Co-op for internationals?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Northeastern University
1

First off, I’m an international and I’m currently trying to decide between USC CS and NEU CS. I’m having a really hard time b/c I think I want to work in the States (difficult, I know), and Northeastern’s Coop program is very appealing to me. I feel that in terms of job placement Northeastern beats USC. However, I have a few concerns.

  1. I’ve read one account of someone at Northeastern who had a very difficult time landing a coop. However, I’ve also read that this is major-dependent, and that CS/Engineering students shouldn’t have too much of a hard time finding one. Is this true?

  2. Would companies be less likely to take an international student for coop vs domestic student? Also how does the visa & getting payed work out? I know there’s this special exemption thing called CPT, but it doesn’t specify if students are eligible to be payed. Also it says it should be less than 12 months of full time; does that mean I can only do 2 co-ops? (I guess that might be enough for some but I know that the convention is to do 3.)
    link here: https://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/upload/international-students.pdf

I’m very reluctant to cross of Northeastern/take the acceptance at the same time b/c if I’m not going to get the “amazing” coop experience that people on cc/reddit report to have, I would definitely take USC over NEU.

Any thoughts on what I should do?

2

Yes, as an international student you have to follow the US government rules on employment. It may restrict which co-ops you can take (some may require us citizenship) and how long they can be (may not have the option of extending co-ops or doing 3 over the years.) I know my daughter had one friend who is not a US citizen who had some issue with her co-op and these rules. You might want to have one international co-op - which then would not follow US employment rules.

3

In general, CS majors should have no problem getting a co-op; there are a lot of great jobs available. There are a few co-ops (usually those where companies are working on government contracts) where you have to be a US citizen, but those are a relatively small minority in CS.

To find out the rules/restrictions with international students on co-op, I would highly recommend contacting Northeastern directly to get the facts on this, instead of getting it second hand. Contact admissions and they should be able to point you in the right direction, or get in touch with the CS co-op office directly.

4

There are also lots of international coops. My son is doing his in France and his best friend went to Germany. So the US time restrictions would not apply to those. Of course you need to work on getting the work permit for the other country if you choose to do this, but it is another option.