Where could I find a list of colleges that offer a winter semester or January term?
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: AP has had difficulty finding such a listing. I believe you’re looking for colleges still on the quarter system, where there’s a fall, winter, and spring term. Right? There are also regular semester systems where the fall semester begins at a reasonable date — say, after Labor Day — and the spring semester ends around the first of June rather than in late April. This sometimes causes the fall semester to continue after the holidays on into January. The semester versus quarter attribute is listed in some paper college directories, like Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges (Perkins and Lilly, Ref. 378.73 F495B, but they didn’t make that field searchable in the CD version, unless perhaps you’re a hacker).
I think the usual reasons to choose a college has to do with the course offerings, the price, the faculty, the student life, the location, whether your friends go there, and many other criteria. For better or worse, most students then accept whatever the term schedule is, and you may also have to accept your fate.