3. Quarter or semestral system for undergrad engineering students?

Quarter or semestral system for undergrad engineering students?

When I first went to college It was with the quarter system. Then later in life I went back for an engineering degree at a college with a semester system.

Overall you'll be taking pretty much the same hours to get your degree either way. So 'big picture' it probably doesn't matter.

My quarter system was 12 weeks each session. One in the fall, not much more than a week off for Christmas, then two more quarters started up right after New Year. But we also had two summer sessions of a month each.

Then the semester college was 16 weeks, but a full month off in between. And only one summer session of 6 weeks.

Personally I liked the quarter system better though. The more involved classes, like Calculus, Physics, Chemisty, MicroBiology...even German language. Those were 5 credits each in the quarter system, and 4 in the semester. But they way the colleges did them was different.

It had been a while in between going so I decided to take a few courses again, like the math, so it would be fresher in my mind.

In calculus, the quarter system, we met every weekday. The professor would spend 10 minutes going over homework from the day before. Then the rest of the time going over the new material with a few worked out examples. Same thing every day, a section each time.

In the semester system that college chose to do 3 days lecture, Mon, Wed, and Fri.. Then Tues. and Thurs. we had what they called lab. Lab was going over homework in a different room with the T.A.. But a new section was only covered in the 3 lecture days.

So in the quarter system were able to do Calc I, II, and III in one school year. In the semester system we did those same classes in Fall and Spring of one, and the Fall of the next school year. SAME material covered, section for section. The quarter system just covered it more efficiently and at a faster pace. I still had my original calculus book to compare content. There was no difference in what was covered. The semester system just wasted a lot of time with that stupid lab system 2 days a week.

I preferred getting done faster. Also having two summer sessions meant I could get a lot of general stuff out of the way then.

I'm not sure that's going to be the case at every college. Just the way the two I went to were.

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