As I started looking for colleges for my son, I stumbled across something I hadn’t heard of before, “January Term.” The January term is the “1” in the “4-1-4” calendar. And the opportunities offered by January terms means that you should pay attention to a college’s calendar.
January terms offer students the chance to focus on just one thing for a month. Students can take a class in a subject area that wouldn’t normally study. Since the class is only for a month and is the only class the student is taking, they can be off campus as needed. The January Term provides a study abroad alternative for those who don’t want to or can’t spend a year or a semester abroad.
Depending on the college, students aren’t limited to just courses offered through their school. Some colleges participate in an exchange program that allow students to take a January Term course at any school without paying any additional tuition.
January Terms aren’t just for courses. They provide students with the ability to complete mini-internships, job-shadow, or participate in some other career building activity. They can be an amazing opportunity.
And while I may have seen the phrase “January Term” in the results from college search engines, it wasn’t until I started visiting the websites (and an outstanding presentation by Austin College) that I really understood what it meant.
This is just one example of why you should visit college websites when creating college lists. There are plenty of other reasons as well which you read about in:
Creating College Lists: Your Guide to Using College Websites to Pay Less for a Better Education
As a bonus, everyone who downloads the book will also get a copy of The Scholarship Toolkit which includes:
- Ratings of 16 major scholarship search websites
- Overview of 7 websites with lists of scholarships
- Listing of resources to organize and track scholarship applications
- 46 often overlooked state websites for scholarships
- Information on how to apply for scholarships including checklists