Son is down to his two final choices. One major consideration between the schools is that one is on the quarter system and one has a traditional semester system. Would love to hear pros and cons of both. Son is a bit of a procrastinator so part of me thinks the quarter system would be better as he would have closer deadlines. But also seems easier to fall behind and get overwhelmed. Would love any thoughts as he has less than 2 weeks till D-day! Will be a business major if that makes a difference.
1 Like
I like quarters for the following reasons:
-
You can take more courses in a year and explore more areas
-
If you discover you are on the wrong path, you can switch majors (or even schools) with less chance of having to go to school an extra term or year
-
If you get a bad class or prof, it is over relatively quickly and you can turn the page faster
-
I have the impression the quarter system lends itself better to taking a course or two over the summer to make schedules work better during the year and/or accommodate study abroad opportunities
5 Likes
I studied with the semester system as an undergraduate student, and with the quarter system as a graduate student.
The issue with the quarter system is indeed that the end of the quarter comes up more quickly than you would normally expect. This has the downside that you have the “end of quarter” rush more often, and you do not want to fall behind because there is not much time to catch up. On the other hand if you do fall behind, you are not as far behind, and you are motivated to catch up more often after falling less far behind. I was more mature as a graduate student and so I actually never did fall behind and liked the system quite a bit. I am also wondering whether four years of this would be enough to teach him not to ever fall behind.
One plus of the quarter system is that you get to take more courses during an academic year. For courses that you only want a bit of (eg, econometrics for me) you just take one quarter then you are off to something else. For courses that you love (eg, stochastic processes for me – I was a math major) you take the next course in the series the following quarter. Having the opportunity to take more shorter classes was something that I liked quite a bit. If you continue with the next course in the series, then you get a lot of any one particular subject.
With the quarter system classes that you do not like do not drag on for as long.
Another issue is that if you want to transfer to a different university the majority of universities are I think probably on the semester system, so I do not know how they would calculate credits for someone coming in from the quarter system.
Personally I preferred the quarter system, but I would mostly pick a university based on other unrelated criteria.
4 Likes
For colleges that use quarter-hour and semester-hour credits (normally 180-192 quarter-hours or 120-128 semester-hours to graduate), 1 semester hour = 1.5 quarter-hour, because a semester is 1.5 times as long as a quarter (15 weeks versus 10 weeks). For other credit systems (e.g. 1 course = 1 credit), it may be best to convert to quarter-hour or semester-hour to determine the credit values.
However, course-to-course subject credit is less likely to match up without overlaps or gaps. For example, a 4 quarter-hour course may only cover 2/3 of the material of a 4 semester-hour course.
Not so sure about this. Of the 12 schools D22 applied to, 8 were on the quarter system — including all but one of the public schools. Maybe it varies by region? Or just a coincidence?
I had both – one as undergrad, one as grad. I personally preferred the quarter system even though it meant an extra set of midterms and finals.
Not only did I like the extra fresh start, it seemed like the flexibility fit better with content. While a year of french at both would be the same (broken in half or thirds), for a lot of courses, it provided a better “break point”. No need to tack on extra material to fill out the semester, on one hand or spread it comfortably over two quarters if it merited more depth.
At the end of the day, you still cover the same amount of material. At some schools, you take fewer classes in each quarter but they meet for longer and the pace is a bit faster.
I am a bit of a procrastinator so the focus was good for me. This can be great for athletes as it often confines the season to one term. It can be a little complicated for internships and travel abroad but it is still workable.
1 Like
Quarter system appears to be more common on the west coast (e.g. several Oregon and Washington publics, plus most UCs (but few CSUs or community colleges) in California).
Changing academic calendars is a big hassle for the school; most recent changes have been quarter-to-semester rather than the other way around. This may be because quarters requires one extra set of administrative work (scheduling classes and final exams, etc.) per year compared to semesters. The gain is being able to slice course material into smaller pieces, but the incremental gain over semesters may not be large enough for schools to want to pay the extra administrative overhead.
Depends on the sport season. A fall sport student-athlete probably prefers the quarter system, since the season overlaps with 1/3 of the academic year instead of 1/2 on the semester system. But a spring sport student-athlete would have the season overlap with 2/3 of the academic year on the quarter system instead of 1/2 on the semester system.
True. But some schools that offer this schedule have a summer session as well, so it affords that flexibilty. (I recall a winter Olympian at my school doing summer work. I hadn’t even registered that there were summer classes)
At quarter system schools, the summer session is typically a full size quarter (10 weeks of instruction). At semester system schools, the summer session is often an approximately half length term (8 weeks of instruction), so courses move at approximately twice the speed as they would in a regular semester, and half as many courses or credits would be “full time” in the summer.
Make sure you check the add/drop deadlines for the schools with quarter vs. semester systems. The add/drop deadlines of schools on the quarter system MAY be much earlier than schools on a semester system.
And if you add a class at 7-10 days into a quarter, catch-up may be much more work, comparatively.
Also, with a quarter system, quizzes, tests and midterms will come much quicker. D21 has already had some as early as 2 weeks into the quarter.
Keep in mind that students in quarter system schools finish their school year in early June. This is often a month later compared to other schools.
Sometimes this impacts summer internship start dates. Some employers (mainly east coast) are not willing to accommodate later start dates. Many are flexible though. So this should be considered.
2 Likes
What a great topic! I had this question in the back of my mind, so I am following with great interest. I’ve never had the quarter-system experience, just semesters.
So does this mean that, in the quarter system, there is a greater frequency AND number of exams, including mid-terms and finals? Generally speaking, of course.
The frequency of tests may be college-specific. For example, a particular semester system school traditionally has two “midterms” (probably more properly called 1/3-term and 2/3-term tests) and a final exam in a semester, although some classes may have a different number of tests from the norm at the school. But the norm may differ at some other semester system school.
1 Like
This is likely to be very class/professor dependent. It is also going to be a function of how many classes that you take each term. Some schools have variable credit hours per class. When I was an UG, we had classes anywhere from 1-6 credit hours (3 was most common). At some schools, a class is a class.
1 Like
It’s tough to generalize as folks have mentioned above. But with the experience of my two kids, one on semesters and one on quarters, I know D21 has had an exam the 2nd week of the quarter and D18 never had that happen in her 3 1/2 years in the semester system.
Also, as I mentioned, D21 added a GE course last quarter (winter) about 10 days into the quarter and she had a mountain of work to get caught up on before she could participate in class, which was part of her grade, and before the 1st midterm.
She essentially had to stop work in one class for several days, a strategic pause as it were, to get back to level in the GE she added. It all worked out in the end though. Thankfully, there was a “low ebb” in one class, which she backfilled with the work from the added GE course.
Bottom line, I think in many cases, there’s just more breathing room with semesters.
1 Like
I did quarter system for undergrad and semester for grad school. I much prefer the organization and pace of quarter system.
The only times my quarter system kids had tests the second week, they were quizzes. Most classes have a midterm around 3-4 wks, a second midterm around 6-8 weeks and a final at 10 weeks. Some classes had a quiz every other week but that was much less common.
And they start a month later. In our experience, it hasn’t made any difference with respect to internships. Semester students start in mid May but need to leave by mid August. Quarter students start in mid June and can work until the end of September.
Some companies do sync their onboarding and may not be as flexible with start dates.
Some may but we never ran into that problem. Granted, if they weren’t flexible, they might not be recruiting from a quarter system school.
Here is another large thread on the subject.