I work in the marketing department of an MEP building systems firm. One of the things I have learned from our engineers here is the value of good internships. Freshman year might seem early to start looking at interning, but nothing gets a resume thrown in the trash faster than weak or non-existent work experience / internships. Also would be a good way to get a summer in a big city paid for.
I'm pretty excited for internships especially since most of the internships that I have heard of in CIS are with big corps like Microsoft and you spend the summer in Seattle or Boston. That would be so roughridin' cool guys.
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Dream bigger, think San Fran
Dream big but with internships often times getting the first one is really hard. Don't be discouraged if you don't get interviews offers from Apple, Microsoft, Google etc. The goal is to get your foot in the door. When you go to career fair of course talk to them, but you're going to need to be very good at your "elevator speech" and have a resume that shows lots of promise. Like if you haven't already participated in HS or out of HS in robotic competitions, have been to coding competitions or something like that, you're going to get overlooked pretty quickly by the big dogs. The thing with CIS is there are lots of super coding nuts out there, so you'll need to be constantly challenging yourself (if you haven't already) at getting better at computer science. Therefore, especially freshman, and if nothing comes along sophomore year, don't be afraid to go to smaller, less desirable at first glance companies. For one they are attracting fewer people so you have a better chance of landing the internship, but two you might find that that place is awesome and screw Google/Apple/Microsoft. Even if it is pretty shitty, you'll only have to deal with it for 3 months and on the flip side you get relevant work experience and when you go to Google/Apple/Microsoft the next time around, you got something that differentiates you from the pack.
Also, be attentive in classes for internships, if you can't get one via the career fair(s) sometimes professors have professional connections and will just basically ask the class if you are interested in an internship to apply for the job/interview through them. That's how I got my first internship that was at Westar. And using that I was able to get internships at the company I now work at and in general enjoy more than my time at Westar. But, I can thank Dr. Pahwa for telling his Circuit Theory I class that "hey if anyone wants an internship come talk to me" and like 2 other people and I went up to ask for helping me get my foot in the door. Beating out 2 people is much easier than beating out, well, hundreds if not thousands.
Finally, when recruiters ask "what kind of classes" etc. that you are taking. Don't say "CIS 209" or "Circuit Theory I" and list them off like that. That's useless. Say "I'm taking Circuit Theory I" and then describe what that class teaches you, and in particular bring out what is relevant that the class teaches you in relation to the company you are interviewing for. Also, emphasize team projects you are on and have an answer for how you'd deal with a team member who wasn't getting their job done or was being a detriment to the team. Ultimately for all jobs how you interact with others ends up being more important than how you actually perform at your job at a technical level. Companies will train technically deficient team players, they will not train you to be a better person. And as a newby to pretty much any job, they are going to train you anyways on "how to do it our way" so there's that.
