There’s a few big difference between co-ops and internships.
- The difference between 3 and 6 months is very significant because of the time spent getting up to speed. If you spend 2 months at a company learning their tech stack, you get about 1 month of tangible work out of an internship while you get 4 out of a co-op. In any technical field, a month or more is a very standard amount of time for getting up to speed.
- Internships are good, but co-op is a real investment from a company. 50% of NEU students get a full-time job offer from a co-op on graduation.
Overall, yes, getting experience in either form is good and will do, but the differences are significant IMO. Frankly, it can be a lot more significant in fields other than CS, where internships are common and plentiful at the moment. Still, the quality of career services at NEU should be noted as well - having the connections with so many companies nationwide and internationally makes a difference. Every year for CS, Intuit, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google all take at least a few CS co-op’s from NEU, and the same can be said for many other companies, some with big names, some with smaller ones but ones that still offer great experiences.
In terms of the departments themselves, NEU offers more courses and degrees, and lots of different specialties, from cyber security to data science to information science. They offer research specialties in programming languages and networking. While Northwestern’s department is growing with the field and deserves credit for that, it’s not there yet.