<p>I went to Penn State back when it had 4 quarters a year. I loved it because I took less classes at one time and could concentrate on those instead of spreading myself too thin; and I was able to explore different classes more, and if I didn’t like them, I only had to wait 10 weeks until I could take something else. My daughter has attention problems and I think this kind of scheduling would work for her, but as others have mentioned, there aren’t as many schools in the northeast that still do this.</p>
<p>Marian - Northwestern works with students individually should there be an internship that starts earlier than the end of their Spring term. It has never been a problem for my daughter or any of her friends. My husband frequently hires summer interns from NU and it’s always worked out.</p>
<p>Oh, and after Freshman year, it doesn’t really matter so much if local friends are home earlier or later. The only date students are pretty much guaranteed that their friends will all be home is the Christmas-New Years week, otherwise Spring Break is all different times for colleges.</p>
<p>Also, don’t employers like having someone who will not be leaving the summer job so early in August?</p>
<p>I attending both quarter and semester colleges and really the only big problem is transferring between the 2. </p>
<p>I took inorganic chem on the quarter system which I thought really worked well as it divided the main categories in nice chunks but I had to take an extra quarter in organic chem to match the credits the school I transferred to wanted. </p>
<p>Other classes seemed to work better on the semester system but students seem to get used to where ever they go. However I agree, being out of sinc with your friends can be a drag.</p>
<p>Yes, transferring may be the biggest practical problem for many students, especially in California, where the community colleges, public universities, and private universities all have a mix of quarter and semester system schools.</p>
<p>DePaul is on a quarter system. They are off from Thanksgiving through New Years.</p>
<p>Stanford is on the quarter system.</p>
<p>I’ve known many who have gone to the Farm and none has had a problem with scheduling, internships, summer jobs, etc. Employers are usually willing to be flexible and work with students as are the schools. I think the concerns about how a quarter schedule at Northwestern could impact a student’s opportunities are quite overblown, IMHO.</p>
<p>(Stanford students have always gone mid-September - early June; in fact the late start was one of the things that was most appealing to my family members!)</p>
<p>Several Ohio public universities switched from quarters to semesters this year. Internships and summer jobs were stated as reasons. Quarter schools like OSU started mid-sept and no one was more sad and lonely than the new frosh who had to wait at home close to a month longer to go off to college than their old HS friends. Of course transition is the worst. Summer term was foreshortened, profs may have a hard time adjusting lectures/tests, kids who missed a quarter may have to take a semester class.</p>
<p>My S is at RIT, they are switching to semesters fall 2013. My senior in HS D is looking at schools, and is interested in study abroad. I can imagine some schools’ quarter systems would make it hard to do semester-long study programs elsewhere. We have also come across the Maine LAC’s - Colby has a 4 week January term, Bates a separate month-long term in May. By my calculations, that makes the semesters only 12-13 weeks long.</p>
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<p>If the home school is a quarter system school, and the abroad school is a semester system school, then study abroad in the fall would replace one quarter at the home school with one semester at the abroad school. But study abroad in the spring would replace two quarters at the home school with one semester at the abroad school, which could cause the student to come up slightly short of credits to graduate if s/he does not overload or have AP credit or take summer sessions.</p>
<p>Right, but at schools like RIT, where the second quarter starts right after Thanksgiving, a semester study abroad program could cause a student to miss 3 weeks of the second quarter, which would not be doable. My D (in a semester college) studied abroad in the fall, and the school there had finals in January, so she had to arrange to take her final early, before she came home in December. </p>
<p>I’m not a fan of the quarter system, but youngest D is looking at several schools that are set up that way.</p>
<p>In looking with the youngest, I have been surprised how the number of classes varies at different colleges. At most universities I am familiar with, students took 5 classes per semester or 4 a quarter. At the LAC’s, 4 classes a semester or 3 a quarter seem to be common.</p>
