I love Northeastern and all of the opportunities it provides to the students. I definitely am convinced the co-ops are worth it when it comes to the experience and the time put into them but are they worth it financially?
I know a lot of co-ops are paid, but are they paid well enough? Assuming I do a co-op somewhere away from my parents house, I’ll have to pay for some type of room and board which can add up if you do two or three co-ops on top of paying for the semesters when you are on campus.
So I guess what I’m asking, for any current students, do you find the doing co-ops on top of going to school makes it more expensive or do you find you can pay for living accommodations with the money you make on co-ops so there wouldn’t be much extra cost on top of being a student at Northeastern. Hopefully this makes sense! Thanks!
Unpaid cops are in CSSH and some majors in CAMD> Pharmacy coops are well paid and science research coops also tend to be well paid. A rule of thumb is that coops pay should cover the cost of living while on coop with some left over for spending money when back in school.
Unless you live at home while on coop you should not expect coop pay to help with future tuition.
It does depend on your major a bit, but the majority of students will pay for their living expenses while on co-op, making the price exactly the same as any other non co-op school. In some majors, it is regular to make money in total while on co-op, but you shouldn’t bank on that.
For pharmacy, you should break even I suspect. In some of the better-paying jobs in pharmacy, you may make a few thousand per co-op even after room/board.
Short story: you don’t lose money on co-op except for specific low paying majors like arts and social sciences usually. The others will at least break even.
@vbspikes98 4th year pharmacy student here who’s done all 3 co-ops: expect your average co-op hourly wage to be about $14 I would say. This goes for both the retail and hospital locations.
As bhmomma said, being an RA is a dope option. It’s pretty competitive because of the free room and board, but if you can snag a spot you’re golden. I’m an RA on co-op now, so I get to bank all my earnings and I happen to have what may be the highest paying co-op in the business school… so after taxes and net my non existent expenses, I will have made over $30k this co-op cycle. Enough to fully fund my IRA, pay next year’s tuition, and have plenty left over to play with. Would not expect this coming in to Northeastern, but know it happens.
Don’t be an RA unless you are truly interested in the work - don’t be an RA when you have a co-op and are working crazy hours. My daughter has had terrible RAs who were not interested or were never available due to long hours while on co-op…
As a different perspective, some RAs have very regular coop hours, aren’t stressed about their own papers or exams and have evenings generally wide open.
@LkL5789 it depends, honestly. It’s often estimated as 10-15 hours per week of work, but it’s totally variable. For example, we work more during move-in and move-out manning the giant moving bins and checking people in/out. You proctor once a week (4 hours, but you can do homework, watch Netflix, whatever); you’ll have on average one duty shift a week, which is sitting in the RA office all evening, doing rounds of the building, and being on call overnight in case of an incident; preparing a bulletin board once a month; staff meeting once weekly, which is 1-2 hours; a meeting with your supervisor every other week for an hour; and the rest of the time is usually devoted to planning and doing programs, which is hugely variable- you may spend 10 hours on programming alone one week, and not at all the next. You can plan when you want your own programs to be (so long as you have at least one a month), so it can work with your schedule.
I was one of the kids working crazy hours, so it was definitely harder to make it work, but I think I did alright. I frequently e-mailed my residents to keep them in the loop of what I was up to and included relevant info for them (i.e, reminding them their options for going to the health center during flu season, good study spots for midterms, etc.) I had a few residents e-mail me when they wanted to talk and I was able to make time for them, it just couldn’t be as spur-of-the-moment. That being said, there are other RA’s around constantly doing programming and also available to talk so I don’t feel guilty for not being there every second- it’s not like I could even if I wasn’t working a crazy job.
All that being said… agree with kiddie that you shouldn’t apply if you really don’t want to do it. It will be miserable for both you and your residents. I happen to really enjoy it, so even when I’m busy I’m still making an effort and it doesn’t feel like work.