 Co-op at Purdue is defined as a rotational work experience where students are getting this progressive experience in work and industry and rotating coming back to the classroom. Here at Purdue the program is completely voluntary and we see upwards of 16, 17, 1800 students participating each year with the projected growth to be over 2,000 students participating by next year. It's like one of the main reasons why I wanted to go to Purdue because I think when I went to the other universities or like the university events that they had they did not really emphasize about the internship and the co-op program and yeah it's a very perspective thing especially as an international student being able to get the experience of working in the U.S. working with a company and allowing the students to learn from the industry here as a very very big goal especially for us international students. You learn the culture of the industry and especially of a big company and so you kind of you know how you're going to fit in and you get exposed to some areas that you'd like to work in or some areas that you wouldn't like to work in so it's more of a networking type of an environment which that's where I benefited the most from it. New co-ops that come into our program here at ZF usually come in very prepared from Purdue. I am always amazed at how we can take a student that's maybe gone through one, two, even three years of school and come in and be a productive member of our engineering team. They end up working side by side with some of our senior engineers and contributing to some of the same projects that are being developed with full-time employees. I like the fact that Purdue co-op allows us to do classes while on co-op. I'm doing a class during the spring and I'm going to be doing class during the summer as well and I think that most importantly having the chance to be able to keep working on your education while being all-way on co-op has been really important to me. Coming into Purdue I knew that I was going to college not just for a degree but to actually get real work experience where I could actually apply all the knowledge I'm learning at Purdue which is great to real-world applications. I had a boss that one time told me don't work harder work smarter and I thought about that and I'd have to take issue with that because I think there are certain universities Purdue being one of them where you just really have to dig in sometimes. There's a lot of smart people, there's a lot of smart students but what I thought distinguished Purdue and that's what interested me in recruiting Purdue students afterwards is they work hard. I will select somebody that has co-op experience over somebody that does not have that experience. The co-op program is something that's been around since the 1950s here on campus at Purdue. It's run by the Office of Professional Practice which is housed in the College of Engineering but it actually serves eight different colleges on campus. About 90 percent of participation comes from engineering students. Being able to see all these different problems in real life actually acted out in like my co-op experience that is something that helps me learn and helps me understand what engineering is all about so it's a very very big part of my engineering degree here at Purdue. One thing I realize about Purdue's co-op is that we have the best support system. We have specifically co-op clubs that allow us to connect with different co-ops on campus. We have networking opportunities. We get the chance to volunteer and actually influence the next generation of co-ops at Purdue and most importantly we have great staff so overall it's been a great experience for me and I wouldn't change it otherwise. What makes Purdue's co-op program stand out and unique amongst all others in the country is the fact that it is purely a voluntary program. Yeah it's definitely a program that is very favorable and that can really help a student especially if they want to go to the industry in the end like it could give them a boost it could give them like a like an edge over other students because they have worked before. It really sets them apart having the Purdue degree is wonderful but having that work experience is what set them apart in the job market against their peers. I would suggest any student that is trying to make a decision as to whether or not a co-op program would be beneficial to their scholastic career or their their education. I would say that the experience that you gain from an extra year year and a half by extending your graduation date is invaluable based on the information the knowledge and the relationships that you build within industry.