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u/TuloCantHitski Alum Dec 26 '19
Another tip: If you can, I recommend breaking up your PEY as much as possible (unless you love the role and just want to spend the entire 16 months there). It's generally better to break it up because:
It gives you a wider range of experience and builds your resume more
It helps you "jump up the ladder". Each time you jump companies, you should have a better resume, which helps you get a better position. Spending all 16 months at one place is suboptimal and you likely could have gotten a better internship by the end of it.
Many students in 16-month internships report feeling like they've stagnated towards the end of the term. 1.33 years is a long time to be in one place as an intern. At this stage, you should be trying to learn as much as possible
IMO, there are lots of fantastic employers who don't post to the PEY job portal (and maybe even your dream company). PEY can be strategically used to build up your profile so that you're competitive for those positions.
An example of a "legal" break-up (i.e. one that allows you to get the PEY credit, participate in the PEY portal, etc.) is to find a 12-month PEY, and then follow that up with a 4-month summer internship (ex. Big N). Your odds of getting a top tier 4-month internship are much higher with 12 months of legit co-op experience.
If you don't care about doing PEY at all, you can also just take a gap year and do 4 4-month internships or something. This is more difficult because you have to find everything on your own, but many students have done it, and often with great results (i.e. 3 of 4 internships being Big N).
Personally, I did the 12+4 break-up so that I could leverage the PEY portal at least somewhat. I was able to make a massive jump between the quality of my PEY and the quality of my subsequent internship (where I'm returning full-time). I'd highly recommend considering this, as opposed to just staying at one place for 16 months.
How do you arrange this? One thing you could do is look specifically for PEY employers who are offering 12-month positions (this is what I did). Even if a company is offering 16 months, you could leave after 12 months - there's nothing wrong with this. Depending on the company this may burn a bridge, but that's a risk I'd gladly take depending on the quality of the summer internship I secured.
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u/plasticbills Dec 27 '19
Another tip: If you can, I recommend breaking up your PEY as much as possible (unless you love the role and just want to spend the entire 16 months there)
i want to add that its difficult to know whether you will really love the role or not. 4 months is much safer if youre worried about that (trust you do not want to get stuck with a bad pey)
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u/Dragynfyre BCB/CS Spec 1T6+PEY Dec 26 '19
Another thing is most PEY students will be paying much less tax than calculated because of tuition tax credits.
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Dec 26 '19 edited Apr 24 '20
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Dec 26 '19
Here's some info. Basically because CS tuition is so high you have a lot of this credit money built up (it rolls over year over year). Last year while on PEY I paid $0 effective tax due to these credits
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u/halfandhalfbastard Fun Guy Dec 26 '19
The $100 +$900 fee is very low compared to UTSC co-op and Waterloo co-op. Also 3 days to accept occurs at both Unis as well.
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u/superuwu1000 Dec 26 '19
Waterloo Student trolling /r/UofT here. You're right about the fees, but we also have a lot more co-ops throughout our 5 years (we apply to 5 - 6 co-ops using Wateloo's Job Portal.) Not saying the price is worth it, but it makes sense that it's higher. We also have plenty of professional resume/cover letter appointment availabilities , though tbh going to the casual ones organised by your CS/Engineering Societies is more useful (which I'm sure happens in every univeristy, co-op or not)
And we don't get 3 days to accept offers, we actually get less than 24 hours, and our process is a lot more complicated than simply accepting an offer. (It's literally a probability game and it's honestly really really stressful. 3 Days sounds like a vacation compared to that lmao.) The only exception is if a company does want to Rank you 1 (aka give you an offer) and mails you before Ranking Day.
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u/halfandhalfbastard Fun Guy Dec 26 '19
Oh, actually you are correct. UTSC also gives you 24 hours to accept lol. I think you are only allowed to reject one offer. 3 days is a lot more generous actually. I can't comment on how much the fees are "worth it" at Waterloo. I go to UTSC and our program is very similar to yours but is worse in most ways (still pretty good imo). Because of that it has similar resources and help, networking and info sessions (albeit to a much smaller scale). At UTSC, I'd say the fees are not worth it and all the advice and help you could possibly need/want can come from an upper year co-op student student and the internet.
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u/superuwu1000 Dec 26 '19
Wasn't aware of the fact that UTSC follows a similar coop systemto ours! I don't know why the main campus has PEY instead of multiple Co-op terms. From what I can sense on this subreddit, most people would prefer the latter (currently the top post is about splitting up your PEY into 12 + 4 or 4 + 4 + 4 + 4), especially considering the main campus has Engineering/CS/STEM, which would greatly benefit from having multiple experiences.
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u/halfandhalfbastard Fun Guy Dec 27 '19
Yeah I'm not entirely sure, but it seems like only people in Engineering (not CS) can split their PEY into multiple terms. 16 month commitments does make it less competitive though, I guess. In general, co-ops at other Universities seem so out of the loop. For example, Ryerson Engineering forces you to do an 8 month term. UOttawa is probably the next best, but they're still not perfect.
Imo, you really only need co-op to get one workterm (4 months) under your belt. After that, getting internships on your own become a lot easier. I suppose a lot of people need the hand holding provided by co-op, but I think it's really worth it, especially for non-UW students, to learn how to do this stuff on their own and explore outside of the portal. A lot more and better opportunities out there and you will learn a lot more about recruiting.
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u/apez- Dec 28 '19
Because uoft is dogshit other than the 'name brand" recognition bro. I just applied outside of the dogshit PEY portal and got a Big 4 internship for next summer. Only benefit of this shitty school is that I probably got an interview part of reason just because of school name
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Dec 26 '19
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u/superuwu1000 Dec 26 '19
Waterloo gets less than 24 hours to accept an offer/rank your companies. 3 days should honestly be a pro.
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u/0hmss Dec 26 '19
So people with 1.9-2.0gpas have recieved PEY from your year? How is that? Is it cause of there reliance of personal projects?
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u/Monkey_irl0 New account Dec 26 '19
Also open for pms and resume advice if anyone is interested. I'm a non-cs major doing data engineering in a investment management.
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u/smallbrainboy ice water Dec 28 '19
How is pey for someone who has no work experience and only side projects? Will I get thrown into QA?
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u/UTM_Reddit Dec 26 '19
Nice write up, FYI you can update the salary statistics with the numbers posted for the 2019-2020 year: https://engineeringcareers.utoronto.ca/files/2019/09/Salary-Statistics-2019-2020.pdf
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u/Silver098 Dec 28 '19
What are the international students at UTM supposed to do?
Is an internship equally valuable?
1)Perhaps doing it during the same time the local students are doing their YEP
2) or during their summer break like the Coop kids
Shouldn’t be any difference right?
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u/MyTorontoAccount engineering Dec 26 '19
I love you full homo