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Even for people who go to college, more work experience is a huge plus. Waterloo's coop system (4 months of school, 4 months of internship, repeated) provides a

Even for people who go to college, more work experience is a huge plus. Waterloo's coop system (4 months of school, 4 months of internship, repeated) provides a great mix of practical experience and academics. It would be great if all majors could have an experience like that.

atom-morgan 9y ago
It was somewhat unbelievable how much my jobs working at Gamestop and Walmart helped in college when so many people around me had never worked a job in their life. Time to rethink minimum wage?
vermontdevil 9y ago
Rochester Institute of Technology has a similar program - Co-op experience. All students are required to complete a specific # of semester work experience before obtaining a degree. I've heard often from employers that they love hiring RIT graduates because of this.
ethmarch 9y ago
I've heard great things about Waterloo's program. Just wanted to give a shout out to Northeastern for its coop system as well. I've learned tons of things on the job that I never would have come across in the classroom. Also, almost every student in every major participates in the program!
stevenwoo 9y ago
I graduated from college 30 years ago and every engineering major at every state university I ever heard of had a coop program.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Waterloo places much more emphasis on it. The program is built around every student doing coops.
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    That part I did not know, most of our professors in our first year engineering classes strongly recommended it, though. I co-oped at a company only about 100 miles from my university, though other students were from out of state schools. The other thing I just thought of was I co-oped at IBM for three semesters which was the max for a location but they had openings in a different country, I probably should have done that instead of staying in the USA for my last co-op, are most of the Waterloo students going to Canadian companies?
    - boyaka 9y ago
      A lot go to SF bay area. I met a large group of them in 2007 when I was doing my coop. My school, University of the Pacific, also had a mandatory coop program, although they started to make it optional sometime after 2009.
- sotojuan 9y ago
  Not all CS grads come from engineering colleges or departments. A lot liberal arts colleges have CS programs and a lot of CS programs are part of the math/"arts and sciences" department. In that case, the college may not require co-op.
- surfmike 9y ago
  Yes and it would be great if they were extended to non-engineering majors. Also even in engineering co-ops are far from universal; at my university, not everyone did a co-op and many did only one. There would be a lot of value in people doing multiple co-ops (even 4 or more like Waterloo).

atom-morgan 9y ago

It was somewhat unbelievable how much my jobs working at Gamestop and Walmart helped in college when so many people around me had never worked a job in their life. Time to rethink minimum wage?

vermontdevil 9y ago

Rochester Institute of Technology has a similar program - Co-op experience. All students are required to complete a specific # of semester work experience before obtaining a degree. I've heard often from employers that they love hiring RIT graduates because of this.

ethmarch 9y ago

I've heard great things about Waterloo's program. Just wanted to give a shout out to Northeastern for its coop system as well. I've learned tons of things on the job that I never would have come across in the classroom. Also, almost every student in every major participates in the program!

stevenwoo 9y ago

I graduated from college 30 years ago and every engineering major at every state university I ever heard of had a coop program.

maxerickson 9y ago
Waterloo places much more emphasis on it. The program is built around every student doing coops.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  That part I did not know, most of our professors in our first year engineering classes strongly recommended it, though. I co-oped at a company only about 100 miles from my university, though other students were from out of state schools. The other thing I just thought of was I co-oped at IBM for three semesters which was the max for a location but they had openings in a different country, I probably should have done that instead of staying in the USA for my last co-op, are most of the Waterloo students going to Canadian companies?
  - boyaka 9y ago
    A lot go to SF bay area. I met a large group of them in 2007 when I was doing my coop. My school, University of the Pacific, also had a mandatory coop program, although they started to make it optional sometime after 2009.
sotojuan 9y ago
Not all CS grads come from engineering colleges or departments. A lot liberal arts colleges have CS programs and a lot of CS programs are part of the math/"arts and sciences" department. In that case, the college may not require co-op.
surfmike 9y ago
Yes and it would be great if they were extended to non-engineering majors. Also even in engineering co-ops are far from universal; at my university, not everyone did a co-op and many did only one. There would be a lot of value in people doing multiple co-ops (even 4 or more like Waterloo).