My son is starting to look at colleges for Mechanical Engineering. My husband thinks that Co-op will give him better opportunities. Thoughts for those who have done it.
Yes, a co-op can be a huge plus, but it’s not the only option.
Co-ops are great for gaining work experience and helping to pay for college. They also often lead to a job offer. However, they do delay graduation, typically by 1 to 1.5 years. They also require that you rotate each term/semester between work and school, which can be disruptive.
Another option is doing an internship. These are typically done over the summer (but Fall/Spring internships have become more popular), so don’t delay graduation. They can be hard to get before your junior year, since many companies use internships as a recruiting tool (they can lead to job offers) and limit their recruiting to juniors. You don’t gain as much work experience, but then you are starting to work a year earlier.
My daughter graduated in December, after completing two internships. Each was at a different company, and she accepted a job at a 3rd company (today was her first day!).
Most schools support both options. A few require that you complete a co-op, but they also work to help each student find one.
Unless your son attends a school with a co-op requirement, he doesn’t have to decide today if he wants to co-op or do an internship. He can decide after he’s been in school for a bit, and knows what industry he wants to go into.
Good Luck!
My daughter is at a co-op optional school. She didn’t want to a commit to one or two companies to co-op and is more interested in doing summer internships so she can have broader exposure to different industries. We haven’t seen a substantial difference in job prospects for co-op vs internships.
This is anecdotal but when my D interviewed for her position as a Chem E she had cooped for 5 terms (22 months). The interview focused on her work experience as opposed to her education. She got the position and the pay was on the upper end of what they said Chem E’s typically make (petroleum engineers not withstanding). To my knowledge all of the cooperative education students she was friends with got good jobs either with the company they cooped with or other companies. These students came from a variety of universities so the coop experience was the common denominator.
I will say that where one coops can have an impact too. If you are looking to work in industry working for a large company can provide opportunities that working for a smaller company might not. Grades and interviews can have an affect on which companies offer you interviews for coop positions. Just having a coop might not offer as much opportunity as having the “right” coop position.
My husband who was an IE would say that co-op was the best thing he did. Not just because of the opportunities, but to know what you don’t want to do. Most employers wanted to know about his experience with companies when he graduated. A friend’s son is a recent graduate from Northeastern and he had incredible co-op experiences, got to live in different places- internships can be similar, but if he is looking at Northeastern, they have a co-op program that is much better than the typical internship.
pros; should be guaranteed a job as a BS. Also can see what the company is like. Cons: not all employers may participate. delays graduation 1 year. Also, maybe not your field but for my DD they tend to start co-ops before they’ve experience all the sub specialty engineering classes (for ISE) to really know which way they want to go.
It’s important to note that no such requirement to “commit” to companies exists in many schools. Big co-op focused schools like Northeastern, Waterloo, UCincinatti, and Drexel all do not have this requirement and can actually offer more broad exposure to different industries and jobs.
As a Northeastern student I love co-op, but “better opportunities” is a marginal difference. Co-op has many more benefits such as more experience in your field (which of course does help with opportunities), figuring out what you like and don’t like in a job, the way it can help practically focus and ground your academic studies, and the pay is nice. Internships do these things to lesser degrees, but as someone who has done 3 internships (two high school, one college) and two co-op’s, the difference in time is huge for so many reasons.
Coop is not the only option to get industry experience. Many schools that require co-op don’t provide help to find one and it can prevent students from graduating on time. Depending on a major, internships might be a better option. Mechanical Engineering internships are mostly for juniors and seniors. CS internships are not difficult to find from freshman year.
D16 is a coop student at Waterloo. There is a tremendous infrastructure that supports students in finding coops. The coop employment rate is 95% for students’ first term and 98% overall. There are thousands of US and Canadian companies that hire students from Waterloo. Engineering students will have their first coop job after the first or second semester. They complete five 4 month coop terms. Engineering coop students earn an average of $17K per term. Students are required to do 5 coop terms, but can do 6.
D16 isn’t in engineering. She just came off a coop term, her second with the same employer, a massive corporation. She wouldn’t have had the same opportunity without coop.
Since he isn’t sure, pick a school that offers but does not require co-op (e.g., CWRU)