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Old 04-08-2005, 05:51 PM
DeltAlum DeltAlum is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Mile High America
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I have a unique perspective since the school I attended changed from semesters to quarters between my sophomore and junior years.

Some of this will likely be redundant because I don't have time right now to read the rest of the posts above.

It's been quite a while ago, but my distinct memory is that mid-terms seem to come much more quickly on the quarter system because they're four weeks shorter than semesters. But we often had two midterms per semester in those days as opposed to one per quarter.

There was no 3 class maximum for us -- basicially the same load (15-18 hours normally) as under semesters. In order to get the amount of subject matter in, some classes met five times a week instead of three on quarters.

One negative thing for quarters is that you have three sets of Finals per year instead of two -- with all the nerves, etc. that they bring on.

At the end of the day (or the year, I guess in this case), you've spent the same amount of time in class and had about the same number of tests. Generally Christmas break happens between Fall and Winter Quarters and Spring Break between Winter and Spring Quarter.

One good thing I remember is that if you had a particularly bad class or professor, you only had to put up with it for twelve weeks instead of sixteen.

As I think back (a long way back), I'd give the nod to quarters -- mostly for the last reason.

Because of the pace of the quarters, the year seemed to go by a little faster as I recall.
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The above is the opinion of the poster which may or may not be based in known facts and does not necessarily reflect the views of Delta Tau Delta or Greek Chat -- but it might.
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