My company, Aquent, hires students through the Northeastern University co-op program for internships, with many going on to work for my company after they graduate. It’s proof positive that the Northeastern University model of experiential learning works! Students get both academic and [long-term] internship opportunities that form the foundation of a success job search upon graduation.
While my company hired in our Finance department and computer science majors for our high tech start-up, Scout Exchange, the experiential learning model extends across the university. This is the kind of college experience for the pragmatic student who likes structure and knows precisely what he or she wants to get out of their five years here.
Northeastern University Visit
– This college experience is all about academics mixed with experiential learning.
– There are four ways for fulfilling the experiential learning component: Co-op with is a 6 month paid internship (and you can do up to three), Global learning (which is study/travel abroad that combines academics with hands-on learning experiences), research (in a STEM lab or also for liberal arts research), and service-learning (combines class assignments for a real-world non-profit client).
– If you think about it, taking 5 years is really just adding summer internships every summer to 4 years of college academics. The difference is that these internships (via Co-Op) are PAID and longer in length which hopefully means that the experience will be more meaningful.
– Northeastern has a great placement rate getting graduates jobs in their fields. The only downside to Co-Op is being stuck in a paid internship for 6 months that you don’t like. 6 months is a long time if the experience is not a good fit.
– The school is urban and compact without a lot of green spaces.
– There is a “factory” sense to this school from the two presentations we saw. For example, the emphasis is not on the students being unique or a wonderful community like at some schools we’ve seen. In fact, the general presentation did not even introduce all the students who led the tours. Only one student was in the presentation and it didn’t flow very well. It felt like that student was trotted out to make specific points to emphasize the points the school was selling.
I visited Northeastern University again with my son recently (September 2021):
This was the brief tour that I did with my daughter a few years earlier:
p.s. Related posts:
How To Write a Great College Application Essay
Applying to College: How To Select Colleges
Visiting University of Maryland (College Park)
Top 5 Tips to Choose a College & Visiting Trinity College
Visiting Georgetown University
Visiting Pepperdine University
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Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World
- Junior Library Guild Gold selection
- Selected as one of 100 Outstanding Picture Books of 2023 by dPICTUS and featured at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair
- Starred review from School Library Journal
- Chicago Library’s Best of the Best
- Imagination Soup’s 35 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023 for Kids
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