Focus Group: Understanding Student Needs

Conducted comprehensive focus group research with 25 Northeastern students across all colleges to identify pain points in the co-op application process. Synthesized qualitative and quantitative data to uncover three critical challenges: application process stress, emotional wellness support, and professional development preparedness, informing Central Co-op's strategic direction.

Research Overview

Central Co-op needed to understand students' experiences navigating the co-op application process to support them better. Alongside my co-researchers Justin Williams and Daniel Zhou, I designed and facilitated multiple focus group sessions that combined structured discussion with real-time polling to capture both qualitative insights and measurable feedback from students at various academic levels and majors.

Methodology

We recruited 25 students through a large sampling frame, grouped by college and availability. Each 60-minute session included 50 minutes of structured discussion covering three key areas and 10 minutes of Mentimeter polling to gather quantitative data. This mixed-methods approach allowed us to validate student experiences with concrete metrics while capturing the emotional depth of their stories.

Key Finding 1:

Application Process Challenges revealed that students experience the co-op search as competitive and stressful, with many wishing they’d built experience earlier. There’s a significant gap between first-year awareness and co-op readiness. Students aren’t thinking about co-op in their first year, but by junior year, they face intense pressure.

Key Finding 2:

Emotional & Mental Wellness emerged as a critical issue. Students reported overwhelming workload balancing academics and applications, heavy reliance on co-op advisors (73% of guidance), and frustration with NUworks transparency and the 100-application cap. The word cloud analysis showed “stressful” as the dominant descriptor of the application experience.

Key Finding 3:

Professional Development Preparedness identified a lack of technical interview preparation, especially for STEM and creative majors. The Career Design Center remains underutilized (0% awareness), and students struggle with resume and portfolio development. Those in niche majors face severe position shortages.

Strategic Recommendations

The research surfaced the “Northeastern Paradox,” students need work experience to get co-ops, but a co-op is supposed to be their first work experience. Based on this insight, we recommended industry-focused career preparation accessible across all majors, empowering the Career Design Center to take pressure off overloaded advisors, redesigning the first-year “Intro to College” class to focus on practical marketability strategies, and enhancing NUworks with real-time application status visibility to reduce anxiety and increase transparency.

Impact

This research became the foundation for Central Co-op’s programming and support initiatives. Student feedback directly influenced resource allocation, professional development offerings, and system improvements to make the co-op process less stressful and more equitable across all majors.