<p>i'm a freshamn in College
but wanted to ask a question about internships and also co-ops?</p>
<p>whens the best time to start them?</p>
<p>down here everyone starts them ass soon as possible. they start sometime within their second year</p>
<p>so your saying IN AROUND THE SOPHOMORE YEARS.</p>
<p>I had completed 7 quarters before I started my first co-op.</p>
<p>The idea that there are internships out there ripe for the plucking is a myth. Do not assume that you will be able to choose when you start your internship. To land one, it takes networking, cold-calling, letter-writing and aggressive job-hunting tactics. Freshman year is not too early to start looking for one, to start making contacts and doing 'reverse interviews'. </p>
<p>I think college career centers do students a real disservice in this regard. They point to all those students who have landed high-visibility internships. I guess if you have a 3.5 at an Ivy League school, it's a breeze. But I hear lots of stories of disappointment. Many engineers spend their summers saying, "Would you like to see our dessert menu?"</p>
<p>In some ways, landing an iternship is harder than landing a job on graduation.</p>
<p>i see, my professor said a sophomore last year applied for like 20 something internships and only got 1 for just interview. he luckily got it. and in the summer of jr year that guy got pleny (i mean a couple) of internships.</p>
<p>Read 'Advice to Rocket Scientists' (<a href="http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=360&id=1133)%5B/url%5D">http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=360&id=1133)</a>.</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>We have students in our program getting internships right after their freshman year. They usually are only doing CAD work and simple stuff in that first internship though.</p>
<p>So Basicslly The Hard Wrk Is Obviusly Done In Sr And Jr Year But Especially Sr Year.</p>
<p>I agree with redbeard that obtaining a co-op or internship can be difficult. At the same time, clicking with a good company could pay handsome dividends at graduation in the form of a full time job. I would suggest trying to land an engineering (or technician job - as a student) as soon as possible to build your resume. I finished chem eng and like redbeard said, my summers consisted of trivial non-engineering related work (the competition when I was in eng school was way too fierce for summer jobs). I think my career prospects would have been better if I had been able to land meaningful summer work (instead I was unemployed for too long). Classmates that summered with big companies later joined them full time.</p>
<p>ASAP. The best part about getting in an internship early is you'll get an idea of whether or not you really want to do it for a career. Maybe you won't learn it through the work you do yourself, but you can observe your co-workers, and see what they do day to day.</p>
<p>D (bio med eng) contacted a genetic reseach institute by email in January of her freshman year about an intership, did an in person interview during Spring Break and began her internship the week after she returned home for the summer. Start early, do research on the companies in your area that do the kind of work you'd eventually like to do and be upfront with companies when you contact them about what you have studied "so far" and what you hope to come away with from the internship-it keeps expectations on both sides realistic. The staff in the lab where she worked were very generous with their guidance, the information they shared with her and the research she was involved in.</p>