You arrive on campus and a month in you start to notice that your bank account has taken a huge hit. All those Felipe burritos, Tasty burgers, and Market trips have finally started catching up with your bank account and suddenly you only have $3. But don’t worry because there are plenty jobs on campus you can find, from research assistant jobs to library jobs.
Jobs are not that hard to come by. You just need to look in the right places. A good place to check for on campus jobs is the Student Employment Office(SEO). Another great place to check are email lists, whether it’s an extracurricular organization list or your dorm/House list. I heard about my jobs from friends, SEO, and email lists. So finding a job isn’t the hard part. For some job inspiration check out these list of jobs you can apply for.
Tutoring
A stereotypical but quite lucrative job. Tutoring jobs can take on many different forms. Whether you’re working for Bureau of Study Council(BSC) or Harvard Student Agencies, there are so many tutoring opportunities for good pay as well. The BSC typically pays about $18/hr and you are notified whether or not you can be a tutor based on whether you received an A- or more in a class. Harvard Student Agencies tutoring ranges from specific subject topics to standardized testing tutoring. There are also smaller tutoring gigs you can find on the SEO website.
Harvard Student Agencies
The Harvard Student Agencies is a student run company here on Harvard’s campus that has many different businesses from tutoring to bartending. Within the company, there are multitude of different organizations that you can work for. I currently am a Sales Associate for The Harvard Shop. But there’s HSA Bartending, Let’s Go, and HSA Cleaners which offer so many different job opportunities.
Research Assistant
On SEO, you can often find research assistant positions within the various departments of the college and graduate schools. Oftentimes, these positions pay well and offer you to gain first hand experience with doing research. Finding a research position on campus is not always as formal as applying through SEO. Some students have in fact asked their own professors if they had any positions open if they were interested in their work. But, definitely check out SEO and the Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships website.
Admissions Office
The Admissions Office has four different student programs: Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program; Harvard Financial Aid Initiative; Harvard College Connection and Harvard First Generation Program. Each program is comprised of students who answer emails and sometimes give tours and information sessions to students. I currently work for the Harvard College Connection group and have been working here since June. It has been an amazing experience so far. I answer student’s emails and I write blogs for the college. Typically the job application comes out late spring for the next coming year and March for the summer. So definitely check your emails to see if an application has been sent around.
Harvard Foundation, Harvard Women’s Center, and Office of BGLTQ+ Student Life
These three offices are the official Harvard College sites for everything related to race, gender, and BGLTQ+ issues. You can apply to intern for each of these different offices and have the chance to engage with these issues in a way that can affect the whole college. The Harvard Foundation internship is a four year long internship and exclusively available to freshmen. (Sometimes there are openings for other grades so be on the lookout.) Applications typically are released early freshman fall. Sometimes, there are positions open to other grades but mostly for freshman. Typically for the Women’s Center and the Office of BGLTQ+ internship applications are released around March, so be on the lookout for these applications. These internships are one year internships and any year is able to apply.
These are by no means the only jobs you can find on campus. There are so many different jobs on and off campus that you can find here. So don’t be afraid to just do a little digging!