Ask your supervisor what his/her definition of an Outstanding Work Term is

It is better to make it clear from day one what your intention for the work term is. If you come into the term wanting an Outstanding, go make that clear to your supervisor so you can get a grasp what their expectations are for that evaluation. That way you can be prepare yourself accordingly for the coming 4 months! If possible, schedule bi-weekly meetings with them to make sure that you are achieving everything they want and are on track to achieving your goal! If you fulfill all that was asked by the end, your supervisor should really have no reason not to give you an Outstanding unless they really are just that savage. If you didn’t fulfill everything at least the reasoning should be relatively clear on why you did not get the rating you wanted! If you did do everything and still got a lower rating, you could always try appealing to your boss what you did throughout the term and why you deserve a higher rating. To effectively give this appeal, the next tip is necessary.

2. Document Your Accomplishments throughout the term

Document what you did so by the end of the term you can have a record of the work you accomplished. That way you can make a convincing argument for your work term evaluation if you need to and can easily make summaries of your work experience to put on your resume for your next coop term!

3. Try to explain the system to your boss if they do not know about it

Maybe your boss has never had a co-op or more specifically, a Waterloo co-op work for them. Although it may seem uncommon, it has happened to me in the past and thus may happen to you in your coop situation. Waterloo is unique as it is the only school with Work Term Evaluations that will be shown to future employers and thus it may benefit you to explain how the system works. This entails telling them about how the scales are skewed like I did above and showing how a Very Good actually means average. You can dig up statistics like the one below and thus have your evaluator tailor there expectations accordingly.

The system is very top heavy. Source: uWaterloo

4. Accept your Work Term Evaluation and move on to the next term

If you try all of this and still do not get the evaluation you want, all you can really do is focus on your coop for the next term. Sometimes your evaluator may not budge and all you can really do is move on to trying to find your next coop. If your evaluation is below a Very Good, you could always try focusing on applying outside of WaterlooWorks so that employers cannot see your evaluations in your application package. It is unfortunate how the system is but there really isn’t much you can do as a coop student. Most employers will at minimum give you a Very Good but you never know given the variety of standards different employers have.