<p>Hi! :) I'm a prospective student that really really loves Oberlin, but just had a few questions and was hoping someone might know something and the following things.</p>
<p>Is Oberlin good at offering internships? I heard that it is because there are essentially none during the school year ( as there is almost no town). Does Oberlin have good career service help? Do they help students identify majors, careers, job opportunities? And Oberlin gets out much later then most schools (end of May). Is it very difficult to find jobs and internships since people who got out earlier may have already gotten most of them?</p>
<p>What is study abroad like at Oberlin? Do most kids study abroad? Is it easy to find a program and go through it regardless of whether Oberlin offers it or not? </p>
<p>Also, if anyone have any experience with the Environmental Studies Major at Oberlin, and could offer a bit of insight, that would be great!</p>
<p>My D is a freshman at the Con so we don’t have a lot of experience. However, she just finished setting up an internship for her Winter Session (basically the month of January.) She will be in NYC helping to produce an opera competition. She is so excited. The winter session is great because you have a lot of flexibility in setting up an area you would like to study. The website says that about 150 students study abroad each semester. My D has found her teachers to be very open to the study abroad ideas she has discussed with them.</p>
<p>I’m studying abroad right now, so I can answer any questions you have about that It’s definitely not an unusual thing to do here – I think the stat is about 45% of students do a semester or a year abroad, and more travel abroad for Winter Term projects or summer research.</p>
<p>In terms of options, Oberlin runs four programs of its own: two during the year in London and Cordoba, two over the summer in Italy and Europe. (The Italy program is specifically designed for music students.) There are also 90-odd affiliated programs, which basically means that Oberlin knows they’re good and will make it easy to transfer credits. Also, if you study with an affiliated program, any financial aid from Oberlin can be applied to your semester abroad. That said, if you find an unlisted program that you really like, you can petition for it to become affiliated – that’s what I did, since there weren’t any affiliated programs in one of my majors.</p>
<p>Faculty are generally familiar with the different options in their disciplines; my department has a meeting at the beginning of every year where majors who are interested in studying abroad can talk to students who’ve been there. If you tell your advisor early that you’re interested in studying abroad, they can help you plan around the requirements for your major(s), research, etc. The Office of Study Away also does workshops about how it works to apply for programs, request academic leave, etc. and I’ve found their staff to be really helpful (like, met with me on extremely short notice right before the academic leave deadline in order to talk about financial issues). I’m also discovering, now that I’m actually abroad, that they’re good about staying in touch about housing and course selection for next semester.</p>
<p>Of course, I have no idea how all this stuff works at other schools… but my experience at Oberlin has been that the process is pretty painless, there are a lot of choices, and faculty and administrators really encourage students to go.</p>
<p>I agree that winter term is a good time to find internships and Oberlin has many different organizations and businesses that they’re connected to across the country who offer internships. I ended up having two internships over January that I had found myself at home. Career services is also pretty helpful, but you have to seek them out, rather than having them come to you. You’ll also have a faculty advisor, and they can also be really helpful in terms of deciding on your major, giving you some names of things to look into, etc. I have some friends who after graduation from big city colleges stayed in their cities and already had connections and internships, but Oberlin won’t have much of that. That being said, there are a few opportunities for internships on campus and the town, but many of them are for work-study students.
I think you make a valid point with the question about Oberlin getting out later in May. I think that this is occasionally an issue and you’ll just have to make sure that you’re looking for jobs early while you’re still in school. For my summer job, I was allowed to start later than the other summer workers, so if you communicate with a place, it might not matter.
Study abroad is encouraged and the whole process runs pretty smoothly besides some annoying paperwork. I studied abroad and everything worked out well.
I don’t know a whole ton about environmental studies, but was always impressed by the different neat things the majors were doing. It seems to be a good program from what I’ve heard.</p>
It’s definitely not an unusual thing to do here – I think the stat is about 45% of students do a semester or a year abroad, and more travel abroad for Winter Term projects or summer research.</p>