Op-ed: Students chase co-ops, not attract them

the workforce – this is a competition.

Northeastern requires all students to take a semester-long preparatory course before embarking on their first co-op. The course does a good job of preparing students for professional interviews and pairing students with a co-op adviser. My advisor helped prepare me to enter the biotechnology industry through mock scenarios and interviews, resume building, panels with current and former co-op students and other resources. However, I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the mental stress I endured, especially since I had such high hopes going into this process.

greater stability, it was more economically feasible to hire co-ops. But now it’s more like, “Co-ops? On my payroll?” and companies dishing out money to afford inexperienced contractors. The downsizing of teams and increase in demand for employees with more extensive industry backgrounds have made it increasingly difficult for learners and people new to the field to obtain jobs.

possibility that I could end up taking a gap semester and falling even more behind because I was incapable of landing a co-op and too egotistical to register for classes as a backup plan.

loomed over me constantly.

When asked why they chose to enroll, Northeastern students will almost always mention the university’s co-op program. Something about role-playing a full-time, 9-to-5 worker really soothes the soul of college students.

Co-op programs are great opportunities for students to grow academically and professionally, and Northeastern is well-known for its prestigious, world-leading program. It’s one of the reasons why I decided to apply early decision to Northeastern. Being able to learn in the field instead of sitting in a lecture while building your resume and getting hands-on experience was something that separated Northeastern from any of the other over-5,000 higher education institutions in the United States.

I just recently started my first co-op and am loving it so far. However, getting to this point was one of the most emotionally draining experiences I’ve gone through. This isn’t your average foray into

People I know who graduated from Northeastern would tell me how amazing their co-ops were and how there were so many opportunities and offers to choose from. However, my co-op search experience was not as easy as I was told, and I’m sure many people who applied in the past couple cycles can relate. Since 2020, it has become increasingly difficult to get hired, and it isn’t because more people are getting jobs. Across the biotechnology industry, share prices have significantly dropped and companies are being pushed to lay off their employees in hopes of saving money on labor costs. This can even be seen recently outside of the biotechnology industry with big corporations like Google, Microsoft and Amazon laying off tens of thousands of employees as costs increase and fears of a recession ignite.

As job openings become scarcer, companies are moving towards hiring more experienced workers — smaller teams, but greater experience — as a collective. When the economy saw

When it came time for me to write a resume for co-op, I was told it should be no longer than one page. I kept thinking about how I’d fit all my work experiences on a single page. Lo and behold, once I typed everything out, I didn’t even need the whole page. Before college, I had only worked at my parents’ restaurant and dabbled in retail. I’d never worked in a lab or done any summer internships. Even when I got to Northeastern, aside from the foundational, basic chemistry and biology labs, I didn’t get any experience or do any projects that would differentiate me from other applicants. Everything I had ever done was on that sheet of paper, and it wasn’t that impressive.

Despite this, I still had confidence going into the application process. If I could show I was ready and eager to learn, I could get myself a co-op. In total, I applied to over 40 co-ops and only received three responses.

As I applied to more and more openings and still had zero interview offers — without even a letter of rejection — my anxiety skyrocketed exponentially every day. I was already behind in classes, in a full-on fistfight with my mental health and struggling to find the motivation to do anything. Now I had to deal with the

As I watched everyone around me post their “I am thrilled to announce…” posts on LinkedIn, I sat at my desk, trying to scarf up at least an interview while also being engulfed in late work and “at-risk of failing” notifications. I kept falling into bouts of imposter syndrome. Maybe I wasn’t experienced enough to get a co-op. Maybe I should have done more to build my resume. Maybe I don’t belong at such a prestigious school. It didn’t help that I was part of the class that Northeastern overenrolled. After the admission of the class of 2025 with an acceptance rate of 18%, Northeastern dropped its acceptance rate for the following class of 2026 to a mere 6.7%. The large drop in acceptance rate partnered with Northeastern’s scramble to find beds for new students made it increasingly obvious the university made a mistake in enrolling too many people in the class of 2025, and I couldn’t help but think that I was one of the people they overenrolled with.

Nobody said getting a co-op would be easy, but nobody told me my mental health would take a toll. Multiple times throughout the process, I thought about dropping out of school entirely. I thought if I was incapable of getting a co-op, I wouldn’t be capable of getting my degree. Even as the midpoint of the winter semester approached and people would reiterate that less than half of students had accepted a co-op and that I still had so much time, my confidence turned into anxiety that

I got my first actual email a week before the end of the semester. But this was a “sorry, we already found someone else, good luck though” letter. The second one I got was a “you don’t meet the qualifications we’re looking for, sorry” letter.

But a few days before my last final, I received an email asking me to interview for a research position. Coincidentally, the interview was for the company I wanted to work at the most. Even though it was only an interview, it was at least something substantial, and some of the overwhelming stress floated off my shoulders. I did eventually get this position, but the whole process of even getting an interview was exhausting.

If you are entering this process for the first time, don’t be hard on yourself if you don’t succeed immediately. Persist. Northeastern puts so much emphasis on experiential learning without pondering how difficult it is becoming to obtain these experiences, pushing an overwhelming and unnecessary amount of pressure on their students. Exposing students to the workforce and incorporating handson experience into its curriculum is noteworthy, but Northeastern should stop putting up this façade that everyone gets a co-op and that being a student at Northeastern makes you better than everyone else in the applicant pool. The world is headed in an unpredictable direction, but one thing’s for sure: Getting an interview is harder than getting the job.

Kevin Ng is a second-year biochemistry major. They can be reached at ng.kev@northeastern.edu.