@singermom4 The choice is, of course, up to you and your son, but I believe the built in Co-op opportunities available at UC are critical in positioning graduates with the best opportunities post-college. Most businesses today want experienced employees who can hit the ground running. They just don’t train like they used to, and in comparing applicants, they’re IMHO much more likely to opt for an experienced candidate (and possibly one with which they’ve had co-op with before) over one with no experience.
With co-ops, the university has an entire department that recruits and nurtures relationships with businesses all over the country and abroad to which UC students can apply. UC students will graduate with 1.5 years of experience on top of their diploma from a very prestigious program. Those businesses come back semester over semester because they see and are more than satisfied with the caliber of UC students. This is unbelievably helpful to a student who has never had to sell him or herself to a company before. The companies already have experience with past UC students, so they already know what the current co-op applicants know, making the interview process much less tense and very easy for both the recruiters and the applicant.
Without co-op, students need to seek out summer internships on their own time during semester courses, researching and sending out dozens of resumes all in competition with their having to study for quizzes and midterms. I realize that many colleges have career services organizations that help students with resume writing and interviewing techniques, but seeking them out is again on your own time and competes with course-related studies. Co-op semesters vary, and therefore, are available year round for a company to take advantage of. They just don’t need interns during the summer, but that’s when everyone…everyone, is looking. Many of the companies involved with UC Co-op have a steady stream of interns of various academic levels cycling in and out all year, and if your son is incoming, a conversation with a currently employed DAAP student provides invaluable and detailed insight into the firm that would otherwise be unavailable to someone just researching on their own.
As for moving to take advantage of co-op opportunities, it’s not as complicated as it sounds because other DAAP students are, in many cases, coming off co-op in the same town, if not the same company, to which you’re locating to work in your co-op semester. That means a sublease of an at least partially, if not fully, furnished room awaits your incoming student. When that doesn’t happen, or if your son sets up his own co-op experience, then, yes, you need to find accommodations on your own, but that would be the same case as with any summer internship they might get too.
If you’ve read this far, I think you can see that I’ve got strong opinions regarding a built-in co-op experience, and its importance to a student. Whatever institution that you choose, I wish you and your son all the luck in the world! It’s a tough decision, but you’ve got a lot of good options from which to choose.
It was a hard decision since we are OOS and she also got into University of Florida (State flagship school – very competitive and hard to get into, ranked much higher than UC overall, very affordable). A big, big thank you to all of you for sharing your experiences, feedback and advice – it helped immensely, and I am very grateful to everyone on this board.