On the NU website the table they have as a sample coop schedule shows that over the summers students are either in school or their coop. Is there really no time off? How many students wind up graduating in 4 years?
You have the summer after freshman year off, four months. Otherwise you will have the occasional week between school and coop off. Many students enter with the intention of graduating in 4 years but choose to do 5 years.
I suggest that you watch this:
https://vimeo.com/194255047
Most students don’t try to graduate in four years and do a five-year plan which usually includes some smaller breaks. If you do 4 years in a major with more requirements or have little incoming credit, you may not get any summer breaks. There are still spring breaks if you aren’t on co-op, and winter breaks of 2-3 weeks for all.
If you do a 5-year plan, you’ll likely have some summers off. Likely your first-year summer, and then some half summers (2 months) in the remaining years.
One of the benefits of co-op and class alternation is that you never get burned doing the same thing, even if you don’t have a break of “nothingness”. Personally, I get antsy enough being home for winter break, and I’ve found that most college students feel the same way.
I’m doing 5 years, 2 co-ops and a BS/MS. I’m planning to have a total of 4 summer months off by the end of graduation: 2 in my first year, 2 in my fourth year. That’s in addition to 5 winter breaks (at least 3 months) and spring breaks. In total, I’ll have about 8 months of break time over the 5 years, or about a month and a half per year compared to about 3-4 months for traditional 4-year programs. I can’t personally imagine having more break time.
One of the important things to remember is that you have the ability to craft your own schedule. My pattern will be found no-where in any sort of NEU admissions info. Here’s a list of all the possible patterns:
https://www.northeastern.edu/registrar/ref-udc-poa-ugd.pdf
It’s really up to you how you want to arrange it, but if you want a lot of breaks, 4 years may not be ideal. Again, most people I know do the 5, but I even know of someone doing 1 co-op and 3 years to get on to grad school, which was done by taking summer sessions.
If you have any particular pattern questions feel free to PM me!