I thought the point of being in a JR developer position was to get a job with limited experience and continue to learn while working. I've been in a job search lately and checking out these Jr Developer positions, they require so much! Some require bachelors degrees, 3-5 years in web development, experience with quite a few languages. I can't tell if this is really what Jr Developer positions require or if these companies are trying to save some money by paying little for the same experience.
Junior and senior is related to responsibility and pay, not skill level. It is also worth noting that a job advert is a list of their "ideal" requirements, so if you don't meet them try applying anyway (or just claim you've been developing in your own time for "years").
For me at least, it's because those without a few years of experience aren't going to be able to be productive enough to be worth their pay. In fact, even if money isn't an issue, they can add more workload to the senior members of the team in mentoring and bug-fixing time. This might be partially because web development changes so fast. It's unlikely that someone with a degree but no real-world experience is going to be productive without (optimistically) a few months of training.<p>Don't get me wrong, I'd gladly hire someone who has done her own side-projects that show initiative and ability to teach herself, even if she wasn't through school yet.
As developers, I think our collective definition of "junior" and "senior" is very different than in most professions.<p>In other industries (think electricians, welders, doctors, attorneys, etc) you'd still be very "junior" if you only had 3 years experience.<p>And my theory is that a lot of HR and Executive folks are trained to think that way; they just haven't bought into our way of seeing things...and they don't necessarily appreciate how quickly things change in this industry; and how quickly people can up their skill-set to senior levels.
That's why during college you need to work on some external projects (internship, open source, it doesn't matter, as long as you build "free" experience).