Colleges with an all year round school schedule?

College Search & Selection
1

Hello!

So I’ve been looking into Dartmouth and their “D-Plan”. In their D-Plan, students are required to attend classes during the summer of their Sophomore year and by doing so they can take a break during any other quarter in their future years.

I’m really interested in this type of schedule and I know that in order for this to happen, the school has to stay open all year round.

So my question is if there are any other colleges that have a plan similar to Dartmouth’s D-Plan or are there colleges that have classes all year round?

2

It’s pretty common in Canadian universities.

3

Are you thinking of Tri-semester?

4

Pretty much all schools offer summer sessions, although the course offerings are usually reduced.

Dartmouth’s D-plan appears to be meant to allow them to avoid fall quarter enrollment exceeding capacity – it says that students are not guaranteed to get a D-plan that includes four fall quarters. The fall term is usually the most heavily enrolled one, since students who graduate early or late often have one more fall term than spring term. Other schools manage fall term enrollment by choosing to admit some students to start in the spring term.

5

Ah, yes. I forgot that Dartmouth did introduce the plan originally to prevent oversaturation.

I guess I’m just looking for colleges where it’ll be pretty easy to take a semester/trimester/quarter off to pursue other things like an internship and then return back to school.

Since most schools do offer summer classes, would I be able to say, take winter off and then just take summer classes to compensate?

6

Would something like Northeastern’s co-op system fit the bill? I guess it’s more compulsory, but they have built-in structure to let you pursue jobs and internships.

7

I second NEU if you like the idea of co-op. They divide the year up in 4-2-2-4 and have significant offerings for the summer sessions.

8

I took the semester off from the University of Oklahoma and I am still on track to graduate in eight semesters despite being in a relatively uncommon major. Make sure that whatever school you enroll in offers at major requirements every semester and you should be fine.