“UCLA’s law and medical schools are on the semester system. Since many (if not most) summer legal internships begin in late May or early June, it only makes sense.”
With the growing importance of summer internships, UChicago’s spring quarter finish in mid June is a negative. Many larger internship programs espe corporate ones are highly structured with a firm start date in early June. My D applied for and was accepted to a wonderful internship this summer, but the firm starts its summer program for nearly 100 college interns at the beginning of June. She plans to leave UChicago two weeks early. Her academic advisor recommended that she choose a (Core) class with a final paper rather than exam and to contact her professors before spring quarter starts and hopefully those with finals will agree to accomodate her with early exams. Apparently, this isn’t an isolated occurrence and 4th years finish early their last spring quarter so professors are usually understanding. D says she is also considering taking 3 classes rather than 4 this spring. Given that this is a common dilemma, why wouldn’t the administration at least consider an earlier start–say in mid Sept and finishing at the end of May? What is the rationale for starting in Oct?
KnightsRidge - I think you’ve hit on what has changed. These internships are so important now to so many majors (not just econ) that it can’t be ignored. Based on comments here and common sense the rigor of the curriculum can be preserved after a shift to the semester system.
Ditto @Cu123’s comment. One of my kids is in a BFA program on a quarter system that begins around Labor Day and finishes up the Friday prior to Thanksgiving. They then have a six week break (many international students are able to visit their families, many students in general are able to do a short internship at that time).
When I was at Booth and worked on Wall St. over the summer, the firms accommodated all those with a June finish date by holding staggered training and orientation periods. Those who showed up early - or stayed through Sept. - had a 12 week program (the extra two weeks were optional). Most just stayed 10 and worked their traveling/vacation in during the extra time either at the beginning or end of the internship. However, perhaps given the sizable majority of semester systems now, that doesn’t happen anymore - or maybe the undergraduate internships run differently.
The problem is that taking six courses during a semester has been deemed a “never again” by many I know. You can increase the length of the semester but not the length of the school week The max seems to be five, but then you can only fit in 10 courses in a given academic year. Most of my D’s classmates are taking 12 right now and completing some pretty challenging syllabi in the process. If the required number of courses is scaled back to, say, 40 courses (5/semester), it’s not only that the pace of learning is slowed down - the breadth is narrowed. Core, major and electives might each have to give up one course in order to make it work. Not only are academic departments not going to go along with that most likely, but scaling back on course breadth seems contrary to the purpose of a liberal arts education and wouldn’t really distinguish UChicago that much from other schools.
However, there is a way to make this happen w/o sacrificing rigor or selection. A 13 - 4 (or 5) - 13 trimester system (those are the lengths in weeks) would make it possible to take five courses each during the longer Tri’s, and one or two during the Winter session. Breaks would be following Autumn Tri (two-three weeks) and Winter (one week). No need to re-tool the curriculum; current courses can be completed at a slightly slower pace in order to compensate for the extra load during the longer Tri’s, but the overall pace is still pretty energetic compared to five courses in a standard 15 week semester. They could still require 4200 credits because everyone would still be required to take a minimum load of nine courses/year (say, 4 - 1 - 4) and most would do the standard load of 5 - 1 - 5 or even 5 - 2 - 5. You still get in 30-31 weeks of study. With this schedule, you can start following Labor Day and you’d finish up before Memorial Day. Best of all, “Spring Break” would be in late Winter which means better airfares
Would also direct everyone to the few but pertinent comments following the Maroon article. This one in particular is interesting because it suggests more of an administrative motive rather than an academic one. Could it be that cost savings are at the heart of the issue? Boyer and committee haven’t been exactly forthcoming about WHY they are examining the switch.
“Having read Professor Boyer’s history of the university I am not surprised that he would be broaching the idea of switching to semesters. His history is almost exclusively devoted to the administration of the school (and its attendant institutional politics) with the intellectual history of the place virtually ignored. Administrators like semesters because they are economically more efficient than quarters. Semesters require at most three registrations per calendar year while quarters require four. In a typical student’s experience, registrations will be cut from three to two, a considerable saving of time and attention. This economic efficiency comes at the cost of educational intensity noted by “Weinst.” Sacrificing educational intensity for administrative efficiency is a very un-UChicago thing to do. It would be much better to gain economic efficiency by cutting administrative overhead by 50%, something there is every reason to believe could be easily done given the widely recognized bloat in educational administration.”
