Cooperative Education (Co-op)
Co-Op
Experiential preparation is an important component of a competitive application to any health professional program. While experiential learning can take shape in many forms, Northeastern’s cornerstone Cooperative Education Program offers students a unique opportunity to engage in full-time work as a part of their academic plan of study. Co-op provides Northeastern students the ability to explore career interests, create professional networks, and develop transferable professional competencies.
Students begin their first co-op no earlier than the second semester of their sophomore year. Prior to starting co-op, they must complete the Professional Development for Co-op course. Each student is also assigned a Co-op Coordinator—typically during their Professional Development for Co-op course—who will support them throughout the co-op search and application process.
Additional information, as well as answers to frequently asked questions, about the University Co-op Program can be found on the Employer Engagement and Career Design website HERE.
Co-op Profiles
Health professional programs look for candidates who have robust and diverse professional experiences. There are no designated PreMed or PreHealth co-ops. Rather, students should apply to co-op jobs based on their individual interest in, and qualifications for, the position. Both healthcare-related and non-healthcare experiences are valuable, as they allow students to build transferable skills—such as communication, teamwork, problem-solving, compassion, and resilience—that are highly relevant to future careers in the health professions.
It’s important to note that co-op is just one part of a student’s application. While students may highlight one or two co-op experiences, they will likely list 12 or more experiences overall. There are many other unique ways our students gain relevant experiences for their health profession beyond co-op, both on and off campus.
Applicant Profiles in Action
The following profiles feature actual Northeastern applicants to health professional schools and provide an overview of their unique experiences and individual paths to medicine. Each story highlights how students have combined co-op with other meaningful opportunities to prepare for successful applications and future careers in healthcare!
Transferable Skills for Pre-Health Learners
Diverse co-op experiences help applicants to health professional schools showcase a wide range of skills, interests, and values. They not only strengthen your application but also shape your unique narrative to medicine. These experiences can come from many different professional fields, not just healthcare.
Health professional programs value the core competencies (see section below) developed through these varied opportunities—such as communication, critical thinking, cultural awareness, teamwork, and service. The key is being able to clearly articulate how your unique experiences have prepared you to be an effective, well-rounded healthcare professional who can connect with diverse patients and address complex healthcare challenges.
Transferrable Skills in Action
To help you reflect on this, the chart below highlights examples of transferable skills gained across different professional fields and shows how they can be applied to your preparation for a career in the health professions.
Core Competencies
Through Co-op applicants gain understanding of their desired profession, technical skills, and interpersonal and professional competencies. While those listed below are the AAMC’s Core Competencies for Entering Medical Students, they are applicable to all health professions. Use these as a framework for your co-op search and experience.
AAMC Core Competencies for Entering Medical Students
- Commitment to Learning and Growth: Practices continuous personal and professional growth for improvement, including setting and communicating goals for learning and development; reflects on successes, challenges, and mistakes; pursues opportunities to improve knowledge and understanding; and asks for and incorporates feedback to learn and grow.
- Cultural Awareness: Appreciates how historical, sociocultural, political, and economic factors affect others’ interactions, behaviors, and well-being; values diversity; and demonstrates a desire to learn about different cultures, beliefs, and values.
- Cultural Humility: Seeks out and engages diverse and divergent perspectives with a desire to understand and willingness to adjust one’s mindset; understands a situation or idea from alternative viewpoints; reflects on one’s values, beliefs, and identities and how they may affect others; reflects on and addresses bias in oneself and others; and fosters a supportive environment that values inclusivity.
- Empathy and Compassion: Recognizes, understands, and acknowledges others’ experiences, feelings, perspectives, and reactions to situations; is sensitive to others’ needs and feelings; and demonstrates a desire to help others and alleviate others’ distress.
- Ethical Responsibility to Self and Others: Behaves with honesty and integrity; considers multiple and/or conflicting principles and values to inform decisions; adheres to ethical principles when carrying out professional obligations; resists pressure to engage in unethical behavior; and encourages others to behave honestly and ethically.
- Interpersonal Skills: Demonstrates an awareness of how social and behavioral cues affect people’s interactions and behaviors; adjusts behaviors appropriately in response to these cues; recognizes and manages one’s emotions and understands how emotions impact others or a situation; and treats others with dignity, courtesy, and respect.
- Oral Communication: Effectively conveys information to others using spoken words and sentences; actively listens to understand the meaning and intent behind what others say; and recognizes potential communication barriers and adjusts approach or clarifies information as needed.
- Reliability and Dependability: Demonstrates accountability for performance and responsibilities to self and others; prioritizes and fulfills obligations in a timely and satisfactory manner; and understands consequences of not fulfilling one’s responsibilities to self and others.
- Resilience and Adaptability: Perseveres in challenging, stressful, or ambiguous environments or situations by adjusting behavior or approach in response to new information, changing conditions, or unexpected obstacles, and recognizes and seeks help and support when needed; recovers from and reflects on setbacks; and balances personal well-being with responsibilities.
- Service Orientation: Shows a commitment to something larger than oneself; demonstrates dedication to service and a commitment to making meaningful contributions that meet the needs of communities.
- Teamwork and Collaboration: Collaborates with others to achieve shared goals and prioritizes shared goals; adjusts role between team member and leader based on one’s own and others’ expertise and experience; shares information with team members and encourages this behavior in others; and gives and accepts feedback to improve team performance.
- Human Behavior: Applies knowledge of the self, others, and social systems to solve problems related to the psychological, socio-cultural, and biological factors that influence health and well-being.
- Living Systems: Applies knowledge and skill in the natural sciences to solve problems related to molecular and macro systems including biomolecules, molecules, cells, and organs.
- Critical Thinking: Uses logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions, or approaches to problems.
- Quantitative Reasoning: Applies quantitative reasoning and appropriate mathematics to describe or explain phenomena in the natural world.
- Scientific Inquiry: Applies knowledge of the scientific process to integrate and synthesize information, solve problems and formulate research questions and hypotheses; is facile in the language of the sciences and uses it to participate in the discourse of science and explain how scientific knowledge is discovered and validated.
- Written Communication: Effectively conveys information to others using written words and sentences.
Core competencies for entering medical students. AAMC. (n.d.). Retrieved August October, 30, 2023, from The Core Competencies for Entering Medical Students | Students & Residents (aamc.org)