<p>Noticing that a lot of schools are on a quarter system. Does this make transferring hard?</p>
<p>What engineering schools are on a semester system?</p>
<p>Son looking to major in biomedical engineering.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>I know Purdue is on a semester system. Your son may want to reconsider his choice in majors. An undergraduate BME degree is almost useless since you must have a graduate BME degree to get most jobs in the field.</p>
<p>It doesn’t make transferring difficult, but you risk losing credit. For example, schools on the quarter system usually have Calc I, Calc II, Calc III, Calc IV, and Calc V while schools on the semester system just have Calc 1, Calc 2, Calc 3. If your son completes Calc I, Calc II, Calc III, Calc IV then transfers, he’ll most likely only get credit for Calc 1 and Calc 2. So instead of being nine weeks from finishing the calculus squence (Calc V), he’s sixteen weeks from finishing the calculus sequence (Calc 3).</p>
<p>Whether or not that sort of thing happens depends on the schools and the student. It very rarely works in the opposite direction as schools err on the side of giving too little credit than too much.</p>
<p>I know that VT is on a semester system and I’m pretty sure OSU is on a quarter system. If you search for a school on collegeboard.com you can find out which system the school is on under “information” or something like that.</p>
<p>I think it might also follow a geographic pattern. For example, I think most schools in the South are on the semester system.</p>
<p>I thought most schools were on a semester system? Most schools that I looked into at one point or another were on a semester system with the exceptions of Rose Hulman and Northeastern. Maybe I just happened to overlook the ones on quarters?</p>
<p>UC Berkeley is on semesters (itself and Merced being the only 2 UC’s on semesters)</p>
<p>Gatech is on semester.</p>
<p>MIT is on semesters.</p>
<p>UIUC is on semesters. UMich is on semesters. TAMU is on semesters. UT Austin is on semesters. RPI is on semesters. UMD is on semesters. Wisconsin is on semesters. Cornell is on semesters. Really, most schools are on semesters, and a few are on quarters.</p>
<p>Northeastern moved to a semester schedule about 5 years ago</p>
<p>I know most of the University of Californias are on quarters, as is Caltech. WPI was also on quarters (though they call they trimesters, which makes a bit more sense to me). </p>
<p>RPI and CMU were both on semesters.</p>
<p>bucknell is on semesters</p>
<p>Actually, WPI is the school that prompted this post. Looks like a good school, but worried that son may not be able to handle the weather and all those Patriots fans. </p>
<p>If he was to transfer, worried that the quarter, or trimester, system at the school would really mess him up.</p>
<p>Any thoughts or experience with this, anyone?</p>
<p>In undergrad I had semesters and now in grad school I have quarters. I hate quarters so much. If you’re someone like me who needs a little bit of time for information to absorb and to really be able to understand the connections between everything you’re learning, then quarters just feels like too much too fast.</p>
<p>I have yet to meet someone who prefers the quarter system over the semester system.</p>