Co-op pros and cons?

[PaulButler]

I have a question for the university students (and graduates) here: should I take co-op in university? What are the pros and cons?

[neufelni]

I'm not a university student, but I would definitely recommend taking co-op. I will be going to college next year and will definitely take co-op.
Pros:
-make money
-gain experience
-see if this is really what you want to do for the rest of your life

Cons:
-can't think of any

[haskell]

Con:

- Sometimes this Co-op requires an extra term of study(depedns on University).

However, the Pros do outweight the cons. So, if you can, try to do Co-op.

[Dan]

Pros:
- Experience

- Moeny


Cons:
- It almost always extends the length of the program, noramly by a year or 1/2 a year.

- Higher admissions averages.

- You could end up any where in the world, or get a crapy placement just as easy as geting a good one.

- Some unis say you have to be in hours to be in co-op for your program, this means another year if you did not wont co-op.

- You most complet your work terms to graduate.


Others:

- There is noramly a co-op fee or adatioanl tutiion, this is almost allways offset by the amount you make tho.

- Some unis can make you do a co-op term before you have a day of class.

- If you ever fail a corses it could be very hard to catch up if your co-op term is the same term of when the corse is offered.

- You will be very removed from the univerity comunity, making it hard to keep up with realtions and firends at the univerity.

[Naveg]

Hacker Dan @ Sun Feb 18, 2007 12:03 am wrote:

- You could end up any where in the world, or get a crapy placement just as easy as geting a good one.

If I'm not mistaken, good co-op programs (like Waterloo's) are not placements at all. You actually interview for a number of jobs and compete for the position much like in the "real world" - the whole point is that it is the "real world."

And as far as I'm concerned, ending up anywhere in the world is a major plus! Getting paid to see the world can't be a bad thing. Even if you have no money left over after your expenses, it's a great way to experience different cultures while you study/work.

Hacker Dan @ Sun Feb 18, 2007 12:03 am wrote:

- You most complet your work terms to graduate.

I don't see why this would really be considered a con of a co-op program. It's a co-op program, of course you have to complete your work terms. What did you expect?

[Dan]

Naveg @ 18th February 2007, 12:38 am wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, good co-op programs (like Waterloo's) are not placements at all. You actually interview for a number of jobs and compete for the position much like in the "real world" - the whole point is that it is the "real world."

And as far as I'm concerned, ending up anywhere in the world is a major plus! Getting paid to see the world can't be a bad thing. Even if you have no money left over after your expenses, it's a great way to experience different cultures while you study/work.

1stly the world dose not revloe around u of w like many of you seem to think, 2ndly or corses you have to interview for the job and get to pick witch one you whont. My point was the best job or the one you whont may not be any where close to your place to study. Allthought this can be thought of as good for some poeleop, it can serveraly complicate existing realtionships. Depending on the distance you may not be able to come back psyical for 4 to 8 mounts. Being spearted from your firends, family and segificant other for 8 months is not noramly a pro. Also what i ment by this (the crazy part) is that a seemling good job maynot allways be the best job in reality. You are not allways gratended to get an admazing placment right outside your door. I have hured many bad sotrys of co-op placments just as i have hured many good ones.

Naveg @ 18th February 2007, 12:38 am wrote:

I don't see why this would really be considered a con of a co-op program. It's a co-op program, of course you have to complete your work terms. What did you expect?

This is a con since you can not decided not to take a co-op placment in a term in witch you are sposted to have one with out extending your program or facing admcimic penditaly. This means that if your co-op terms comes around and you can not find a good placement you either are stuck with a crapy one (or one that the co-op office pulled out of there ass to keep there stats up) or you miss the term and extend your program by another term. Also acording to the corse caldienr where i got to school, missing a co-op term is grounds for being kicked out of the program. I find it unlikey they whould do this but in theroy they could. Since this is a list of cons and pros of the co-op program this is cleary a con even if it is an obviues one, what most do not know is it is posible to take co-op terms with out being in the co-op program or you can cheat it by going to the co-op program for a term and then chaning back. This lets you do co-op with out having to complet all co-op terms to graduate.


Also there is another very impornt con that i left out last time:

OSAP & full time student status:

Depending on your fincual status, osap argement and unvierity, going on a co-op term can effect thess. This means if you go on a co-op term you could have to start paying back student lones intill you return to noraml corses. I know this is deaftly ture in some cases since i have rencely revceied a letter from osap stating such. Also some univeritys do not consider you a full time student when you are on a co-op term, noramly this dose not matter but if you are invloed with your student union or other school clubs/orgrasions it could effect your status.

[Tony]

Well pros seem to be pretty obvious: money, experience, chance to travel. It's pretty darn nice to graduate with 2 years of experience to show for yourself. Another argument is that you are likely to try and work during the summer terms anyways, might as well use University's resources and connections to help yourself find a job.

In my personal opinion, it's a fantastic change between study terms. I tend to burn out from constant studying.

The cons are of course the lack of "breaks". Assuming that your University and living expenses are paid for by your parents (or OSAP and scolarships), it might seem like a drag to work.

On the contrary to one of Dan's statements, my girlfriend lives in Toronto, so during the workterms I actually get to move closer to her I can't see myself not being in co-op.

