@cubby208 some similar benefits can be obtained with a summer internship but honestly it’s a different ballpark to be a co-op. While most college students do one internship the summer before senior year (and the ambitious minority may have one their junior summer as well), that amounts to about 3 months of work as an intern. This work is often low-level and unpaid/poorly paid. Northeastern co-op students have 18 months of full-time work experience on their resume, no intern fluff, especially in CS imo; a co-op really is significantly more relevant than an intern. They are also paid tremendously well. For some but not all industries, you may have significantly more work and thus experience as a co-op vs. summer intern; for example, as an accountant, the co-op cycle Jan-June hits the big tax season and deadlines, so the work I did was WAY more than that of a summer intern. There were also several times more of them (because everyone else wants to work in the summer when they have off from school), further reducing what they actually contributed.