How much spending money does a freshman need?

Tsubie-chan
Sun, 17 Jun 2007 05:46:52 +0000

Heh, getting a credit card here is tough. Part of the reason my SATs screwed up was cause I had to pay the money via a check as I didn’t have access to a credit card. Here, you need to have visited a foreign country in the last few months or something and then you are legible to apply for an international one ortherwise not.

TheDad, I think it depends. For F-1 visa holders, it’s basically school + 8-10 hrs of on-campus job per week then coming home for the summer as we can’t work off-campus till work permit issued… that is a typical freshman. A friend of mine who went last year said she found schoolwork easy and even with the work-study she felt bored because she had too much free time. She is a very good student of-course, but perhaps high school for her here in this country involved more work (my courseload was 21 courses for two years which still felt pretty slack). Then again, she didn’t socialise that much and did say someone she knew was having a hard time because her grades were suffering due to too much ECA.

Sure considering now I will have to take care of myself and won’t have maids, grandmother and mom running after me or dad buying things, it will be a lot more responsibility on my shoulder and that will probably burn me out combined with the schoolwork. I didn’t think that’d be a factor with American kids though, as they tend to be more indenpendent at this age. It’s probably about the way how their lifestyles change once in college, whereas here it’s so as well but in a different way.

Another friend of mine, who is American and living in Maryland, said he thinks I won’t have much time for my current activities once I am in college cause college professors like to treat their classes like the ‘only class you have’.