<p>Does anyone know of a student going on an unusual co-op like…joining the Peace Corp or other similar group for the 6 months?</p>
<p>I know people have done volunteer co-ops in other countries (peace corp requires a college degree and 2 year commitment, but something similar with less commitment is possible). I think I remember a girl went to Kenya to live with the maasai, a friend of mine did neurobio research in South Africa, and numerous people do international co-ops every year. There are always pictures up on the nu website about someone in X country doing X exciting thing. I have one friend, a business major, who did 2 of her 3 co-ops abroad and also managed to spend a semester abroad. The “Antarctica” co-op that NEU talks about is set up by William Detrich who is a zebrafish researcher, and he took one of his research assistants with him recently for about 2 months and got it to fill a co-op req by doing research in the lab for the other 4 months.</p>
<p>Really, with co-op, as long as you can convince the school that the work is related to your intended field (and fills all or most of the 6 month time frame), you can probably get credit for it. Most of these you’ll need to finagle yourself, but if you can find a cool opportunity, the school will most likely work with you.</p>
<p>Peace Corp is surprisingly hard to get into. It’s not just any college degree- it has to be in something they want/need.</p>