Have any of your kids worked as a Resident Assistant in a college dorm? My D16 thinks she wants to be an RA after starting college. I know each School has its own RA system, but might you have any general tips for a kid who wants to get an RA job? Pros, cons, considerations, cautions, advice? It seems like such a huge job for a peer college student to take on.
The “D16”- does this mean your D is still in HS? If so, way too soon for her to think about this job. First she needs to apply to and then go to a college. Once she is there she will learn what is involved at her particular school. Then she can decide what her chances are and if it is worth it. Depending on her career plans it could be a wonderful experience. Depending on her finances the typical free room and board (?) could be worth the hours spent doing the job. She should NOT pick her college based on wanting to be an RA there.
Right. She’s still a hs senior, but she has attended boarding school and is really attracted to dorm staff work. At this point, she has a ranked list of colleges and has already applied for admissions. However, she doesn’t intend to pick a school based on its resident life hiring. She’s just wondering about what experience might make her a good candidate. I told her to go search for RA job ads to see that skills, etc., they tend to require.
There was a class at USC that my daughter took for RA position. Conflict resolution, that seems to be the most helpful course, a prerequisite for RA positions.
My S was an RA. He also was a camp counselor during the summer, which is a perfect opportunity to practice the relevant skills – being welcoming, warm, inclusive, resolving conflicts, “reading” people and helping them fit in. It was pretty intense though – he worked hard for the money. (We paid him what he saved us in room and board. My H was also an RA and his parents did the same for him.)
I was definitely thinking she might want to see about a summer job as a camp counselor for an overnight camp. At least, she is lining up an assistant leader job for a day camp next summer, but might want to repeat her summer 2015 job working with disabled adults in a recreation program.
I have heard that depending on the specs of the RA job, you might wind up with higher hourly pay and less stress in a different student job, like library aide, office receptionist, or kitchen help. It depends on how much you’re on call as an RA, apparently. Do you have any days or nights off? All depends on the school’s set-up for RAs.
You have to be 18 to be camp counselor. That’s what I checked out for one kid.
I do think there are ways to improve your chances of being selected as an RA. First, have no infractions as a freshmen resident. Join in on the dorm activities as a freshmen. Become friends with the current RA’s who might be on the selection committee. Take the courses required. Be nice. At my daughter’s school I think they hire about 75 RAs from 150 or so applicants. Many are returning from the year before. It’s a good deal because they get room and board (a single and a full meal plan, worth about $10,000), about $500 in pay. They have hours they need to work the front desk, they have activities they lead in the dorm, so it is a time intensive job but you ‘work from home’. A friend’s daughter at another school picked all her desk duty time from midnight to 3 am so she can study and then she sleeps in as she picked afternoon classes.
I think she should pick the college that is the best fit academically/socially/financially and once she is there she can look into the selection process to become a RA at the school she is at. Because it generally comes with free dorm room (although the RA can’t usually choose the dorm they are assigned to) , the process to become a RA is typically highly selective so it would be silly to go to pick a school that is not the best available fit for a slightly better shot at being a RA. Once at a college, she can learn about the time commitments and responsibilities (which are significant) and make a rational decision as to if it would work for her. There is no chance of being an RA prior to soph. year so it is too early to worry about it.
College student here. There’s not a whole lot she can do now in high school. My advice is for her to get involved with any residence life stuff freshman year. For example, at my school, freshmen can be elected to hall government positions which is a good way to get your foot in the door. My RAs were very active in res life stuff last year. This is going to var per school so she really shouldn’t worry about it until she’s in college. Something she should definitely do is talk to her RAs and ask how she can get involved and become an RA. They would be able to provide the best, most relevant information.
At my school, RAs aren’t paid, they just receive free room and board. I think this is the standard for many schools. I definitely wouldn’t say it’s less stress. It can be a pretty stressful job. Definitely more stressful than my job (working in an advising office). My dorm had an issue at the beginning of the year that led to the firing/resignation of many RAs so the ones left had to work extra and cover the floors without RAs until new ones were hired. It was a very stressful few weeks for them. That’s definitely not the norm, but it does show how there are always different situations that can arise and you never know what will happen.
Really, it just depends on the school and it’s definitely way too early for her to think about this.
Receiving free room and board IS being paid.
I was an RA in college, and in graduate school I was a residential hall director who hired and supervised RAs. I love res life so I am super biased, but here are my thoughts.
Pros, cons, considerations:
Yes, RAing is a time-intensive job. Generally we tell students that RAing is your second priority right after academics - and before anything else you may be involved in, including athletics.