At least one of my kids probably would have applied to Chicago were it not for the quarter system. Both of them avoided applying to any school that was on a quarter system. They didn’t want to start and finish so “late” and worried about getting summer research/jobs.
So are we saying that Stanford, UChicago, CalTech, Northwestern, Dartmouth and a number of LACs are all losing out on internships or is it the other way around? The vast majority of internships are quite flexible so I really don’t see it as an issue.
@CU123 My D’s internship was one of the exceptions then. Before she was accepted, she was asked if she could commit to the company’s entire 10 week program. She didn’t want to give them any reason to turn her down so she said yes. It’s certainly possible she could have asked to start later and they might have still taken her but she didn’t want to take that chance. However, I’m confident she’ll make this all work w/her professors but it would be nice if the quarter finished a week or two closer to the time the vast majority of college students finish in the spring. She does love UChicago regardless!
With an admit rate rumored to be under 7% this year, a yield in the upper 70’s and a +2,000 increase in early applications alone, Boyer might have a difficult time convincing the rest of the university that undergraduates are missing out on internships as a result of the quarter system. The admission trends don’t support that line of thought. Not even sure that internships are his real motive anyway.
Recognizing that everyone is free to do their own job search, why aren’t students utilizing the assistance of UChicago Career Advancement services for this issue? I’d think those directors would be eager to work with employers to ensure that students don’t have to skip out of class a couple weeks early. And then, employers already working through Career Advancement might be used to the issue and allow for a flexible start date in the actual offer.
@JBStillFlying Indeed, she found the internship utilizing Handshake the modern career development platform that UChicago Career Advancement participates in along with many top colleges throughout the country. She is quite impressed by Career Advancement’s breadth of resources and the thousands of Metcalf Internships available to the Chicago undergrads (though hers is not a Metcalf). In her case, the company she’ll be working for has an orientation program for all undergrad/graduate interns the first week of June with all sorts of events planned to introduce the interns to the HQ and the city. D doesn’t want to miss out on the fun and the opportunity to mingle with company execs and the other interns before they disperse to their assigned teams. Also, I’m not otherwise critical of the quarter system–just wish there were some way to make it work with an earlier start and finish to the year.
@KnightsRidge - totally understandable, given the structure (and size, it sounds like?) of her specific summer program. Yeah, Handshake is a great tool - my daughter was delighted with the choices she had.
Your D might still want to check in with the employer on the excuse of finalizing her spring finals schedule - if enough kids are coming from Uchi or other colleges using the quarter system, they might stagger orientation and offer that as an option. You never know. If on the other hand it was clear that the start date is set in stone, then so be it - and hopefully she’ll have minimal issues with the profs. Career Advancement might be able to offer a few tips for either strategy.
Stanford, UDub, the entire UC system except Berkeley, Northwestern, and Dartmouth are all on the quarter system too. Unless employers want to be locked out of hiring anyone from those schools (most don’t), they will accommodate the quarter system.
That’s true, but if you are talking about a company based in, say Baltimore, or Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, or even Philadelphia, those schools (plus Chicago) represent a tiny percentage of the realistic prospect pool. It would probably be news to them that there’s an issue. And they might not care enough to change the way they do things.
It’s not that big a deal. There are plenty of other fish in the sea, so to speak. (From both perspectives.)
If the University wants to accommodate more students in College or Graduate Schools or professional schools who plan to start their summer internship early, there are ways to twist the calendar a bit.
Administration can move the winter quarter up by a few days. Winter break is longer than 3 weeks. If it gets reduced to 3 weeks, it won’t be major pain and suffering. School can make the quarter start on January 3rd instead of January 6th or 7th. Winter quarter can end one week earlier than it is now. Then move the spring quarter one week forward and have the Convocation on the first Saturday in June.
Or University can have unequal length of quarters. 11 weeks of fall quarter and 9.5 weeks for winter and spring.
