<p>Does anyone have any personal experience going through the 4-year program? I understand it is relatively new.</p>
<p>It is not new at all. Everyone THINKS its new because Northeastern has been advertising it so much lately. However there has ALWAYS been the option to do four years instead of five, if you pay attention to your required classes and do everything on time.</p>
<p>I’m actually kind of annoyed at Northeastern with this whole pushing-for-four-years thing. I’m doing four (graduating next spring), but that’s because I came in with a bunch of credit, I’m going to grad school, and I’m on student loans (so I don’t want to spend any more money than I have to). But for most of my time here, I planned on five years. Meanwhile now I’ve talked to a bunch of first year students who won’t even CONSIDER doing five years, and I think that’s really stupid. Five years gives you a lot of options, another co-op, more time to change your mind, etc. Every single person I know doing 4 years is doing it purely because they’ve decided during their third year that they are certain with their major, content with the two co-ops they’ve done/are doing, and don’t want to spend the pointless money taking electives for a fifth year. People who are coming in thinking they have to or “should” finish in four years are cheating themselves. There is absolutely nothing wrong with graduating in five years, no matter what friends from back home say when you tell them- I know mine think I wasn’t smart enough to do four years when I told them it was a five year program… which is just idiotic. In fact, most people by their third year will WISH they had more time in college.</p>
<p>And re-reading that, I don’t mean to sound like I’m yelling at you or anything. I just get really annoyed when I tell people I’m doing four years and they act like I’m doing this super awesome thing. I would kill to stay for a fifth year and do a third co-op in some other field to get even more varied experiences and maybe even take electives towards a minor or do a full semester study abroad (as of now, I can only do a summer one). But sadly I only need 7 classes to graduate, and they’ll cut my financial aid after those classes so there is no way I’d be able to afford a fifth year and still be able to go to grad school.</p>
<p>Essentially I ditto neuchimie, per usual. And this is going to be a novel, because I have senioritis, and I’d rather write about this than do real work.</p>
<p>First. 18 year olds know nothing. I know because I was one once. Also because I still practice, for fun, with my old sports team (for which I’m now out of 4 years of eligibility, womp womp), and I have to deal with 18 year olds telling me why they want to graduate in 4 years. This generally results in me going into passionate monologues about 5 years being awesome and then me throwing my hands in the air and telling them they know nothing about anything (the reason they love me so much).</p>
<p>18 year olds think 5 years is a long time. They are wrong. They think after 4 years of college they’ll have it all figured out and will run off into the rainbows with their fancy new jobs and cool apartments. They are wrong. They think 23 is old and grown up. And despite me feeling annncient when I turned 23 (blech), I am sure as hell not a grown up and they are so so wrong.</p>
<p>They think that if they take 5 years to graduate, they’ll be behind all the other 23-year-olds out there. They are wrong. A lot of kids take that extra fifth year. Our 5th year involves a semester of co-op and one awesome last semester of being a hungover whiny lazy college student with no responsibility (sadly I do have responsibilities and have little time to be lazy, but I am often whiny and hungover). Many students from other colleges spend their “5th year” living with Mom and Dad, applying to any and every job, often hating the one they end up in and crying “TAKE ME BACK TO COLLLLEGGGEEE”. So I mean, it pretty much equals out, except for the maybe 10% of college kids who go straight to grad/prof school or the 1% who land a sweet gig after graduation.</p>
<p>Ok, so this isn’t so much about the benefits of the 5th year as it is my whining about The Real World. But, the benefits are pretty much what neuchimie said. More summers to spend doing fun/cool things (traveling! volunteering! random internships!), more time to figure out what your next step should be, more work experience, more life experience, more time to enjoy college life.</p>
<p>Also, like neuchimie said, there are some people who do graduate in 4 years because it’s really the best choice for them. A friend of mine came in with boatloads of credits and still had time to do a co-op, and was super productive in her 4 years, so she graduated, is doing 2 years with Teach For America, and will then go to med school. Another went on a co-op he fell so in love with that he finished up school and now happily works for them. Then there was the girl I knew who didn’t “see the point” and wanted to “get on to the real world” and is now on her 3rd job since graduating and still hasn’t found anything she actually wants to do.</p>
