I heard that for engineering students, it’s hard to find internships or Co-op opportunities if you don’t have connections with people. How true is this?
Being a foreign student, I don’t have any kind of connections with people here and I dont’ want to lost opportunities just because of lack of connections…
The best place to find out about local internships or co-ops is thru the career center at your university. The office maintains a list of programs/contacts.
Your engineering professors will also know about programs where their students have previously worked/been placed.
Lastly, there are summer NSF REUs in all sorts of physical and social sciences and engineering disciplines.
http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/
(Your international status will be a hinderance for some REUs since US citizenship is required for some of them.)
It’s probably much too late to be looking for a summer position for this year. Most REUs had application deadlines in January, for example.