Honestly Caryn - the experience is worth it.

Plus, it looks really good to future employers. It shows responsibility and great management skills.

No we had to pay room and board. Our perks were...getting paid I forget how much each semester (which wasnt til the end of the semester), a free parking pass for your car, 10% off at the bookstore long as you remembered to tell the bookstore, a single room for the price of a room with a roommate, and that was pretty much it.

I can't believe people don't get the cost of their room and board comped for being an RA. I thought that was standard.

my friend was an RA at FSU and they got paid the same as a campus job, which was minimum wage (so $5.15/hr for 20hrs/week-which sux cause RA is a full time job).
they also got a single but they had to pay for it.

another friend is an RA out at some school in CA, and they dont get jack. it is a volunteer position. then again, its a technical school and the RA doesnt have much responsibility over the residents. there, its more the security officer's position to handle what i would think was "RA stuff."

i went to formal with an RA. she had her own apartment and stuff. she had mentioned that they were paid enough to cover the cost of apartment living, but not the extra bills.

I thought this thread was about the Egyptian sun god. Seriously. I'm an idiot, obviously.


I was an RA - I was either the best RA ever, or worst, depending on who you ask. It does look good on a resume, and it will provide you EASY answers to pretty common application/interview questions (I'm talking softball shit like "what's the hardest thing you've done?" or "what are your weaknesses?").

The job kind of sucks, but can be rewarding. It's not nearly the time commitment they will tell you it is - you can dip out of much of it, plus most residents won't require much assistance. You will have a couple of clingers - you'll have to work out how to deal with them on your own.

Past that, I still drank, went out, had other outside responsibilities, occasionally made out with girls, all that - it was certainly a worthwhile experience, plus the compensation was not even CLOSE to in line with the amount of work I did (I would estimate 10 hrs/week of actual work, but at BU RA positions paid full room and board - I obviously won in that exchange).

I'm going to say at my school being an RA is a full time job. You get a set number of nights out (anytime you're out past 2am) a semester. It's not very many, and it's up to the individual RHDs. You have to put on programs, do bulletin boards, plan so many floor activities, work the front desk and also attend so many in-hall activities. The compensation is room and board (in a reduced capacity room) and the highest meal plan. In my opinion you have to love the job to keep doing it. Most RA's don't cotinue the job for the length of their time at college, it ranges from a year to two years usually. With quite a few leaving at semester of their first year.

At IU, RAs get a single room (free room and board), a 2,704 point meal plan (it's the midrange plan), and a small monthly stipend. Here's the info page. (go to the RA/CUE online application center for specifics)

Me too. I was wondering why it had gotten so many responses . . .

I think it really depends on the school. Certain schools require a lot more responsibility than others, and certain schools obviously compensate you a lot more than others. For the record, all of my RA friends bitched endlessly about their jobs, but most of them did it for a second year, so take that as you will.

I would make sure you can have an off-campus job, my friends who were RAs were not allowed to.

Also, that limit on scholarship money sounds bunk.

Unfortunately, no. :( I didn't at undergrad, although the RAs who I worked with in grad school did.

Update
 

Re: Ra
 

I was a RA for about 2 years and I honestly liked it. It paid better than most other college jobs, I had a room all to myself, and it was really flexible and worked around my class/extra curricular schedule.

The one thing that I HATED about it was what we used to call "overnight duty". The RA's of the building had assigned nights that they had to be "on call" in case a resident was having problems or whatever. The only calls I EVER got were from drunk freshman girls at 3 in the morning who needed to be let into their rooms b/c they didn't want to carry their keys with them.