[Martin]

Does anyone really get breaks though? I mean, I know I'd be working in the summers if I wasn't in co-op, and writing software for four months is a lot more fun that flipping burgers (hypothetically speaking; I've yet to have to flip burgers for a living)

Speaking from Waterloo, the only real con is that your degree takes 8 months longer to get. As far as benefits go, there's the $60,000+ you'll make from co-op jobs as well as the huge number of contacts in the industry you'll make. You get the chance to apply what you learned in real world situations - no university course is going to teach you as much as crunch time on a major project will. I'm half way through and I've met the president of Epson and the lead engine designer for Duke Nukem 3d. To be quite honest, I view the co-op part of my degree as much more valuable than the school part.

As far as fitting in courses goes, very rarely is this a problem at Waterloo. Every required course is offered at least two out of three semesters, so you can always fit it in. It does mean that you have to plan ahead a bit, but I have yet to meet anyone for whom this has been a problem.

In summary, if you can get into a co-op program, I strongly recommend taking that route - doubly so if it's Waterloo's co-op program.

[PaulButler]

Thanks for all the replies, it looks like the pros far outweigh the cons, so I am going to apply for a co-op.

[bugzpodder]

the only thing i like about waterloo is its coop program.

[Cervantes]

I, in contrast to pretty much everyone here, it seems, would not recommend co-op.

Now, this is a very personal choice. For most people, I think co-op is probably a very good thing for them. For me, however, it just isn't as useful. The main reason is that I want to go to graduate school and do a Ph.D. too, so I'm going to be in school for a long time. Why would I want to make my undergrad a year longer?

Also, financially, I'm pretty much covered by grants and scholarships.

Finally, it seems that a lot of co-op supporters have the impression that if you're not in co-op you get a break every summer. Well sure, you could take a break if you wanted it, but very few university students are going to not work full time during the summer. They'll also try to get a job related to their field. The only difference between co-op and regular, as I see it, is you pay more money for co-op to help you find jobs, and you spend more time in undergrad. If you're confident that you can find your own jobs, and you don't want to spend an extra year as an undergrad, go regular.

[bugzpodder]

confidence have absolutely nothing to do with the job industry. You need to have experience, period. My grades and skills are enough to get me interviews, but not close enough to get me jobs. They look for experience, and very likely your employer will value your previous experience more than other things. Even if you are going for a PHD,i still recommend coop. It maybe possible that you change your mind for example. and going coop wont harm your chances for phd.

[Martin]

Although you bring up a good point Cervantes, I'd have to disagree. Co-op will definitely not hurt your chances of getting into a good graduate school, and it'll probably even help it. You'll learn more about CS in the wild than in the classroom, based simply on the fact that in the classroom they're reteaching you old information, whereas in the work force you're creating new things (if you choose where you apply to wisely). No matter what you choose to do post undergrad, co-op will only serve to broaden your horizons, whether it's continuing on to get a Masters and/or PhD or going straight into the industry.

The most important thing is to not view it as work for the sake of money. If money is all that you think that you're going to get out of it, then you are quite misled. You're not spending that extra year doing some menial task; you're spending it expanding on and applying your education. The primary goal of the program is the experience, which as other people have said can be a lot more valuable than just your classes.

Also, to expand, there are jobs in all areas of the industry. Being a co-op student doesn't necessarily mean that you will be working for a large company pushing out line after line of Java code. People work for companies with anywhere from 2 to 200,000 employees, ranging from startups to the Fortune 500 to education, making software to do everything you can imagine (as well as some things you probably can't). So for one person a co-op job could mean working at Google for a summer in Mountain View, and for another it could mean working with a professor to write software to do structural analysis of bridges in 14-dimensional space.

[Cervantes]

Martin @ Mon Feb 19, 2007 5:32 pm wrote:

Although you bring up a good point Cervantes, I'd have to disagree. Co-op will definitely not hurt your chances of getting into a good graduate school, and it'll probably even help it.

bugzpodder wrote:

Even if you are going for a PHD,i still recommend coop. It maybe possible that you change your mind for example. and going coop wont harm your chances for phd.

Hold on guys. I never said anything about co-op hurting your chances of getting into grad school. I simply said that co-op doesn't help you. I'm going on suspicion, but I think grad schools would care way more about your undergrad program and university and marks than they do about your work in the industry.

Also, Martin, you're talking solely about CS. Remember I'm not in CS. I applied to non-co-op Math and co-op CS. If I had chosen CS, I would have done co-op, for sure, because that's an industry where the type of job you want is pretty professional. I, however, want a physics research job. Co-op doesn't help much at all for this.

[Tony]

I think that Waterloo professors are requires to hire research assistants (this would help towards grad school, right?) out of the co-op pool, just due to the internal politics.

It's probably also worth pointing out that Waterloo's co-op (because that's the only one I have a lot of experience with) is bias towards Computer Science jobs. Development, programming, QA, testing, testing, testing... I think there's something like 1/3 chance for CS to come up as a program of interest to the employer. That is followed by an assortment of Engineering positions.

So Cervantes is right, being in Math, looking for Physics... that's clearly a minority position.