Graduate or More Internships

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>I'm a senior in chemical engineering. My curriculum has a mandatory summer lab. Normally, the summer lab begins the day after final exams in May, and finished by the 2nd week of June. This allowed students to have time remaining in the summer for internships or other ventures. However, now the class has been moved to the middle of June to coincide with the university's normal class summer schedules. This severely limits opportunities for internships because most companies won't let the student leave during the middle of the job period for 5 weeks. </p>

<p>Here is my dilemma. I have an offer from a good company for an internship/coop. If I take the offer, I will not take the summer course until Summer 2011 and thus would not graduate until Summer 2011. I definitely want my resume to be as best as possible which is why I am considering doing this to have more experience. Spring 2011 I will not have any classes to take and the company already said that I would be able to return that term as well. </p>

<p>If I work this summer, I will be able to save more money to pay for the summer class in summer 2011. If I take this course this summer, I'll have to take more loans out to pay for it.</p>

<p>Of course, I would love to graduate asap so that I can (hopefully) land a job and stop being a broke college student lol.</p>

<p>To sum, it's between
More experience plus making money to reduce loan amount or
graduate earlier and get a real job.</p>

<p>Thanks for taking the time to read this.</p>

2

<p>I’m no expert, but it seems like you’d be getting a better deal taking the internship. It’s not too uncommon not to graduate on time, so I think it’s a worthwhile investment.</p>

3

<p>do you have other work experience?</p>

4

<p>DS was able to string three post MS-CS internships while he was looking for a FT position 2008-2009. Originally he was planning to do only one, but jobs were/are scarce.</p>

5

<p>internships are good, pay is good and your not committed, it’s like you can’t really graduate and work for a company and then leave after a yr. and repeat, people will frown upon that, so this is your chance to test the waters you know?</p>

6

<p>I did two different chemical engineering internships. One summer hire program with the Department of Defense - not engineering, purely secretarial. And I also have an on campus job as a student “researcher”. I help a Ph.D researcher who is not a professor but works for our school’s entrepreneurship center. </p>

<p>So my work experience is pretty good and I have a lot of leadership positions. One of those internships however, was actually a coop. I won a scholarship and had to quit the coop program in order to receive it. My supervisor for some reason was offended and I learned he had been giving me negative references, so I keep it on my resume I just don’t list him as a reference anymore. Therefore, I’m reluctant to mention it too much.</p>