Loss of community with the rest of your class? At Waterloo co-op in engineering is not optional. Your entire class is on the same 4-month school-workterm-school schedule.
You're close enough to being "on-stream" with at least half of your starting class. The bulk of your co-op schedule will be alternating between 4-month school and work terms, and you'll generally align close to the engineering "8-stream" or "4-stream" schedules, with some 8-month terms here and there.