We attended their Top Scholars Day where engineering internships and coops were touted as readily available. Now suddenly after our trip I hear one parent on a facebook page complaining about her son not able to get an internship as an upper classman…and a slew of parents chiming in that their students are having the same problems. Some mentioned they’ve been looking since the Fall and after countless interviews and resumes. Please tell me this is not a common experience!
The internships are there, though I wouldn’t say readily available. For the most part, you have to find and get them yourself. If you have a stellar GPA, you will find opportunities. Though he has good work experience, EC’s, and leadership credentials, in each interview DS was told that his 4.0 GPA is what got their attention. If you have a weak GPA or poor resume, the UA name will not help. If you have the goods, though, you will have the opportunities.
Thanks @chardo. Someone also mentioned REU and joining professional organizations as well. I agree you can’t sit around and wait for anything. You really should be a go getter regardless where you go. Another parent just told me the new trend is towards coops and not so much internships. I do know UA will hold your scholarship while you do that coop too. Thanks again.
DS was never interested in coop because he didn’t want to miss time on campus. Whatever school you choose, keep your GPA up (goes without saying) and start building your resume right away. Get involved in activities, even if they have nothing to do with engineering. Join organizations, do research, anything that can build that resume. This is vital even at the top schools.
You can’t believe everything that students are telling their parents. Some kids really don’t work that hard to get an internship, some don’t have great resumes, and some don’t have great grades. Some don’t interview well.
My kids did not have trouble getting internships or REUs.
Also, some that are now complaining will find that come summer, their child will have an internship. MANY companies do NOT yet have their summer internship budgets. My H’s former company could never hire interns before May because it wasn’t until then that they knew what their budget was.
I will PM you with more details…
It is possible to get an internship. My DD found out a little over a week ago that she was selected for a paid
internship this summer. She is an engineering major. 
Like others have stated keeping your grades up and spending a lot of time on your application is important.
Getting an internship or full time job involves having a good academic/work background, a good resume, great interviewing skills, networking, and knowing how to successfully complete online applications. Some of those skills are not as commonly taught as one might hope.
Speaking from personal experience, the jobs and internships listed on UA’s careers page are only a tiny fraction of those available. One really has to do their own research to find opportunities which suit them.
LOL, is Dean Karr and others bragging about UA again?! 
PM me for specifics on my own S’s experience in aero w/ internships.
Agree with absolutely everything that has been said above: stellar GPA, eye-catching and relevant resume, ECs, research, networking, interviewing well, making connections, finding your own opportunities to pursue, apply far/wide, be willing to relocate.
The only thing I’d like to add is insight on the decision to pursue co-ops vs internships. Co-ops usually are with only 1 company (the same company) for all rotations, so you have to choose wisely, I think, if that’s your route. Internships are usually only during the summer months, and if you’re lucky, you’ll have 3 (can be different ones!) during your college years for a wider range of experience. So, do you want to go wide (internships) or go deep (co-ops)? Co-ops almost certainly lead to a job offer at the end of it, but so can internships. Again, I would choose wisely w/ co-ops - I think they kind of lock a student in too much. It is easy when you’re 18 or 19 to grab whatever co-op is available, but there will be pressure on the student to accept a job offer from the same company at the end. IMO, internships are better ways to try before you buy, so to speak.
Then, you need to consider housing, if the co-op is not in the same general area as the campus. If you’re in a dorm, you need to move out each co-op semester (and notify housing by a certain deadline prior to moving)…if you have an apartment, you need to consider that expense if it is left empty while you co-op.
A student needs to think about a co-op very early (like early FR year is not too early!), and pursue a co-op very diligently and plan carefully, IMO, whereas an internship is much more flexible and you can pick one up whenever it suits you. At UA, co-ops in certain branches of engineering are nearly non-existent, because of class schedules and only certain courses being offered in fall/spring semesters only. This is the case w/ aero at UA, but I have heard that UA will work w/ specific aero students if they find their own co-op (because UA does not have co-ops for them). Not sure what ‘work with’ means - but they appeared very accommodating and flexible when my S inquired about how to fit in an aero co-op back when he was a FR. (S did not do a co-op, but went the internship route instead.) Schools are of course going to be flexible, because let’s face it: it looks good to have their students placed in co-ops and internships.
Both are great experiences, OF COURSE…but you can see where I’m leaning with my advice… Good luck with your decision, Rdtsmith! 
Guess I should be lucky it’s his decision and not ours at this point but I do feel bad as the boy is very frugal and even though we would have money saved for GT, even without GI Bill, he would feel guilty taking it for college. I hope he is not just wanting to make us happy…he did want us to pay all the UA deposits and is attending a local party for acceptees this weekend. GT made him feel like one of many and other than being accepted EA he thinks they could care less if he attends or not. Other than newsletter emails and one overnight visit he has had zero contact with the school and no one has reached out with any new info. Not so with UA. Exact opposite!
^ oh, I meant your S’s decision regarding a co-op or an internship (not decision re a college). I can only offer insight into the co-op vs internship, not GT vs UA, sorry.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both co-ops and internships. I think internships are better… If a student can land good ones. UA helps with finding co-op jobs, internships not so much. I don’t know if this will work for anyone else (or even if it will work for my son, it’s still early in the game) but here is his game plan…
He landed a coop position after two semesters at ua for fall 2015 of what would have been his sophomore year. He will also work this summer and spring 2016 at the same company to complete his 3 term coop commitment. At that point he will still have 4 semesters left of his scholarship. He is hoping to land interships summer 2016 and summer 2017 prior to graduating in may 2018. Hopefully his one year of coop work experience and additional coursework at ua will help as he pursues internship opportunities.
