Rating $$$-making ways at MIT (F1 friendly)
F1 students tend to have a lot of restrictions when it comes to working in the US. But here are some ways I managed to build myself up financially (and who doesn't love a rating) --
First things first, I got obsessed with money
Not sure if it was the increasing urge to gain more independence and establish myself as a “proper” adult, or the looming responsibilities that seem to come with the expectation of graduation, but starting sophomore/junior year of undergrad, I started to become obsessed with everything financial-related. I learned about side hustles, long-term investments, retirement accounts, credit cards, and whatever else I could read/watch. They say money can’t buy happiness, but it can certainly buy that cup of bubble tea that sugars up your day after a particularly hard exam, or that singing lesson that leaves you feeling more confident for that musical audition. Unfortunately, as an F1 international student, USCIS offers strict guidelines for what types of work are acceptable under this status - After all, F1 students come to the US to receive an education, and should not be distracted by attempts to “make some cash”. Here are some legal, productive ways I managed to receive some compensation to enrich my life while being an international student.
⚠️ Obligatory disclaimer: this is not meant to provide any legal/financial advice, and is only for entertainment purposes.
1. Research Assistant - 10/10
What it is: As someone who was determined to go to graduate school after college, I sought out lots of research opportunities. MIT, specifically, made it relatively easy for students to join a research lab of interest and work on a project where they can expand their horizons. Back in my days - *old man voice* - the program was called UROP: Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Over the pandemic, MIT decided to group these research opportunities together with internships, externships, traveling abroad programs and such to form one big collection of “Experiential Learning Opportunities”
They later revamped the official UROP website (which now looks gorgeous so I encourage you to check it out) to be an extremely comprehensive guide to finding, connecting with, and working on a UROP. The process is relatively straightforward:
You comb through the project listings and identify the ones you’re interested in
You email the listed contact (usually a grad student, a postdoc, or, sometimes in rare cases, a professor) with why you’re interested and how you qualify
You cross your fingers and go through your day-to-day commitments worrying about whether they’ll email you back (most students apply to a lot of projects and hear back from a few)
You receive an email back (yay!) to schedule a meeting to talk further about the project (ie. an interview)
You go to the interview and hope it’s a project that actually aligns with your interests and that wants your help
If all goes well, you have now earned a place in a research project!
You do the paperwork for the UROP (writing an application that details what the project is about, what parts of the project you will be responsible for, and what your learning objectives are).
Application submitted! You go to work in the lab for the semester (or beyond, if you and the lab mutually like each other).
Rinse and repeat.
Pay: Being a research assistant can be “paid” in money or credits. For the latter, you would register the UROP as an additional class with the appropriate units (x number of units for x planned hours/week). For the former, it may vary by department/lab. If the UROP is under “Direct Funding”, MIT pays you for the research, and it’s about $13/hr; if the lab likes you enough to fund you, it may be more (up to the $20/hr range) depending on the department. There are two main thoughts I have about this pay: on one hand, I’m extremely grateful that we get any pay for such a great opportunity to learn and develop as a scientist in amazing labs; on the other hand, the compensation is definitely not close to even being comparable to, say, an average tech internship. I sometimes half-joke that it prepped my expectations for grad school/academia compensation because, well, grad students really don’t get paid a lot for the amount of work that gets done. But well, that’s a different discussion.
Cherry’s rating: As a student, you learn, you get to use expensive equipment, and you get paid. Can’t complain, 10/10 would recommend.
2. TAship - 11/10
What it is: TAship, aka Teaching Assistantship, works pretty similarly to Research Assistantships. You can either do it for credit (usually the unit of that class) or for pay ($3000 total for the semester for my particular experience). Usually, the TAs for an undergrad class are the grad students in the Institute who has TAship as part of their graduation requirements. But sometimes, undergraduates who have taken the class or have enough experience with the material have the opportunity to apply for and TA for a class. I was lucky to be able to TA for an introductory class in my major as a Junior and continued doing it in my Senior year because I loved it so much. Not only am I able to help someone else work through the course material after struggling with the same thing, but I also catch pieces of information that I missed when taking the class myself and can deepen my own understanding of the concepts.
Pay: Different from a research position, TAship is not compensated by the hour, (as mentioned above, $3000 for the semester), and the amount of work can be variable. The responsibilities such as preparing for recitation material, assignment grading, and test writing are distributed amongst TAs relatively evenly, but different TAs may have different ways of approaching their teaching. Sadly, maintaining healthy boundaries in terms of work-life balance is something I still need to work on. Even though this helped me as a TA since I voluntarily put in a lot more work, I tended to overwork myself as I often found myself tweaking my recitation slides for hours and drafting long emails for my section, hoping to find ways to improve their learning experience. As a result, my hourly rate was probably well below what I got paid for doing research, but personally, it was a rewarding experience to see even just a few students become inspired and improve over the course of a semester.
Cherry’s rating: Extra cash for making new friends and getting to know people in my major (other TAs for the class), getting some teaching practice, connecting further with course professors, and reviewing and consolidating my understanding of basic concepts in my field. With the added benefit of an ego boost when the course evaluations come out and seeing students appreciating you :’) 11/10 would strongly recommend.
3. Campus jobs - 7/10
What it is: Last but not least, we have various campus jobs that international students can also take advantage of to relieve some financial burden of living in the US. These include librarian jobs, front desk workers, theater crew/ushers for shows, etc. I know friends who have worked all these jobs and I’ve worked the front desk of my dorm for about 3 semesters. These are jobs that don’t necessarily have a lot of educational value but are relatively more accessible, and are flexible for picking up more or fewer shifts depending on existing commitments, which works really well for busy student life. The work you do could vary depending on the time of day your shifts are. During the morning and late hours of the day, a desk worker usually only needs to tend to the guestlist and check out packages for the residents. Around noon or early afternoon when deliveries get dropped off, it can get a bit more hectic as we manually log all the packages into the system.
Pay: While we start at around $12.5/hr for the first semester of work, each semester of previous desk worker experience adds 50 cents to the pay. However, it’s an easy desk job where, when there’s nothing we need to tend to, we could simply do our own things (do work, watch videos, play games, what have you). For the work we do, I’d say it’s a pretty good deal.
Cherry’s rating: -3 points for lack of productive/educational value of the work. 7/10.
Views about being a working student
“You’re a student and studying is your main job” is a pretty prevalent opinion in society, especially among parents. While that is the truth, there are a lot of factors that play into a college education. College is an important time in a person’s life — a 20-something-year-old is prepping for the transition from being a kid that relies mostly on their guardians to being a productive adult who can function independently in society. It’s naive and insensitive to think that academic enrichment should be the sole purpose for college students, especially when a lot of students come from financially disadvantaged backgrounds. Budgeting, saving, and things that contribute to a person’s financial literacy are crucial during this time. Of course, completing coursework and taking advantage of academic resources are important for a student, and in an ideal world, a student would not have any financial pressure during a time that they’re supposed to learn skills that could contribute to solving problems in the world. But personally, I believe managing money is a grossly underrated skill for young adults, and even just working a few hours (as time allows) could give a student some experience that can be useful post-graduation.