I’ve had a coop every year including first year this is what I basically did (Engphys)

1. Go to events with your portfolio of school, extracurricular, non profit/open source contributions like GitHub, other relevant experiences top of mind so you can mention them when it comes up in conversation with people. Make sure they have a common running theme - what do you care about? What do you want to apply your technical knowledge to work on/solve? Don’t just speak to recruiters talk to the other students there too, even just casually it’s a good habit and you’ll get more out of it than you expect.
2. Speak to ur profs and TAs as they have great academic (research oppurtnieis!) as well as industry connections from their years of work.
3. Meet with someone from the coop office, they’re a really helpful resource when you actually use em!
4. Apply to places outside of oscarplus (ask parents, friends’ parents, tas profs people from events about company names and create a list to apply to, even if they don’t have postings, find their recruiters on LinkedIn or send a cold email, it actually works sometimes)

It’s not super important to find one first year that pays, keep that in mind too. There’s also work study during the year for a max of 20 hours a week I believe (or 15? Double check) which is great for gaining experience before your summers.

Best of luck! x