Wed Jul 27, 2011 1:16 pm
These are the guidelines for the American school I attend. I assume these are government regulations and not specific to my school or state, but I'm not 100% sure.
International students can work up to 20 hours a week on campus while they are taking classes. 20 hours is stressed - you cannot work 22 one week when your place of employment happens to be busy. You cannot go over 20 hours. I haven't investigated if this applies during periods of no classes, like Thanksgiving or Spring Break, but I've never heard anything about exceptions to this rule.
International students can work up to 40 hours a week on campus during their "vacation", or while they are not enrolled in classes.
I haven't seen anything limiting the amount of money a student can make, but if you're limited to working on campus you probably aren't going to be exactly raking it in anyway.
As I mentioned before, these jobs must be on-campus. There are exceptions, however, for example I believe some internships may count as exceptions. But for the most part, if you're an undergrad, you can't work off-campus. When you are given a job on-campus, you will go to your international services center, or applicable service station, and provide proof of this employment. You'll then be issued a social security number. As far as I've been able to tell, you can't get this number without first getting a job (I know because I needed a SSN to "donate" plasma, which I was trying to do because I didn't have a part-time job yet.)