Working abroad / Stateside for the summer

[RoGuE|SaBeR]

Just about to go into third year of Uni and I'm thinking about working abroad next summer.

I haven't got any internships lined up but I will start applying for those once the term starts properly. Otherwise my idea is to just email some companies and see if they would take a student on a short term place. I'm doing Computer Science and Electronics at Edinburgh Uni which should be a 5 year course with a MEng at the end of it so that would be 3 years done with 2 left when I would start the placement.

Ideally I'd love to try working in California in and around Silicon Valley. That sounds all a bit pie in the sky even to me at times but I figure I might as well try to get something over there to see what life is like state side and the experience of working for a company out there can only be useful even if I don't really fancy it as a long term thing. Obviously it would be with an engineering / IT company.

Any one any experience of short term work abroad while at Uni? Any advice?

[ikonia]

you'll struggle a LOT with this. USA companies take UK students, they promote their own. Very little is done over seas, plus speaking to someone in recuruitment for a large blue chip USA company I'm doing some work for tells me there is a lot of hassle and paper work that goes with it.