In engineering program tenure, most students get an opportunity to intern in a company and experience the professional life before they actually earn a degree and be employed. This practice helps them to be prepared with the professional etiquettes and helps them bridge the academic and professional lifecycle. The purpose of this work is two-fold. The work attempts to understand how students perceive the relevance of their academic coursework to their internship experiences and the recommendations that can be made to optimize the course structure design and learning outcomes to align with the key elements of the internships. The research questions are formulated on the grounds of identified purpose. With a pragmatic philosophical assumption and reflective practitioner model as conceptual framework, qualitative research method was adapted. With two cycles of coding process: descriptive, vivo and focused coding were used for data analysis. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and survey forms. Self-selection was used for sampling and a total of 29 participants were part of the study. Students who participated in the interview were final year students of [name removed]. Themes were generated using the process that can guide the institutes to re-write the learning outcomes. Gaps were identified in the process and an analysis was carried out on how students find industry different from academics. The work brings out the differences in academic and professional settings in identified five themes. While the academics need to draft learning outcomes with professional objectives starting from lower semesters, industries need to collaborate in designing them as well. The work presents five themes on the areas of process of learning, skill set, technology and application of core courses in professional practices.