<p>My S just completed his first semester in Civil Engineering and thinks he will want to specialize in environmental engineering. He has spoken to some folks who stressed that graduating in 5 years and taking a coop year would give him experience that would significantly increase his chances of finding a job. Others have advised him that employablity would be improved by getting a masters and that this would be more valuble than the coop experience. It is early but he is considering both options. Do you have any thoughts about either plan?</p>
<p>I’ll bump this once and if there are now replies I will assume that none of you have an opinion about this. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.</p>
<p>This would depend mainly on your sons interest wether he wants to end up in industry or academia. The coop would be great for company recruiters. Also, the coop would help solidify the engineering foundations learned in the classroom, which helps for grad school later on, possibly after a couple years.of work.</p>
<p>For now he wants to go into industry and he wants to go the route that would make him most employable. Do engineering employers put their employees through graduate education?</p>
<p>For civil engineering, the experience will make him more employable, so he should do the co-op. One thing that employers are considering a little more now is that there are a lot of students graduating with internships or from co-op programs, so if you graduate without that (for certain engineering fields) and with a masters, you could look a bit overqualified. This is more true in fields like civil or mechanical, but less true in ones like biomed eng or chem.</p>
<p>It seems that if he doesn’t do the coop program he should definitely have internship experience prior to graduation. So perhaps realistically if he chooses to go the masters route summer internships ought to be in the plan. From what I understand it seems that a coop year or internships couldn’t start in a meaningful way before Junior year. Am I correct about that?</p>