Yes, RAs get days and nights off. How many depends on the college. But on-call work is not necessarily very time-intensive - you have to do rounds and respond to calls, but you may not get any calls and you may only get easy calls, particularly on weekdays. Also remember that on-call work is only one part of the job of an RA - there’s also planning events (we required our RAs to do one event per month; other schools have different requirements) and meeting your residents’ needs (some residents will have problems that are not call-worthy but will approach the RA about it). I also had a mandatory weekly meeting with my whole staff and biweekly one on one meetings with each RA.Otherwise we encouraged our RAs to be on the floor in their room most of the time in the evenings. Still, our RAs were very active in lots of other organizations on campus, so it’s possible to do other things - just not a lot of other very time-intensive things.
There is also, of course, training and move-in prep, which is its own beast but usually requires the RA to be back on campus about two weeks early. Training usually runs from early in the morning till late at night. It’s exhausting but a lot of fun. Another important consideration is that there are some holidays that we need RA coverage for, although usually local RAs volunteered for that.
Pros are meeting lots of people, having a stake in community building in college, having a great leadership position that looks great on resumes, creating a network that lasts for a long time (my RAs do amazing things and I know so many people through RAing, and my closest friends I met through my HD job - most of my friends are former res life). You also gain super crisis management skills - I have this weird thing now where I go into Zen Mode and start considering actions and options in a crisis because of my res life experience. Another pro of RA jobs is that it makes you eligible/more competitive for hall director jobs, which you can sometimes do in graduate school to save money. I lived in NYC for two years RENT FREE because I was a hall director, and I estimate that I saved at least $24,000.
Cons are the time involved, stressful on-call situations, sometimes there are perceptual issues with friends (not a huge problem, but a consideration - if your friends are hard partiers or like to smoke in their room…you can have issues) and being in a “fishbowl” - you have to hold yourself to a higher standard than your peers because you are always being watched. Also the standard ringtone on Verizon flip phones will always freak me out.
I don’t think that the hourly pay doing other work study positions would be more if you count the value of room and board. However, other work-study and general student jobs are certainly less stressful, and probably put more money directly into the student’s pocket. It’s a trade-off - the student has to decide what they’d rather do.
Advice
Yes, there are totally things your D can do as a high schooler that improves her chances. We looked at and took high school activities into consideration when we hired. Especially for our sophomore RAs, we looked for a track record of leadership, community building, and crisis management activities (to a reasonable extent). But we interpreted that broadly. Camp counseling was a VERY common entry point. We also had a lot of RAs who were prefects or the equivalent at their boarding school. Any kind of leadership in ECs in high school are also viewed favorably, as well as other organizations that involve community building and service. Lots of people did peer mediation/counseling/mentoring, too. Basically, we want to see that this person has a dedication to helping others and serving - and not that they’re applying because of the free room and board or some other reason.
Most of the other things @twoinanddone says are true, too. We definitely reviewed student history with infractions before hiring and any significant infraction is usually an automatic disqualifier, so obviously don’t violate policy.
Joining dorm activities as a freshman is a huge deal. If your D’s dorm has a residential hall council, she should run for it or get involved in it - we drew a lot of our RAs from that. (They plan activities and do a lot of other things that are great prep for RA work, and few people really want to get involved.) Getting to know current RAs is also an excellent way to increase chances. ALL our RAs conducted our interviewing process along with us at my institution. And while hall directors selected their own staff, we took recommendations from our RAs VERY seriously, and I heavily involved my RAs in the process of selecting new RAs - because they took their jobs seriously and would only want people on their team who wouldn’t drop the ball and increase their workload, but also because team dynamics in res life are SO important and I wanted RAs who would click with my current ones. Basically, if my RAs strongly recommended someone and there wasn’t another reason to think they would be a bad fit, I tried to hire them or at least encourage another HD to bring them onto their team. One really common thing was residents who were particularly helpful or involved in the dorms (aka residents who weren’t necessarily on dorm council but always had suggestions for the RAs about events, or helped set up or clean up after events, or always showed up for most events, etc.) were referred to me as potential candidates.
Basically though res life is awesome and I’d tell any college student who’s interested to try and pursue it!
One thing in particular that I remember about my older D’s experience as an RA was that she had to be willing to be the “bad cop,” that is, not always being everyone’s friend, because residents would get mad or at least annoyed when told to be more quiet or whatever.
This is great advice. Just to clarify, D16 will be picking her college based on educational and financial fit, so that won’t be a worry.
An RA job, should she really go for one as an upperclassman, and be hired, would just be a cherry on top. But, because her career goal is school social work (albeit middle school), she’s kind of oriented toward all this RA work already. Her dream career-job is to be staff at a boarding school.
I know it’s early days, but you all have really helped us!
D16 does understand that her specific goals might change as she gains experience and opportunities, while she is already thinking for the long-term. She’s a planner and loves work.
Very good article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/fashion/on-the-front-line-of-campus-sexual-misconduct.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Thanks. It seems colleges are getting their acts together due to Title IX? So much responsibility on RAs. One tough job.