My son is in his Junior year. ChemE major - also part of STEM to MBA. Between 3.3 and 3.4 GPA. He is having a hard time gaining traction finding internships for this summer. Part of the trouble is he has had a new advisor each of his 3 years on campus so it is hard to get consistent help and feedback. The career center tells him to go Campus Recruiting/Career Day in the fall - which he has attended the last 2 years. He has applied to several internships through that and has also applied to approx. 30 found on the internet. But he has no real plan or guidance. Curious if anybody has advice or knows of a Bama engineering alumni group that actively seeks Bama students for internship opportunities.
You need to join the UA Facebook parents group, particularly the one for eng’g parents. We regularly post REU and internship opps. I’ve probably have posted 10 of them in the past 2 weeks. And there are a ton of REU opps.
Send me a PM if interested.
@1stTime Why did your son not do Co-op? Did he look for an internship after Sophomore year? What kind of responses is he getting back from potential employers? Has he talked to the Co-op office because maybe they can help.
The Co-op office was really impressive when I visited.
My son is now in his 3rd and final co-op session and I highly recommend the co-op office.
He was able to find a summer internship after his freshman year (before he opted to do a co-op), but it took A LOT of leg work. I don’t know how many resumes he sent out and he went to both the fall and spring job fairs on campus, but he only got 2 interviews and 1 of those did not go well (he said they were asking specific questions about material he hadn’t yet covered in any of his courses). Fortunately he did get the other position. It was very low paying for an engineering position ($10/hour) and wasn’t near home (he was able to spend the summer with relatives or it would not have been cost effective), but it provided some experience that he could add to a resume.
I was very glad when he opted to do the co-op because it was a full year of experience and I got a break from investing the time and energy in helping him find and apply for positions.
It does add another year to school, but the money is well worth it and I don’t think my son minds too much about staying on campus for another football season.
Many students don’t do co-op because they don’t want to extend their time. They prefer to do summer internships. and REUs.
I’ve added 1stTime to the UA facebook group and the eng’g group.
@mom2collegekids I totally understand your point but it really depends on what you plan to do beyond undergrad. If a person plans on going to Med School, like your son, I understand not doing Co-ops. However, if a student is planning on going into the workforce after undergrad then Co-op is definitely the best route to take.
He is planning to complete the MBA portion of the STEM to MBA program. So after getting the undergrad ChemE degree he will stay another year to get the MBA. So his thinking is that he is already planning on 5 full years on campus and doing a co-op would only push that out farther. He understands the benefits of co-ops, but is hoping to nail down an internship or REU before going the co-op route. To answer the other question above, yes, he tried to get an internship after sophomore year. But he felt frustrated working with a new advisor who referred him to the recruiting day - and the companies he spoke with at recruiting day telling him they were primarily looking for 3rd year students. Admittedly, we are slow on the uptake on how this whole process works. ChemE is challenging my son - like it should - he works very hard to keep his GPA over the 3.3 needed for Honors. But that leaves little time to ferret out all of these opportunities. He’s not a natural that breezes through everything at a 4.0 pace with time to spare. So far he has received 4 rejections on the 30 or so internship apps.
Just to give everyone an update…my son will be starting his ChemE internship on Monday. His persistence paid off. He went to the spring career day. Found a company looking for ChemE students. Went through the interview process and got a very generous offer a few weeks ago. He was lucky that his employer was slow in getting their internship program finalized for the year. So I guess everything happens for a reason. Starting work on Monday will cap off a very successful spring for him. He presented for NASA and was a Silver Award winner. His grades will keep him in the Honors College, and he starts work on the MBA portion of the STEM to MBA program soon.
@1stTime, great news! Roll Tide!