Hi everyone, my daughter has chosen to study Industrial Design and is trying to choose between RIT, UC and Auburn. We are from Florida and, since there are no ID schools in FL, have no choice but to look out of state. We are concerned about the co-op and the logistics of how they work. Any experience and advice on any of these schools? Thank you!!
Hi @flmom2018 , my son is in his sophmore year at UC studying ID. He is currently doing his first co-op term. His co-op is located in the Adirondacks where he is learning to build and design rustic adirondack style furniture. I would say this is not a typical co-op in that it deals with custom, hand crafted products but he is enjoying it and learing alot.
UC has a very well established co-op program with companies all around the country. Here is the process my son went through. Students prepare their portfolio and resume during the fall of their sophmore year. In addition to jobs fairs at the school, the co- op office sends out the student files to about 30 companies selected by the student. Students interview by phone and skype. If a company makes an offer for an assignment it is expected the student will accept. They dont allow students to wait too long for other offers so that they can efficiently place many students. Most of his classmates except for a few students had assignments by the end of the fall semester. From now on, he will alternate between a co-op and a school semester until he completes the 5 year program.
I think the co-op is one of the best features of the UC program. Students graduate with 1.5 years of experience. They get alot of support finding co-ops so it takes some of the job hunting pressure off the student while they are at school. My impression from other schools is they put more responsibilty on the students to contact employers and get job offers.
My son chose UC over other schools where he was accepted: RIT, RISD, Carnegie Mellon and Pratt. A good method for comparing schools is to look at the portfolios of students graduating from each college. If you seach the school name on Behance you will find student portfolios. This really helped my son in the selection process. UC was the also the most affordable school for us.
Each school has a different approach to teaching ID. I recommend your daughter visit each school and ask lots of questions to find where she feels most comfortable. Good luck!
Thank you @geode111. We have visited several schools and we are now trying to make the final decision. We are concerned about how easy it is to find a coop?
I think the job offers depend heavily on the quality of the student portfolio. I wouldn’t say it’s easy to get co-ops because it is competitive. In the first co-op my son thought it was difficult to differentiate portfolios between many of his classmates because they all had similar projects. He did many interviews, received constructive criticism on his portfolio from employers and got one job offer.
For his class with 80 students, 7 did not have a co-op at the end of the semester. He tells me this is higher than usual. More colleges are participating in co-op these days and it is getting more competitive. As the students get more co-op experience the number of junior and seniors that don’t get a job on co-op term goes down to 1 or 2 typically.
The field of ID is competitive and portfolios are more important than grades for getting a job offer.
I think it’s even harder to get co-ops and internships at other schools that don’t have such an extensive co-op network like UC.
Overall this is a great experience for preparing students entering this career.
Thanks for the advice. Definitely hard to make a choice.
my daughter is graduating in may with an industrial design degree. the co-ops were the reason we chose UC. she was accepted to appalachian state, virginia teach and drexel…which are both closer to our home in maryland but she chose UC because it was the top ID program in the country. i have heard that there are less companies offering co-ops and many have chosen just to have summer co-ops. for my daughters first co-op she really didn’t understand what a portfolio was and didn’t get much guidance and was not interviewed by many companies and had to find a co-op on her own. her 2nd co-op was at owens illinois where she has 26 patents on bottles she helped design and one of them even won an award. her 3rd co-op was at apex supply where she helped design and build the start of what ci-cis pizza is now using for warming station pick up kiosk, her 4th co-op was at hasbro where she helped design 2 toys that are on store shelves. her 5th co-op was for global brands group which is supposed to be a top consulting firm. they had no work for her to do, in fact it was a total learning experience for her because parts of the company were bought out by another company, there were may layoffs and not much communication with the interns. she didn’t even know who her supervisor was after the buy out. she didn’t get to design anything but she did see how large companies in the real world work. not to brag but she was given an award called the senior 100 which is when a student is chosen by either a professor or a peer as being one of the top 100 graduating seniors…she still has no idea who nominated her. one of the projects they had to do one semester was build a chair. her chair was chosen to be in a show call voltage…she was 1 of 13 students chosen from the senior class to have her project displayed in the show. your daughter will love it. tell her to get involved in some DAAP programs (DAAP tribunal, DAAP makers market) she was also involved in a wonderful program that UC participates in called 4 paws 4 ability. it is a service dog in training program where students can foster puppies in the program that are training to be service dogs for children with disabilities. it helps the puppies get used to large crowds, etc., she also joined a sorority her junior year to make friends outside of DAAP…she decided there are more students there then in the DAAP bubble and she needed to branch out. i know you and i have messaged one another previously. i hope your daughter makes the right decision for herself.