As the classes start, I thought about sharing with you the peculiarities of the quarter system, used especially in those universities located at the north side of the country. In the US, quarters usually comprise 10 weeks. According to Malone, academic quarters first came into existence when William Rainey Harper organized the University of Chicago in 1981, on behalf of John D. Rockefeller ( Kemp Malone, 'Semester' , American Speech, Dec. 1946, p. 264). However, less than 20% of the high learning institutions across the US use this system and around 60% uses the traditional academic semester.
Although some people dislike the brevity of the term and the intensity of the classes, it has some special advantages that I personally enjoy. In particular, the quarter term allow you to enroll in a richer variety of courses and extra curricular activities, maximizing the use of university facilities. Also, it allow you to coordinate internships with a big dose of flexibility and teach yoy how to manage your time in a short period basis. Even though this can be especially the case of very organized people, it is a fact that the quarter term encourages you to learn and improve your time management skills.
In particular, I think that the most important advice I could tell you this far is to keep up to date the materials, work on time on your problem sets and NEVER skip a deadline. If you have doubts, ask them during the class, TA sessions or office hours and don´t wait until the next session. Take into account that in a 10 weeks schedule, there is not enough time to catch up!
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