Co-op freshman year?

chuy
Tue, 12 Nov 2013 11:30:04 +0000

Wow, that is a very rare opportunity. Congrats.

I wouldn’t worry too much about not having the technical knowledge yet. First off technical knowledge makes up less of most jobs than you might think, and at any rate doing this now will enlighten you as to what you actually want to learn about anyway. Having this on your resume is going to be a massive bonus both for the raw fact that you have experience and because people tend to look at something like ‘had a freshman coop’ as an indicator that you’re a high value prospect.

There are downsides, like being removed from college and your classmates for a semester. I will say that you could be better off doing that now than down the road when you’ve made more friends and gotten more involved. The biggest thing I would check my my advisor is if it is going to mess up your class schedule too much, since a lot of classes are only taught once a year. Again, though, that’s probably going to be an issue whenever you do it.