<p>So, there are good reasons to go the traditional route and just graduate. 5 years isn’t necessary for everyone, but most of us love it. Co-op/5 years is the NEU student’s favorite thing about NEU (hence our responses!) so it really works for the majority of us.</p>
<p>Obviously I’m happy to have done 5 years. They’ve all (mostly) been awesome. That being said, come may I will be psyched to be outta here.</p>
<p>Also. I should point out that you can always change the year you graduate. For less structured majors (ie not engineering), you can decide, hey, I don’t want to do another co-op, I’m just going to graduate earlier. Or you can give the first year or so a shot and then decide to go on co-op and graduate later. </p>
<p>It’s not set in stone from the minute you step foot at northeastern, you can change your mind/adjust your schedule as you go along.</p>
<p>By the way,
does anyone know when we decide whether we want the four or five year co-op?</p>
<p>… Did you read either of our rants? I decided only a month ago. You don’t “decide” like you pick between two majors. </p>
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<p>I pretty much died laughing when I read this, Emily. I’m currently 20 (yeah I know, a baby) and will be either 22 or 23 when I graduate grad school, and one of the people I knew from high school that is graduating this year asked me last week how I could even stand to wait that long to be out of school because it was “so old”. I remember when I thought my life had to be totally figured out by 23. Now I’m just hoping (although to be honest, I’m not worried at all) I’ll be able to pay rent and loans when I’m 25. </p>
<p>Also, I just want to point out that often people who can graduate in 2 years and still do co-ops are people who could graduate in 3 years at a normal state school. I have friends graduating now (3 years) and they are so not ready for the real world. I’m currently on a networking warfare mission to get a friend of mine a writing job because she has no prospects at all, despite doing two publishing internships at her state school. </p>
<p>I’m totally comfortable about doing four years because I’ve already started filling out grad school applications in my head, so it really doesn’t feel like four years at all.</p>
<p>It makes sense to consider doing 5th year / 3 co-ops. The last co-op will likely pay the best and hopefully cover your living expenses. The more co-op experience a student has before graduation, the more prepared he/she will be to do a job AND to know what kind of job is the best fit.</p>
<p>ive been considering the 5-year program to get extra co-op experience… however, is it true that i will have to do an extra summer semester?</p>
<p>Whether or not you do an extra summer in school depends on what coop division/pattern you are in. Several posters on various Northeastern threads seem averse to going to school in the summer. I actually liked being in class during the summer. The campus is less crowded and I found it easier to get some electives. I also liked not being in an office eight hours a day during the summer. After class, I could enjoy the nice weather and study at night. There is a lot to do in Boston in the summer and you can enjoy it in a way you can’t if you are working.</p>
<p>Summer in Boston could be pretty nice. </p>
<p>But it looks like there are some nice summer options studying abroad.
[Dialogue</a> of Civilizations Programs: Office of International Study Programs: Northeastern University](<a href=“http://www.northeastern.edu/studyabroad/programs/dialogue_of_civilizations/]Dialogue”>http://www.northeastern.edu/studyabroad/programs/dialogue_of_civilizations/)</p>
<p>You don’t do any extra semesters. It’s just the eight traditional semesters you’d be taking elsewhere fall/spring for four years end up having to be placed into some summers. So if you were to do spring co-ops, you’d be in classes:</p>
<p>Year 1: 2 full semesters fall/spring
Year 2: fall semester
Year 3: summer II half semester, fall semester
Year 4: summer II half semester, fall semester
Year 5: 2 full semesters fall/spring</p>
<p>If you do fall co-ops, you’d be in classes:</p>
<p>Year 1: 2 full semesters fall/spring
Year 2: 2 full semesters fall/spring
Year 3: spring semester, summer I half semester
Year 4: spring semester, summer I half semester
Year 5: spring semester</p>
<p>And I totally recommend doing Dialogues for summer classes! I went on one last year, will be going on one this year, and am really hoping I can do a third one two years from now. They’re basically the reason I chose to come here, but then again I’m an International Affairs major :)</p>