Because he was out of school a fall and a spring semester and didn’t use a semester of his scholarship for summer classes, it will take him five years to graduate. Also, money is tight for our family so The $$ earned in coop are enough to cover his living expenses during coop and some of his living expenses during the school semesters which is very helpful.
Bumping this thread to ask a few questions specifically about co-ops, which my freshman son is very interested in pursuing, having learned about them first semester. Being from out-of-state, it just seems like a better way to go than trying to land internships on his own.
According to the UA co-op site:
My son interviewed with three companies on Interview Day. He passed on one due to the distance involved in arranging a second interview and because he wasn’t terribly interested in the work. The other two he was very interested in. One company told him they’d selected other candidates but have now have invited him to come in for an interview on very short notice. He’s scrambling now trying to get a Zipcar in time to make the 90-minute trip. The third company, the one he’s most interested in, still hasn’t communicated with him one way or the other. He’s emailed several times as has the co-op office. It’s been a very frustrating process and he can’t get the co-op office to call the company on his behalf.
I hadn’t realized until today that most co-ops opportunities are offered to freshmen. Does anyone have any experience with sophomores or upperclassman being able to get co-ops? We were advised not to send our son to school his first year with a car, but not having one has made this process pretty fraught.
Thanks!
I don’t know about cooping via UA, but our Ds didn’t coop until between his jr an sr yr. His coop company made housing arrangements for coop students.
The advantages of cooping over internships is that coops are formal agreements between corporations and universities. The corporation has to provide a certain level of on the job training.
Does UA restrict how students may coop? Our son was able to coop 12 straight months. It had the advantage of not having to move back and forth and worrying about getting off cycle for classes only offered in the spring and fall.
For students having to alternate semesters, that is the biggest concern. Make sure they know how their coop will impact course registration.
Good questions, @Mom2aphysicsgeek!
My son is comfortable with the alternating-semesters schedule, and I believe it won’t cause any problems for him since he’s in a big major (ME), which likely has a lot of students going the co-op route.
I know they’re not for everybody, but I’m a huge believer in co-ops as my son has a couple of cousins (one in CS and the other in IT) who leveraged their co-op experiences into tremendous career paths. We didn’t choose UA solely for the co-op program, but knowing it had one was a big plus. I’m proud of my son for pursuing the opportunities, but it’s all a little destabilizing. It’s hard enough for a fully mature adult to look for a job and have to weigh and juggle various simultaneous opportunities, but for a kid far from home it can all be pretty overwhelming. And they’re relying on the co-op office to do a lot of the communicating on their behalf, so they can’t always control the things they’d like to.
@LucieTheLakie
I understand completely! We moved 10 hrs away from where we lived during our ds’s sr yr of high school during his freshman yr of college. So we were even farther away than originally!
Coops are awesome experiences. Our ds made a hefty salary, his company provided him full benefits until graduation, and they gave him scholarship $$ every semester until he graduated. He ended up not selecting their job offer, but he did struggle with the decision b/c they had been such a great company to work for.
At his university the students with high GPAs (3.5+) and coop experience had multiple job offers. Kids with just high GPAs and no coop experience struggled with finding jobs. Our ds really had an ideal situation. He had 4 incredibly great offers to choose from.
I think internships are good opportunities, but I think that corporations do understand that coop students are not just being stuck in roles but are being trained and complete projects over the course of their 12 months. (Our ds’s project was pretty darn impressive.)
Funny but where I come from in Germany it’s all coop! It’s a bigger win for the companies because you are pretty much obligated to that company. Internships not much at all…everything I’ve read it seems that coops are becoming more popular and give it 5-10 years there won’t be anymore internships, strictly coops, if we follow what they’re doing in Europe. Not sure what the rest of the world is doing.
@Rdtsmith
I really have never read more encouragement for internships over coops anywhere other than this UA forum. My husband is also a chemE. Even back in the 80s when we were in college, coops were preferred over internships. I don’t think it is something new. I think the preference for internships must be regional.
No preference…just opinions…there is no right or wrong option here - any employment is great!
Some companies aren’t large enough and just don’t have the resources to support multi-year co-op employment, but they are able to offer short-term internships. That is universal and not just limited to the South.
I also want to reassure those students who have not yet organised a co-op to not despair - it is not your only employment option in college!
The co-op thing can be a crap-shoot too. My son lucked out that he was able to sign up for a few interviews even though he got to sign-up day pretty late (had a class he couldn’t miss). He’s just trying to gain experience at this point. There are many opportunities for these kids if they work hard and keep plugging away.
As far as having an ‘older’ student start a co-op, my son went to interview day in the spring of his 2nd year (he was a junior by credit hours) and his first work session was during the fall semester of his 3rd year. We were told that most of the highly sought co-ops went to the older students.
I agree that there are pluses and minuses to both co-ops and internships and my son has done both. The benefit of the co-op is the company can and is willing to invest more in the student since they know they are a longer term employee. For the work my son is doing for his co-op he is required to be certified in order to do the work without direct supervision. His co-op employer paid for him to travel out of state and the testing so that he could become certified and would be able to perform the work. That’s not something most employers will invest in for an intern that may only work for them for a couple months (although there are always exceptions). The big downside to the co-op is extending graduation, but my son will earn about 8X the extra year of rent we’ll have to pay during his co-op (and I really don’t think he’s going to mind being on campus for an extra football season),