<p>Number of courses per semester or quarter depends on how “large” they make each course (in terms of workload and credit units – note that a quarter credit unit is 2/3 of a semester credit unit to reflect that a quarter is 2/3 as long as a semester).</p>
<p>Typical arrangements:</p>
<ul>
<li>Most courses are 3 credit units => typical course load is 5 courses per quarter or semester.</li>
<li>Most courses are 4 credit units => typical course load is 4 courses per quarter or semester.</li>
<li>Most courses are 5 credit units => typical course load is 3 courses per quarter or semester.</li>
</ul>
<p>(Schools not using the usual measure of credit units have a translation for transfer student purposes, though that can usually be figured out by noting how many courses or credit units are needed to graduate and making a ratio with the usual 180 quarter or 120 semester credit units.)</p>
<p>Note that not all schools assign the same number credit units for a course or sequence of courses covering the same material (even after doing the quarter versus semester system and other translations).</p>
<p>The UC system (except Berkeley and Merced) are on the quarter system. They don’t finish for the summer until the third week of June. Many of the summer internships were therefore unavailable because they started before the UC students had taken final exams.</p>
<p>Yes, I am familiar with the credit hour system. However, at many of the LAC’s we’ve toured recently (that are on semesters), courses are 1 credit, and you need 32 to graduate.</p>
<p>Re: #34</p>
<p>With 32 courses needed to graduate, that makes each course equivalent to a 4 credit unit course in the usual method (although it adds up to 128 instead of 120 to graduate).</p>
<p>At Knox, one class = one credit. I take three courses per term/trimester and will receive three credits. Each year I should have nine credits. To graduate, a Knox student must successfully complete at least 35.8 credits. A student cannot take more than 3.5 credits a term if they do not want to be charged more money.</p>
<p>Study abroad wise, there are trimester and semester options. I would get 4.5 credits per semester if I studied abroad. I would not loose any credits if I did it for a year. If one studied abroad in a fall semester program then it is usually more money because not all of the financial aid goes through. A spring semester or year program is usually cheaper. At Knox, ones financial aid will also go towards a study abroad program if it’s affiliated.</p>
<p>Wabash does the same thing with credits, and labs do not count, so a biochem major appears earns the same credit hours of a Rhetoric major even though the freshman course load at a state school would be 12 credits for the Rhetoric major and 16-20 (depending on the school) for the biochem major.
The average class load for the LAC is 4.5 credits.</p>
<p>I attended Berkeley when it was on the quarter system and I wasn’t even aware that there was an alternative. Most of the classes in my first 3 years were 3-quarter sequences, so it wouldn’t have mattered whether the school was on a quarter or semester system. However, there were a few classes which I could take as a lark comforted by the knowledge that if it didn’t work out it was only 10 weeks of unhappiness rather than 15.</p>
<p>My son is attending a quarter school in the Midwest and the school claims that the fact that it lets out late does not interfere with summer internships. We’ll see if that is the case next summer</p>
<p>I liked the quarter system at Northwestern. Didn’t have to worry about any classes over spring break. I also liked only having classes for 10 weeks; they were over just about when I got tired of them! I took 4 courses at a a time (except for the one quarter when i walked on to a D1 sports team; the dean was fine letting me drop a class). I don’t remember quarter or semester being an issue at all when I was looking at colleges.</p>
<p>University of Delaware is on 4-1-4. At first glance, seems like regular semesters, but they have a very long break between fall and spring semester - from mid-December to Super Bowl Sunday (first weekend in Feb). It’s a great opportunity for the myriad winter session study abroad programs that UD offers, but that’s $$$. You definitely need a plan for those 7 weeks. If not study abroad, then working, taking a class at local comm college or something. The students get home a bit later than traditional semester schools (just before Memorial Day). If you are productive in January, then 4-1-4 is a good thing. But if you don’t have a plan, then that’s a different story.</p>
<p>Son intends to attend grad school in either the midwest or the northwest. He’s always been on semester systems, but wants out of the south finally. Will he have trouble adapting from semester to quarters? Will he get breaks between the quarters where he can visit us down south?</p>