<p>How much do internships help you when getting a job? For example if I graduate with with a 3.6+ from Penn State in Aero and don't have any internship/coop experience, will it hurt me that much? I just don't want to give up my summers working somewhere away from home.</p>
<p>Internships help you VERY VERY MUCH with getting a job. If you do an internship with a company and don’t screw up, 90% chance they’ll hire you for a full-time position afterwards. I’ve also often heard of companies hiring exclusively from their past intern pool, meaning that you CAN’T work for them unless you did an internship there.</p>
<p>What you say doesn’t make any sense though.
What, are you going to miss your parents if you leave? If you’re going to work over the summer, wouldn’t you rather do an internship (something relevant to your career path) than some part-time job near your parents’ house? You’ll make more money AND you’ll find it more interesting.</p>
<p>Internships/summer jobs in your field exist in the oddest of places. My S found one in our medium-small metro area (250,000 people total) by doing his own legwork/online search. Look at all the firms in your area that might potentially employ people in your field (not necessarily the obvious; my S got his job in a biotech company even though that’s not his field, but it was a software engineering job which was close enough to his field).</p>
<p>Extremely Important, what you learn in school and what you do at a job are different. No one cares if you can solve “textbook” problems if its not going to make the company money. Internships/Coops teach you what is necessary to be a good engineer in practice, which is not always what is taught in schools.</p>
<p>Thats not to say you cant find a job after you graduate, but you may be overlooked by some of the well known companies because they may not think its worth it to teach how to be an engineer in practice.</p>
<p>The toughest part is getting your foot in the door. If you already have previous experience through internships, it will be relatively easier to get a job in your field. Most people will have had some relevant work experience when they graduate and look for that first job. </p>
<p>Most of the time, they’ll take the person with work experience for a couple of reasons:
- The company knows the person can hold down a job and isn’t lazy.
- The company knows that the person knows what to expect in industry and won’t quit after 2 weeks because s/he doesn’t like it.
- What viciouspoultry said</p>
<p>Haha no, it’s not because I will miss my parents. It’s because I’ll miss all my friends from home. They’d all be having a fun summer and I’d be elsewhere. If I found an internship near home, I would be all over it. I guess it does help a lot though.</p>
<p>I do understand not wanting to leave home, it seems like a big step to me too. However, if I DO GET AN INTERNSHIP in the FIRST place, then I will totally take it! You will be lucky to get an internship in the first place, good ones are hard to come by and are usually extremely competitive. My view is, just get an internship, do it, then make your decision on whether this line of work is right for you. Best of luck to all of us.</p>