Foreign academic calendar especially US and Canada use a number of different systems, they include the following:

The quarter system divides the calendar year into four quarters, three of which constitute a complete academic year. Quarters are typically 10–12 weeks long so that three quarters amount to 30–36 weeks of instruction. Approximately 20 percent of universities are on the quarter system. Most colleges that use the quarter system have a fall quarter from late September to mid-December, a winter quarter from early January to mid-March, a spring quarter from late March or early April to mid-June, and an optional summer session. Notable users of the quarter system include the University of California system (excluding Berkeley, Merced, the UCLA medical school, and all of the system’s law schools), Stanford, the University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, Northwestern University, University of Washington, the University of Oregon, and DePaul University. Union College uses a modified quarter system: fall, winter, and spring terms are each eleven weeks long; there are some summer classes, but there is no official summer quarter. Because Union’s calendar makes use of just three of four quarters, the three academic terms are generally (and somewhat misleadingly to outsiders) dubbed “trimesters,” which they literally are since they each span three months, December, July and August being off. Another notable and somewhat unique user of the quarter system is Baylor Law School: it operates on the quarter system while the remaining colleges of Baylor University operate on the semester system.

The semester system divides the calendar year into two semesters of 16 to 18 weeks each, plus summer sessions of varying lengths. The two semesters together constitute 32 to 36 weeks of instruction, so that three academic quarters equal two academic semesters. Thus, academic credit earned in quarter hours converts to semester hours at 2⁄3 of its value, while credit earned in semester hours converts to quarter hours at 3/2 of its value. Put another way, 3 quarter hours is 2 semester hours. Most[citation needed] universities on the semester system have a fall semester from the day after Labor Day in September to mid-December, a spring/winter semester from late January to early May, and an optional summer session.

In practice, the average quarter-long course is four or five units and the average semester course is three units, so a full-time student graduating in four years would take five courses per semester and three or four courses per quarter.

The trimester system evolved out of the semester system. It divides the academic year into three equal portions of 15 – 16 weeks each. Institutions that use the trimester system include Carleton College, Knox College (Illinois), Lawrence University, and the United States Merchant Marine Academy. The fall and winter trimesters constitute an academic year of 30–32 weeks. The spring/summer trimester is usually divided into a 7.5 week Spring Session followed by a 6-week or 7.5 week Summer Session.[56] The reduced maximum course load that accompanies the shortening from the traditional semester makes the trimester system compatible with the semester system. Academic credit is thus measured on the trimester system in semester hours; there is no such thing as a “trimester hour” of credit.

At the University of Michigan and Brigham Young University, for example, the Fall trimester (informally still called ‘semester’) operates from September through December; the Winter trimester runs from January through April; and the spring-summer trimester operates from May through August, as two half-trimesters. Most spring-summer classes either meet double-time for 7–8 weeks in May and June or double-time/double-plus-time for 6–8 weeks in July and August (with summer half-term classes sometimes starting in the last week of June).

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