Thanks for your reply
Do all schools with a quarter system start in early September, end in Thanksgiving, and return back in January? Or is this only at Denver?
What do you suggest students attending a school with a quarter system do if they want to do an internship but can’t because they don’t get out of school until June?
The downside is 3 sets of midterms, dead weeks, and finals each year.
This is the main reason as to why I would prefer a semester system vs a quarter system.
If you are an athlete, you should see how it goes in with your sport. It might fit into just one quarter and you’ll have a little more flexibility to take a light load in that quarter.
I’m not an athlete, but I’m sure I can use this strategy to my advantage in other ways. Like maybe one quarter I can lighten my coursework and focus on a personal project
Thanks for your reply
Thanks for your reply. What do you suggest students attending a school with a quarter system do if they want to do an internship but can’t because they don’t get out of school until after the internship actually starts?
Thanks for the clarification
as a PhD student I usually had to start working on my final papers by the second or third week of the quarter
This seems like it would cause a lot of stress. I’d much rather take the first few weeks of the class to get situated, but I guess this would just be another one of the many things I’ll have to adapt to once I go to college
Thanks for your reply
Varies by school. Some start autumn quarter in late September and end in December.
At least one splits the winter quarter with the winter break.
The California schools that are on quarter system start around the end of September, some years even as late as early October. They generally have a week or two of classes after Thanksgiving followed by a week of finals. For example, the first week this year started the week of Sept 20 and the last day of finals was Dec 10.
The schedules vary by school.
At least one splits the winter quarter with the winter break.
does this mean that exams would be after winter break?
This might depend upon the school. My recollection was that for the university that I attended first quarter classes started in September and ended before the winter break, and second quarter classes start in early January. I just checked and confirmed this. This year’s schedule for the “quarter based” university that I attended many decades ago might just give one example:
September 20 (Mon) First day of quarter; instruction begins.
December 6-10 (Mon-Fri) End-Quarter examinations.
January 3 (Mon) First day of quarter; instruction begins
March 14-18 (Mon-Fri) End-Quarter examinations.
March 28 (Mon) First day of quarter;
June 3-8 (Fri-Wed) End-Quarter examinations.
You will note that this will run a bit later in the spring compared to universities that are on the semester system.
I agree with a comment above that you might want to just pick a university that is a good fit for you, and then adopt to either the semester or quarter system (whichever the school has).
Here is an example of a winter quarter split across winter break:
https://catalog.latech.edu/content.php?catoid=13&navoid=484
However, most quarter system colleges have a calendar more like that described in post #30 where winter quarter starts after winter break. This results in the entire academic year shifted about 5 weeks later than most semester colleges’ academic year.
Our experience (with UCs) has been that quarters work well for the academic classes (you can mostly take three classes, occasionally four), but that being out of sync with the bulk of colleges does create some challenges.
Nevertheless, most internships have been OK, starting straight after classes finish for the summer, with a break in September (actually offering more chance of getting a few weeks extension after other students have gone back to college).
It was most noticeable at the beginning of college, when you are hanging around for a month after all your friends have left, and after graduation where there hasn’t been a chance for a long holiday because some employers may have starting dates in early July.
D struck schools with quarter systems from her list because it limited the options for internships and coops.
I think this question is best answered by a representative of a college with a quarter system. I imagine that they deal with this all the time and that they have ways to make it work.
I can also imagine that their are situations where the quarter system has advantages in scheduling internships because of the inherent flexibility of the system. Internships don’t. Have to happen in the summer. In fact with key people away on vacation, it’s not necessarily the best time. A lot depends on the internship.
Dartmouth is probably the most prominent college that uses the quarter system. Yet they report that 81% of thei students do internships during their 4 years. It doesn’t seem to be a problem for them.
Among prestige privates, there are also Stanford, Chicago, and Northwestern. Among publics, the quarter system is more common on the west coast (e.g. University of Washington, University of Oregon, most UCs other than Berkeley and Merced)
Yep, I think asking the question to the college directly is important, along with getting a list of which companies students work for during the summer. It’s important to parse that out from where students go AFTER graduation.
The dean of engineering from a top school, mentioned in this thread, gave my D a terrible answer when she asked that question.
Stanford, Chicago, and Northwestern? I didn’t know that. That’s quire a Big 3! I can’t imagine that schools like these haven’t worked out ways for their students to have excellent internship experiences. And on the other side of the coin, I imagine that companies love to get students from institutions like these and others.
Caltech is also on the quarter system.
Quarter system is more popular in certain regions (e.g. West Coast, Midwest). It has some advantages for students who want to take more courses that aren’t year-long in different subjects and aren’t concerned about faster paces. For year-long courses, it doesn’t really matter whether they’re structured as 3 quarters or 2 semesters. For summer internships, there may be some mismatch for regional employers located in regions where one system predominates, but for national employers, this usually isn’t an issue.
Parent of recent Stanford grad here. No problems with internships. They don’t do the coop thing so not sure how quarter system would work with that.