My major point is always the College is not the entire University. Are Booth, Law School or Graduate Schools summer interns all getting major push back by potential employers on their starting time? Or are we making mountains out of mole hills over this summer internship starting time “problem”?
Back in comment #23 I recommended an altered schedule of 13 - 4 - 13 (or 13 - 5 - 13) for term length. That will work and the kids can even get an extra week of learnin’ in! Here’s the suggestion again (pasted below):
“However, there is a way to make this happen w/o sacrificing rigor or selection. A 13 - 4 (or 5) - 13 trimester system (those are the lengths in weeks) would make it possible to take five courses each during the longer Tri’s, and one or two during the Winter session. Breaks would be following Autumn Tri (two-three weeks) and Winter (one week). No need to re-tool the curriculum; current courses can be completed at a slightly slower pace in order to compensate for the extra load during the longer Tri’s, but the overall pace is still pretty energetic compared to five courses in a standard 15 week semester. They could still require 4200 credits because everyone would still be required to take a minimum load of nine courses/year (say, 4 - 1 - 4) and most would do the standard load of 5 - 1 - 5 or even 5 - 2 - 5. You still get in 30-31 weeks of study. With this schedule, you can start following Labor Day and you’d finish up before Memorial Day. Best of all, “Spring Break” would be in late Winter which means better airfares.”
My take on this is a bit different - I start with liking the quarter system as being just one other indicia of the different take on the educational experience that UChicago has always had. Yes, I know it shares that system with a few other really good schools, but it and they compose a minority in a vast sea of all institutions. It also seems especially suited to the peculiar UChicago intensity that everyone notes - that relentless building up and letting go over a short time-span of one’s attempt to grapple with a particular subject matter. I speak primarily of my experience in the Humanities, but let me assure you that reading all the major works of Tolstoy or Dickens, or Plato, Aristotle and Kant, in 10 weeks is no walk in the park - nor is it meant to be. That’s the whole point. Intensity and concentration are the quintessence of the Chicago experience.
Boyer has done great things at Chicago, and I for one am grateful for this, but I can’t help feeling that there are things about the place he doesn’t quite get, simply because it was not the way things were done at Princeton. When he remarks that the quarter system means that Chicago students become a little too driven or harried or whatever it was he said in that vein - well, that’s Princeton speaking. Maybe Chicago needed a little bit of Princeton once upon a time, but Boyer in his dotage may have lost track of a very necessary drawing of the line between the University of Chicago and that and other institutions.
There are reasons that kids are now flocking to the U of C. Don’t dilute the experience that is drawing them. If they are put off by these summer job situations (and these also affected me as a student), well, they are not the sort that should be at the University.
Boyer wasn’t ever actually at Princeton from what I recall; however, this issue does remind me of someone who WAS from Princeton and who initiated a major change at UChicago in order to make things a tad easier on the undergrads: President Hugo Sonnenschein, who oversaw a reduction in the Core.
Boyer was an undergraduate at Loyola (the Chicago version) and went straight from there to graduate school at the University of Chicago. He has been at the University of Chicago continuously for more than 50 years! He also grew up in Chicago. He’s in his sixth (!) term as Dean of the College, under three presidents, and he’s unofficially the official historian of the University.
Whoever’s talking, it’s not Princeton.
It’s highly unlikely that there’s some aspect of the University of Chicago Boyer doesn’t “get”. What’s possible, I suppose, is that never having been elsewhere for meaningful time, he lacks some appreciation for the differences between Chicago and the other colleges to which kids are flocking.
As noted above, Boyer has no first-hand experience with Princeton. Regardless, Princeton’s current academic calendar is one that no college should emulate. Princeton itself will finally reform the calendar beginning 2020.
The max seems to be five, but then you can only fit in 10 courses in a given academic year. Most of my D’s classmates are taking 12 right now and completing some pretty challenging syllabi in the process. If the required number of courses is scaled back to, say, 40 courses (5/semester), it’s not only that the pace of learning is slowed down - the breadth is narrowed. Core, major and electives might each have to give up one course in order to make it work. Not only are academic departments not going to go along with that most likely, but scaling back on course breadth seems contrary to the purpose of a liberal arts education and wouldn’t really distinguish UChicago that much from other schools.