Colleges and Universities
on the Quarter System or Block Plan

Last updated February 24, 2010

When my son was going through the college search process, he had some unusual constraints. He is involved in elite level athletic training during the winter. His training requires him to miss classes during much of the months of November through March. This makes attending a typical college or university tricky, as he would need to miss the end of most schools' first semester, and much of the spring semester as well. So we tried to identify the dwindling number of schools that operate on the quarter system or on other alternate calendars. Surprisingly, I have not been able to find any online college search tool that lets one search on the type of academic calendar the school uses. As a result, I spent a lot of hours doing Google searches and looking at various schools' websites to see if they have a calendar that would work for my kid.

Given that I put a lot of time into this, I figured I'd share, since I suspect I'm not the only parent in the USA who might want this kind of information. Below you'll find the list of four-year quarter- and block-system schools that I've accumulated. If you know of others that should be added, or if you simply find this information useful, please send me an email to   dlbauer (at) hotmail.com  .
--Dave

BLOCK SYSTEM COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

Under a block system, a student takes only one class at a time, typically for about 3.5 weeks. Blocks might be organized into semesters (for example, at Colorado College, there are 4 blocks in each of the fall and spring semesters, plus 3 optional blocks in the summer session). However, the admissions department in these schools might be willing to allow a student to attend only selected blocks during a term. Inquire with the school if this suits your needs. There are only a few four-year schools in North America that follow this type of schedule, including one in Canada.