Waterloo University has the biggest coop(internship) program in the world, and it has had the program since the university's inception in 1957, and the program is required for all their Engineering students and optional for the other faculties. In Engineering, all students alternate between school and co-op usually every semester, so the length of the whole degree gets extended to 5 years, with 3 full years worth of studies, and 2 full years worth of experience.
The way it works is that the co-op department, CECS, has an internal job posting website, where students view jobs, and submit their resumes and maybe cover letters. The employers will then look at the resumes and decide on the students they want to interview. Most interviews happen in interview rooms in the CECS building. If the employer cannot attend, then Skype or phone interviews are arranged instead. After the interviews, both the students and the employers rate each other 1 through 9, and the students get automatically paired with the job where the sum of the ratings is the lowest. CECS constantly contacts companies to get them interested in hiring uWaterloo students. Companies that currently hire uWaterloo students include FB, Google, MSFT, Apple, all the big banks in US and Canada, Qualcomm, RIM, and tons of other medium and small companies including Allerta, which HN has been hearing about quite a bit, and which is currently employing me. In terms of job locations most jobs are in North America, however there are quite a few in Japan, Germany, NZ, Australia, UK, and students can set up their own jobs if they don't like what's offered through CECS.
Now about salaries, even for a first work term engineering student the range is $12-$22.50 with an average of $15.94. CECS requires that employers pay the students. Until now however there were few exceptions: start-ups were able to discuss with CECS to see if they could offer unpaid internships, however that's now being phased out. If the company can't pay the students with money, it is now required to pay them through other means such as equity.
On another note, I think having all these internships spread out, is better for us, students, since it allows us to try out different type of jobs. Once semester you can work for a start-up, while the next one you can work for a big corporate.
EDIT: Even humanities students get paid however relatively less than say, Engineering.
In Engineering, all students alternate between school and co-op usually every semester, so the length of the whole degree gets extended to 5 years, with 3 full years worth of studies, and 2 full years worth of experience.
From what I've seen(my undergrad had a similar program), this is actually a very bad deal for many students.
If you do coop, you pay roughly the same price as a 4 year student. (Typically you pay fees in the semesters you are working.) Your financial aid is significantly reduced, since you now have income, so you might even pay the college more money. 5 years after starting college, employers will consider you a better than average fresh grad. (I.e., your salary on graduation won't be ordinary graduate + 2 years worth of pay raises.)
In contrast, if you graduate in 4 years, maybe doing (usually paid, but even unpaid) summer internships, you get more financial aid. 5 years after starting college, you are an engineer with 1 year of experience, and with a commensurate pay raise.
If you work as hard as coop students, you can even graduate in 3 years. This considerably reduces your costs, and at the end of 5 years, you have 2 years worth of pay raises under your belt.
In contrast, if you graduate in 4 years, maybe doing (usually paid, but even unpaid) summer internships, you get more financial aid. 5 years after starting college, you are an engineer with 1 year of experience, and with a commensurate pay raise.
In this economy, it's not usual to graduate in 4 yrs and not be able to find work in your field - even with an engineering degree. The guy with the internship experience under his belt is going to have an advantage in this situation.
Employers these days don't want to invest in training "entry level" employees so getting experience (even if you have to pay for it) is sometimes the only way to get your foot in the door.
Is 3 summer semesters of internship or summer research that different from 6 semesters? When I graduated from college (right after the dotcom bubble burst), I didn't observe any real gap between coop students and regular ones.
The coop office also refused to publish any numbers (in spite of being asked repeatedly), so I suspect there wasn't much of one.
Caveat: this was 9 years ago, and not at Waterloo. But even a few years ago (back when I had students), it seemed like the only people who couldn't find work were the people who weren't very good. Will internship experience help you if you bomb a technical interview?
Well it probably won't help you if you bomb the interview, but at the same time, chances of bombing the interview are considerably lowered, since by the end of the degree we would go through 30 if not even more interviews, so you should have a feel for the type of questions they ask.
The thing with Canadian universities is that the financial aid isn't that great to begin with. Most of the aid comes from the gov't (at least in Ontario through OSAP). Most students do not qualify for it since their parents' income is too high. Unless you get one of the big 50k to 70k scholarships in grade 12, chances are you'll have to pay for uni quite a bit. The advantage is that it is cheaper than the top universities in the states, so your student debt isn't as large. From what i gathered from uWaterloo grads, you usually end up with student debt worth half of the whole tuition costs, so it's not too bad.
The benefit of co-op is not just the money, it is the variety of experience. You can graduate having worked six different jobs at six different companies. Seeing such a huge variety of work environments, cultures, practices, even cities or different countries, is hugely valuable.
In my co-op terms, I've worked in enterprise software, gaming hardware, two start-ups and one very hot valley company. Each one has taught me different things, even if it was "I never want to work in enterprise software".
Yeah, I have friends at Waterloo who are on that system. The benefit is that they have a lot of experience under their belt, and perhaps the assumption is that companies (for FT positions) will reward them for that?
The way it works is that the co-op department, CECS, has an internal job posting website, where students view jobs, and submit their resumes and maybe cover letters. The employers will then look at the resumes and decide on the students they want to interview. Most interviews happen in interview rooms in the CECS building. If the employer cannot attend, then Skype or phone interviews are arranged instead. After the interviews, both the students and the employers rate each other 1 through 9, and the students get automatically paired with the job where the sum of the ratings is the lowest. CECS constantly contacts companies to get them interested in hiring uWaterloo students. Companies that currently hire uWaterloo students include FB, Google, MSFT, Apple, all the big banks in US and Canada, Qualcomm, RIM, and tons of other medium and small companies including Allerta, which HN has been hearing about quite a bit, and which is currently employing me. In terms of job locations most jobs are in North America, however there are quite a few in Japan, Germany, NZ, Australia, UK, and students can set up their own jobs if they don't like what's offered through CECS.
Now about salaries, even for a first work term engineering student the range is $12-$22.50 with an average of $15.94. CECS requires that employers pay the students. Until now however there were few exceptions: start-ups were able to discuss with CECS to see if they could offer unpaid internships, however that's now being phased out. If the company can't pay the students with money, it is now required to pay them through other means such as equity.
The latest Earnings Information for uWaterloo can be found here: http://www.cecs.uwaterloo.ca/pdfs/Hourly_Salary_Information_...
On another note, I think having all these internships spread out, is better for us, students, since it allows us to try out different type of jobs. Once semester you can work for a start-up, while the next one you can work for a big corporate.
EDIT: Even humanities students get paid however relatively less than say, Engineering.