Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program
MIT’s Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program (UPOP) is a full-year cocurricular program that prepares sophomores to thrive in the world of work. The UPOP curriculum emphasizes two tracks: engineering effectiveness and active career design. Hands-on exercises in engineering specification, project engineering, negotiation, agile engineering, and ethical implications of engineering decisions, expose students to key success factors for professional engineering. Coached practice in networking, business communication and "personal branding" (reputation building) helps students take active control of their careers as early as two years before they graduate.
With guidance from MIT faculty, UPOP staff, and industry professionals, students apply these concepts by obtaining meaningful summer internships in industry, government, and the nonprofit sector. They receive instruction and individual coaching before, during, and after their internships to help locate and negotiate the terms of their hands-on summer work and then succeed on the job by maximizing their contribution to the employer organization.
The UPOP program comprises five credit-bearing phases:
- A fall semester program of workshops and individual coaching in which students learn to author an effective résumé, excel in a job interview, and establish the foundation of their professional network by meeting alums and other engineering experts.
- A one-week intensive course of experiential learning in which students receive instruction and coaching from MIT faculty in the School of Engineering and Sloan School of Management, assisted by high-powered industry professionals who serve as Mentor-Instructors. The course is offered twice during the inter-semester break each January.
- A spring semester program of workshops and individual coaching in the job-search process and professional etiquette, with help in securing a summer internship assignment suited to their individual needs and aspirations.
- A 10- to 12-week summer practicum in which students apply their technical and interpersonal skills in real-world settings. During the internship, each student submits three entries to an electronic journal and hosts a site visit by UPOP staff who meet with the students, their supervisors, and HR representatives to ensure a positive outcome for student and employer.
- A reflective learning experience upon return to campus in the fall in which students report on their UPOP experience to each other and to a team of industry mentors. Participants in this phase are eligible to take part in a UPOP closing conference with UPOP staff to chart a course for the subsequent year and beyond.
UPOP is open to all MIT sophomores regardless of major. It is compatible with participation in other MIT programs, including MISTI, UROP, PSC fellowships. Students who complete the program gain a keen appreciation of the social, environmental, and ethical implications of engineering decisions and better understand how to put their unique talents and skills into practice as engineers, scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs, managers, or policy leaders.
