You're Lucky If They Pay You
What Yale gave me in financial aid was something my family could afford, at least what they gave me after a little scare when they forgot to give me a deal. The financial aid office was like, "You're missing papers," for months-- that was stressful.
Regarding the student the summer contribution, it's hard because for all of the internships in politics, you're lucky if they pay you, and if they pay you that's enough to have an apartment over the summer and eat, and that's certainly not enough for the summer contribution. The way that I got around that last summer was by taking a break from my unpaid internship, which ended up being reasonable, because my job wasn't a horrible thing. But it did mean that instead of working with a senator, since I had so little time, I interned with someone I didn't really want to work with. It also meant that there were a couple of other opportunities that were in different cities where I would have had a financial obligation to rent an apartment that I didn't want to do, because I wasn't sure that I would be able to get enough funding. There was one in Boston, and it's the kind of thing you just can't do if you have other financial obligations. $3000 plus enough money to work in another city is just not doable. I might do it this summer and just take out loans. If you want to do things that teach you things and get you jobs, you have to spend money.
People in a lot of the other groups I've talked to about financial aid changed their calculus to lean toward consulting jobs over the summer, because those are the only jobs in which you can make enough money to live and pay the contribution. You get people who want to do completely different things who entirely alter their summers to do consulting instead. It's hard thinking of this in terms of race, because most people do not talk about their financial aid situation.
Yale students are really terrible to the working class. You see the way people treat you differently when you're hanging out versus when you're behind the counter. It's sometimes fun, because you can make fun of people's conversations, but other times it's just rude. That kind of just reinforces class divides.
The fact that some jobs can always get more hours is something that people don't talk about. I haven't tried to get more and more hours because I haven't needed as many, but that's something my friends have done. That makes it possible for a bad boss to do things, because you have to keep that job. They 'guarantee jobs' at Yale, but it's hard to find them freshman year. There aren't that many jobs for people who aren't researching or don't have a certain set of skills. Freshmen come in with no resumes and no experience, which makes it hard. I found my jobs through the online posting in the first few months of getting here. It takes time to get a job.
Because I don't work as many hours, I can do more things. I can do YPU and an a capella group because only because I don't have to work 20 hours a week. Coming from a middle class family means that some majors/career options are more accessible to me than some of my friends, in that there is no pressure on me to make lots of money. Also in academic work, its easier for me as a white person to accept whitewashed/male-dominated cannons/syllabi as problematic and not as excluding people like me from academia. As an English major, this makes my life easy in ways that it simply will never be for other people.
In the end, you see financial aid affect people in a lot of different ways. The financial aid office is not good at telling you what to do. They are not very organized, since the university has little incentive to make a financial aid office run more smoothly. If they mess up, they just get more money. When you get a whole extracurricular group applying for financial aid together, it's both adorable and sad, because applying to financial aid is no fun, and there are serious stakes involved.
Regarding the student the summer contribution, it's hard because for all of the internships in politics, you're lucky if they pay you, and if they pay you that's enough to have an apartment over the summer and eat, and that's certainly not enough for the summer contribution. The way that I got around that last summer was by taking a break from my unpaid internship, which ended up being reasonable, because my job wasn't a horrible thing. But it did mean that instead of working with a senator, since I had so little time, I interned with someone I didn't really want to work with. It also meant that there were a couple of other opportunities that were in different cities where I would have had a financial obligation to rent an apartment that I didn't want to do, because I wasn't sure that I would be able to get enough funding. There was one in Boston, and it's the kind of thing you just can't do if you have other financial obligations. $3000 plus enough money to work in another city is just not doable. I might do it this summer and just take out loans. If you want to do things that teach you things and get you jobs, you have to spend money.
People in a lot of the other groups I've talked to about financial aid changed their calculus to lean toward consulting jobs over the summer, because those are the only jobs in which you can make enough money to live and pay the contribution. You get people who want to do completely different things who entirely alter their summers to do consulting instead. It's hard thinking of this in terms of race, because most people do not talk about their financial aid situation.
Yale students are really terrible to the working class. You see the way people treat you differently when you're hanging out versus when you're behind the counter. It's sometimes fun, because you can make fun of people's conversations, but other times it's just rude. That kind of just reinforces class divides.
The fact that some jobs can always get more hours is something that people don't talk about. I haven't tried to get more and more hours because I haven't needed as many, but that's something my friends have done. That makes it possible for a bad boss to do things, because you have to keep that job. They 'guarantee jobs' at Yale, but it's hard to find them freshman year. There aren't that many jobs for people who aren't researching or don't have a certain set of skills. Freshmen come in with no resumes and no experience, which makes it hard. I found my jobs through the online posting in the first few months of getting here. It takes time to get a job.
Because I don't work as many hours, I can do more things. I can do YPU and an a capella group because only because I don't have to work 20 hours a week. Coming from a middle class family means that some majors/career options are more accessible to me than some of my friends, in that there is no pressure on me to make lots of money. Also in academic work, its easier for me as a white person to accept whitewashed/male-dominated cannons/syllabi as problematic and not as excluding people like me from academia. As an English major, this makes my life easy in ways that it simply will never be for other people.
In the end, you see financial aid affect people in a lot of different ways. The financial aid office is not good at telling you what to do. They are not very organized, since the university has little incentive to make a financial aid office run more smoothly. If they mess up, they just get more money. When you get a whole extracurricular group applying for financial aid together, it's both adorable and sad, because applying to financial aid is no fun, and there are serious stakes involved.
