Would Northeastern be a good "investment"?

neuchimie
Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:39:49 +0000

Co-ops vary greatly between fields and majors. Obviously art majors get paid a lot less than finance majors. I remember last year for my first co-op, these were the ranges of what most of my friends were getting (definitely not officially, just what I noticed).

CAS- 8 to 15
Engineering- 10 to 20
CS- 14 to 25
Business- Pretty ranged, but like finance and accounting can go from 13 to even 28 for first coops
Bouve- don’t know

The pay was never really something people considered though. You take a job because they offer you one, and unless you get three calls in the same day most people panic and except their first offer (just like in normal jobs). You can BARELY live off of coop pay in the city though, so do NOT think coop will help go towards tuition next semester. Even the best coops can’t really do that enough to matter.

As for work, again totally depends on the job. From what I’ve found though, if you are good at your job and you ask a lot of questions and you are a hard worker (aka your boss doesn’t come over three times a day to find you on facebook), they will end up giving you a pretty substantial amount of responsibility. There are a few employers who are famous for giving a LOT of responsibility (ex: Wellington) whereas it’s pretty obvious in some job descriptions that you’ll never ever do anything but file papers. It is really important to read job descriptions before applying and to ask questions during an interview. Most of the stories you hear about people hating their coops are because they didn’t bother to find out what they’d be doing. I do a lot of paperwork at my current job, but I knew about it from the interview and I still decided to say yes- so I don’t mind at all.