<p>I know quarters are shorter than semesters. But if you go to a school on quarter system does that mean that you graduate earlier because you take more classes a year? Or are the classes just worth less units/credits?</p>
<p>You do not graduate earlier. You end up taking more classes. </p>
<p>It isn’t always an easy conversion, however. For example, when I taught at RIT I had as much face-time in one quarter with my students, as I would have had in a semester at University of Rochester. So, I could teach EXACTLY the same class at two places - and at one it would take 10 weeks, and at the other it would take 15.</p>
<p>But in general, the idea is that you learn proportionally less in a quarter than you do in a semester. So, the intro biology sequence might be split into three chunks instead of two.</p>
<p>Generally, there is a 2/3 conversion from quarter units to semester units. Most of semester colleges require 120 total semester to graduate while quarter colleges 180 total units to graduate. So the total number of courses you have to take are more in a quarter system, but the converted total units are equivalent since it runs by three quarters vs. two semesters in an academic year.</p>