I went to a university basically no one here has ever heard of but The engineering program has the same 4 month on/off schedule. I was a CS student and the CS department has a co-op/internship program that is a bit different, its a minimum 8 months and max 16 months continuous which is really nice. Actually helps you get settled in and accomplish something fairly substantial.

It also, allows you to organize it in a way that you can schedule it to start right before your last semester, so you can potentially start your co-op, complete it, do 1 semester in school then get out in the work force.