[rustyfe]

Counteradvice: I do not think Co-Ops are a good idea. Tying yourself to a 3-4 year commitment is directly counter to what I consider the big advantage of work/study. I had friends who badly wanted to leave their Co-ops, but were bullied by advisers into not doing so.

You aren't just padding your resume, you're also getting a feel for the different paths in your career you could pursue.

I had 3 different Internships for 3 different companies, and although that added a decent amount of stress (an annual job hunt) to my college career, I 100% recommend it.

I worked for a medium sized team at Georgia Tech's Research Institute, was the first hire at a startup, and worked DoD contracts for BAE, a defense contractor.

Those are all extremely different, and I not only built a resume that served me well in a variety of interviews, but also learned things I absolutely did not want to do.

However, your principal point, that work/study is a good idea, I wholeheartedly agree with.

[prefect42]

At my Uni, engineering co-ops were just internships were you got paid, there was no commitment term. This is to differentiate from "traditional" internships, were you probably didn't get paid to work. But all this was 20 yrs ago, so things could have changed ;-)