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Are you saying my friend's son was lying when he said they were looking for people who had finished their junior year? Truth be told, I don't know anyone who did an internship in any thing until at least after the sophomore year in college.
Depends on the company ... and the schools they have relationships with.
Example: University of Waterloo in Canada. They are well known for their engineering program, where co-op terms are REQUIRED. And I believe they start after their first two terms of school, if not earlier. The program have a lot of coordination with various companies for the co-op students, such that both the company and the students benefit from the experience.
I did a paid 16 month internship after my junior year. The "intern" in the position prior to myself, was a co-op student IN his 2nd year at at Waterloo. I was given the same exact training with the "new grad" who joined the team at the same time I did. I had the same responsibilities, and more flexibility to participant in extra projects. By the time I finished the internship, I made enough money to pay for last year of school (and some left over), I had two offers to return for new grad positions from the managers I worked with. Instead I accepted an offer with a competitor (that I learned about from a colleague who left for the competitor) by the time I returned for my senior year.
Another advantage of internships, is finding out what your strengths are....or not. I had summer and a part time job doing support prior to the internship. The internship helped me focus on the direction I wanted to go (it wasn't in support!) for my career.
And in a freaky coincidence, and just shows how important networking can be... Almost 5 years after my internship, I no longer kept in touch with the people I worked with there. I had a new 2nd line manager in the US, at another company. It turns out we worked together on a side project I did for my director during the internship. We never met in person, only exchanged emails, as I needed to collect some data from him. It wasn't until we got to talking, realized we worked at the same company at the same time, knew same people..did each other's name ring a bell.
I graduated in 2000...at the height of the dot com boom. While it's true, even those students who didn't do internships found job very quickly, those who had internships either already had offers prior to graduation, or they got more interviews (and arguably better offers) at the top companies then those students who did not.
Are you saying my friend's son was lying when he said they were looking for people who had finished their junior year? Truth be told, I don't know anyone who did an internship in any thing until at least after the sophomore year in college.
No idea, I don't know you, your friend nor their son - let alone that job fair and those employers .... very well could not know the full situation though, maybe he was good friends with an engineering student who was shot down and came back saying how it was a waste of time and now the friends friend has the word of gospel
who know
could all be true
even if it is, it's very foolish to take that one little ancedote and say that engineering students can't get a job doing actual professional work while early in their college experience
as stated by gnomatic some schools actually require it (my university did)
I can attest that they weren't just getting coffee and making copies ... no company is going to pay the wages they were for that level of work ... they were brought on with expectations
you aren't going to be running a project, but you will work
so to me it's a pretty broad brush statement to say these jobs don't exist, while during my 5 years of school at a single university we had over 5,000 students place into such engineering jobs after their first round of schooling
All of my roomates were engineers and I know the type of companies they worked for and the type of work they were performing (and the type of money they were making...........)
We even had students go on co-op out of our engineering program and work for companies like PWC after their freshman year - they would travel and do audits, had a company sponsored laptop, signing bonus, the whole stretch ..... now not everyone gets those gigs, but they were definitely out there and a tremendous experience for a 19 yr old
DH's company begins taking summer interns in certain disciplines after their freshman year. In other disciplines, they do not take them until like their senior year, going on to work on their masters, because in certain disciplines, they do hire anyone without a masters.
My ex-husband did a co-op engineering program at the University of Illinois back in the late 60s/early 70s. He did not do the "work" part of the curriculum until after his sophomore year.
Are you saying my friend's son was lying when he said they were looking for people who had finished their junior year? Truth be told, I don't know anyone who did an internship in any thing until at least after the sophomore year in college.
Maybe at that particular fair that might be true but it isn't across the board.
I have three just graduated high school seniors who are working as interns at NOAA this summer all paid. Our sister school has seniors (I am not sure how many) who intern during the school year at the Princeton Fluid Dynamics Lab. These are the same internships that undergrads are offered but geared towards highly motivated high school students.
Well I just hope future employers think like you guys and I just don't think it made sense for me to do this particular internship because unlike that member said I wasn't working for subway. I had a job with a big company with clients for all over the U.S. such as hospitals, utility companies, credit card companies....
I thought that the main reason of doing internships was to gain experience in your field. If the whole point is networking then I should have stayed with my previous employer.
I've heard everywhere that you should do an internship while you are in college that it's the only way to gain experience and blah blah.
I think that the problem with unpaid internships is that they are basically free labor and why would a company waste their time and money to train someone that is only there for summer? It makes no sense!!
The point of an internship for the intern is to gain experience.
(In most cases) the point of an internship for the business is to test the waters of new employees and make sure they're a good fit before they are officially hired. This is not always the case as some businesses do use internships as cheap labor, however one of the main reasons businesses have interns is as a form of testing out new help.
You had a bad internship experience and that happens, just like people have bad job experiences. Don't let that deter you from trying again.
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and I just don't think it made sense for me to do this particular internship because unlike that member said I wasn't working for subway. I had a job with a big company with clients for all over the U.S. such as hospitals, utility companies, credit card companies.... 
