Would graduating earlier be bad instead of pursuing an internship? (Mech E Major)

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

My situation is that I am currently on track to graduate at the end of next year (2018) if I can manage to finish my GE requirements over the summer. If I do opt for the summer classes then I cannot work as an intern. Normally I would gladly take the work experience over finishing 1 quarter early, but my issue is that my 1 year lease renews in July so I need to decide now if I should attempt to finish school and be able to look for work and a new place to live at the same time.

I guess my question is exactly how much would it hurt my first job search if I do not have a summer internship? I have wondered if it would be possible to perhaps seek an internship for summer 2018 after I graduate just to get initial experience while simultaneously looking for full time work. Also, if it matters I am an older student (29) that went back to school after working for a cabinet company for 7 years so I do have work experience (is this worth anything?), just not engineering related experience.

2

Personally, I think you should try to do an internship.

3

As a (now retired) engineering manager at a large aerospace company, I hired a bunch of college grads. One thing I looked at was the person responsible, knew what it was like to work an 8 hour day and worked well with others. All things that would be part of an internship. But you have 7 years of demonstrating that in your previous job.

Internships pay at a much lower rate than full time new hires and you work on simple projects that fit within the timeframe of the internship. I’d skip the internship and graduate ASAP to get your professional career started.