Maine
College of the Atlantic
Bar Harbor, ME
Focuses exclusively on ecology/environment
When my son was going through the college search process, he had some unusual constraints. He was involved in elite level athletic training during the winter. His training required 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 had 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 or student in the USA
who might want this kind of information. Below you'll find the list of two year and four-year quarter- and block-system schools that I've
accumulated. If you know of others that should be added, if you find broken links or out-dated information, or if you
find this information useful and just want to say hi,
please send me an email to dlbauer (at) hotmail.com
--Dave
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.
Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado
While researching American block system universities, we also came across three overseas. There are likely more, and if you know of any others please bring them to my attention and I will add them here.
University of Suffolk, Suffolk, England
Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands
Victoria University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Also, while not exactly block system colleges, you might want to look at the atypical academic calendars at these schools:
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA. It has unique 7-week terms, different than both Blocks and Quarters.
Upper Iowa University, Fayette, IA. It has 8 week terms where students take two classes every eight weeks.
Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, NH has a similar schedule with six 8-week terms per year.
Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA has a similar schedule where students take two classes every seven weeks. NEW!
Spalding University, Louisville, Kentucky. 8-week blocks where students take 2 or 3 classes each block.
Under a quarter system, also known as a trimester system, the academic year is divided into three terms (fall, winter and spring) called quarters or trimesters, instead of the typical two semesters. Most schools also offer a fourth summer quarter.
I first created this website in 2011. Numerous people have provided helpful updates and additions to this site over the years, for which I'm very appreciative.
One of my readers, Belin, provided a lengthy list of two-year colleges on the quarter system which formed the starting point for the two-year list above. Thanks, Belin!
Another reader, Zain, provided several updates and performed a thorough test of the 2021 revamp of the information here. Thanks, Zain!