If you think a co-op college should be subtracted from or added to this list, please email me at Jeannie@JeannieBurlowski.com. If you don’t hear back from me in one day, text the phone number on my speaking page.
Welcome to the list of co-op colleges I personally recommend.
Colleges do not pay to be included on this page.
It’s recommended that you read my article 7 Reasons to Apply Exclusively to CO-OP Colleges before looking at this list.
To earn a place on this page, co-op colleges must have an established, embedded, institution-driven co-op college program that facilitates undergraduate students completing two or more full semesters of full-time paid work directly applicable to the student’s chosen field of study prior to college graduation. Colleges on this page maintain co-op, experiential, or work-integrated learning staff who: 1) point undergraduates to high-quality career assessing early on to ensure major and career goal are indeed a good fit and not just a guess, and 2) provide active human assistance with placement into full-time co-op employment positions—rather than relying exclusively on student-initiated searches. Though internships are valuable for students, programs that rely primarily on traditional internships, student-initiated job searches, or ad hoc career services support do not meet this standard.
To the best of my knowledge, here are the U.S. colleges that currently meet these criteria:
The first five are noteworthy because they provide the co-op experience I’ve described across many different majors:
University of Cincinnati ★
Northeastern University ★
Drexel University ★
Rochester Institute of Technology ★
Cincinnati State Technical and Community College ★ (Remarkable for being a 2-year college—yet so high on this list.)
The following university is highly recommended for what I call its “pure co-op” structure. It provides the co-op experience in business and computer science as well as across multiple engineering disciplines:
Kettering University
The following colleges make co-op programs available to students in more than one major. Ask which ones before applying:
Wentworth Institute of Technology
Widener University
Clemson University
Missouri University of Science and Technology
University of Massachusetts Lowell
Clarkson University
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of Pittsburgh
Stevens Institute of Technology
The following co-op colleges are well worth exploring, but they tend to serve only engineering–oriented majors:
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
University of Louisville
University of Detroit Mercy
Cleveland State University
North Carolina State
Virginia Tech
Penn State
University of Dayton
University of Toledo
Michigan Tech
* As an academic strategist, I strongly recommend students take three specific career assessments at age 15 or as soon as possible after that—so they’re applying only to colleges with programs most likely to prepare them for careers they’ll excel at and love. Enrolling in college and then choosing career is specifically not recommended. The free career quizzes offered at the high school are specifically not recommended for this purpose. I explain this carefully and thoroughly in this 3-session online class.
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This page was updated on April 19th, 2026.