By Rob Tokanel
The anonymous co-op rating website created nearly six months ago by Northeastern students is beginning to reveal some information that may aid students searching for the perfect co-op job.
The site, <a href="http://www.coopratings.com“>www.coopratings.com, now has 640 registered users and over 500 reviews, rating co-ops on a one to five scale for employment factors including pay rate, quality of learning experience and the amount of responsibility required for the job.
The creators of the site, junior business major Punit Shah and senior business major Vipul Lakhi, said the idea came from what they saw as a disconnect between the job descriptions provided by some employers and the reality of the positions themselves.
Co-op Ratings has been acquiring new reviews steadily since the site launched in July, and although Shah and Lakhi said it’s hard to narrow down specific jobs as being particularly good or bad, there are some trends emerging as more reviews come in.
For instance, the most visited review to this point has been for a job at Goldman Sachs as an analyst for the Security Lending Operations department, which has had about 500 hits. The second most visited review is for an Apple job as an iPod Hardware Intern, followed by a Merril Lynch job as an analyst for a co-op in New York.
“The most popular reviews are for the jobs that seem to be the most competitive,” Shah said. “If you look at the comments, you can see that students are using this to see what they need to do to qualify for a position.”
Further down the spectrum, several companies have received repeatedly poor ratings from students anonymously claiming to have had bad experiences. Gray and Rice Public Relations has a cumulative average of 2.1 out of 5 stars based on three student reviews, all of which said they would not recommend the job to anyone else.
Senior Coordinator of Cooperative Education for the College of Business Administration Scott Weighart said that because of the relatively small sample size of reviews and the subjective nature of the ratings, he would recommend students make sure they talk to their co-op advisors and consider all relevant factors before choosing any job.
“Whether students are looking at coopratings.com or talking to their buddy over coffee about their personal experiences, they should always keep in mind that one person’s dream job is another’s nightmare job, and also that jobs change over time,” he said.
Weighart also mentioned the university may soon have it’s own, more regulated system for cataloging co-op reviews.
“It seems probable that the co-op department will have other electronic mechanisms for students to rate jobs at some point,” he said. “I would feel better about any system that allowed us a chance to look over what students have to say.”
Although Shah and Lakhi acknowledge that there is the possibility to use the anonymity of the site immaturely, they said they haven’t had any complaints from companies, students or faculty.
“The ratings have been primarily good things or sincere bad things,”
Shah said. “Nobody has acted inappropriately or called out specific names or anything like that so I think it’s turned out to be a fairly positive forum.”
However, some students have taken the opportunity to entertain themselves and their peers when writing their reviews.
One student described his position at Equity Office Properties as “CAD Monkey,” referring to his on-the-job use of the technical drafting program, and observed that, “If you have an IQ above 75 and know how to read lines on a tape measure, you’re off to a good start.”
Junior sociology major Em Dunham said she reviewed her previous co-op using the website and that she expects the other reviews will be helpful for her when she searches for her next position.
“It’s really helpful to have these databases to see what other students are thinking about jobs, and they’re giving honest opinions about how they liked it,” she said. “With more people using it I think it’ll be easier to find a helpful review.”
Cooperative Education Faculty Coordinator Charlie Bognanni said he would also like to see more reviews on the site to validate a general review of a company instead of allowing one person’s perception to shape the whole image of a job.
Regardless, student opinions of the site continue to be positive.
“It’s a great resource because it gives students a chance to put their thoughts on their co-ops out there without sugarcoating them or having them filtered through the university,” said Stephen Lavenberg, a junior health science major.
