hard and had great co-workers and really loved the job. Saw several co-workers going back to school and decided to go back to community college. I am not sure that would have happened w/o the job.
My '22 worked all last year during high school and the summer before. I think it was great for her too. She became a manager and got more responsibility. Learned to get along with co-workers and to not let the team down.
I think both of them learned to stop comparing themselves to people at school and learned a lot about the general public. They learned that they are smart (both suffered a little from comparing themselves to other kids at school) and they learned about the value of treating people well. And they did learn something about the value of money and time spent working to make money.
5 Likes
Kid 1 worked in a restaurant at 15 and quickly learned that working in a restaurant means you are at the mercy of a manager that can make or break the experience. (Let’s just say the manager broke the experience with the way she did scheduling). When she was 16 she was able to get a job in the field she plans on going into (early childhood education) and quickly realized how much better she would be treated working in social services. She got great hands on experience, was able to determine that it really was the field she wanted to go into and they absolutely love her there and have offered (actually begged) for her to come back to do internships and work there when she gets out of school. She has also shown us that she can survive in a lower paying field by the way she’s handled her money while working there. Seeing her co-workers all having 2nd jobs has not deterred her and even has her thinking about minoring in a field that can be a “side gig”. We can already see how it will pay off in college through the discussions she’s been able to have with her future professors while she was at orientation and how she was able to suss out her future classmates that probably were not going to stay in the major. Admissions officers definitely noticed that she had meaningful experience in the field she wanted to study.
Kid 2 plays sports and goes to boarding school in a different state so was unable to hold a job until summer of this year (his rising senior year). He is working for the maintenance department in our local public school system. They almost didn’t hire him because “boarding school kids don’t do this kind of labor”. Since he’s going into a field that does field work and manual labor (Wildlife bio and conservation), I’m hoping that having this on his application shows he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. He also just had a nice little lesson about taxes when he got his check and asked for us to show him how to do a tax return when the time comes. In terms of admissions, I think AOs have been/will be more impressed with the research he’s been able to participate in, so I’m glad that he did not have to make a choice between that experience and working as personally, I think this has been a great experience for him.
My kids have had employers ask about high school jobs ( as in, whats the worst job you had and what did you learn)