<p>^Yes, it is a risk to hold off your job search till only Jan to April, leaving you less time, but the reward could be greater.</p>
<p>(I was mostly focusing on summer internships. I’ve never heard of internships that are Oct to Dec or Jan to Mar. It’s 3 months long, just like summer, but that time frame seems to disrupt semester scheduling. Like, if one landed an Oct to Dec internship now, is one supposed to drop out of fall classes halfway?)</p>
<p>In an ideal world, interning full-time during a school semester or summer ‘semester’ should be no problem. But with upperclass engineering classes, skipping a spring (or fall) semester to work and taking summer classes can still delay graduation if a necessary engineering course is only offered once a year during the time you were interning. Not all colleges have such thorough provisions.</p>
<p>So what I’m saying about greater rewards come Jan to April is that more AND BETTER companies are hiring interns then for summer. For example, ‘elite’ companies like Boeing and Edison might only hire in Jan to April (this is what I’m seeing in bigger companies I am most interested in), but right now, for Sept-Nov, smaller, less appealing companies like cheapieJets are hiring interns. So if I applied now got offered and accepted a position with cheapieJets for next summer, I could get locked out of potentially interning for Boeing or Edison which I am more interested in (to use your examples).</p>