3
2 years ago
Admissions Advice

Job
Answered

Is having a job impressive for my college application and follow up question is an internship or a job more impressive.

.
3
1

Earn karma by helping others:

1 karma for each ⬆️ upvote on your answer, and 20 karma if your answer is marked accepted.

1 answer

1
Accepted Answer
2 years ago

Context is everything. So it really depends on you demographics, personal circumstances, whether you are first generation, low income, come from a under-represented minority or marginalized community.

Let me give you 3 examples:

Student A is LatinA, and works in the family bodega to help his immigrant parents who have no formal education. They attend a public school and needs to work to contribute to the family. So when this applicant applies to college they will have lots of work experience out of necessity, not of choice. Therefore college admissions officer will be sensitive, empathetic and compassionate toward this person trying to better themselves.

Student B is a East Asian and middle class and both parents are college educated. He attends a charter school for gifted students and has great grades, course rigor and ECs. In his free time he makes money on the side by fixing laptops and smartphones. He has saved $10,000 and re-invested most of it by building his own crypt-mining rig with 10 GPUS. College admissions officers might be impressed with this applicants hands on approach and how his work experience align with his desire to be a CS major.

Student C is a White upper class private school applicant. They play 3 varsity sports and won all State in Lacrosse and Football in the Private School athletic conference. They already have 5 colleges looking to recruit them, including dad's alma mater. They want to work at their dad's investment bank for a internship on the Capital Markets trading floor. Colleges think these types of affluent applicants who are full paying students who play collegiate sports are par for the course and regardless, are going to get picked up by some top colleges. Whether they work or not, doesn't matter much because they are ALDCs and super entitled.

I hope this give you a reasonable range of explanations why there is no right and wrong answer. It really depends on who you are as an applicant and what you are trying to achieve by working and doing a summer internship.

Good luck.

1
What are your chances of acceptance?
Your chance of acceptance
Duke University
Loading…
UCLA
Loading…
+ add school
Your chancing factors
Unweighted GPA: 3.7
1.0
4.0
SAT: 720 math
200
800
| 800 verbal
200
800

Extracurriculars

Low accuracy (4 of 18 factors)

Community Guidelines

To keep this community safe and supportive:

  1. Be kind and respectful!
  2. Keep posts relevant to college admissions and high school.
  3. Don’t ask “chance-me” questions. Use CollegeVine’s chancing instead!

How karma works