No, I went to a quarter based school which is not the norm.

No, this is a feature of RIT and a few other schools. Even RIT is switching to 15-week semesters this fall.

The history of this is controversial. Student Government was charged with polling the student body and making an official recommendation to President Destler on that basis. The students voted to keep 10-week quarters, but SG recommended against the popular vote. It wasn’t just their fault, of course, but this kind of thing is part of the reason I left RIT. Nothing seemed to get done, at least not right.

Believe me, as a current student, I know how it happened. This really isn't the place for this discussion.

Now I'm kind of glad for the hilarious and useless student government at my school. All they can do is burn my money on events I don't care for...

Student Government sold us out. We should have never gotten rid of Al Simone.

From my understanding (which is indeed limited), yes, give or take two-three weeks -- with the exception of summer or winter classes, which meet more frequently but for a lesser overall time period.

Still, the intensity of that course can vary, depending on the number of 'credit hours' it is worth: for example, a one credit class might meet for once a week, whereas a three credit class will meet thrice.

The Scottish University I attended in the 1980s had years made up of 3 terms of roughly 10 weeks - 9 of teaching and one of exams. A class would typically run for the whole year - so for our first year maths course there were about 6 lectures and 2 tutorials and one exam for that class at the end of the year - the class exams during the year not actually counting for anything. We probably had about ~30 hours of timetabled lectures and tutorials a week - which actually got less as you went through the 4 year course but the overall workload incread a lot - although you were always left to decide how much you wanted to work (in my final year I did a lot of 14 hour days).

Overall I thought it was great, I learned a huge amount, pushed myself really hard (mentally and physically) and had a hoot of a time socially. I don't regret it for a moment - and not just because it didn't cost me or my parents a penny!

[NB My tax payments have more than repaid the investment made in me.]

Some US universities operate on a quarter calendar (4 terms per year), while others use a semester calendar. Semester terms are roughly 5 months long. I am not familiar with any other calendar terms used in the US.

Iowa State University, where I attend, has 16 week semesters counting finals week but not spring/fall breaks. Summer semesters are shorter.

The school I'm at does 10 week quarters, but I think the typical university uses semesters these days, which would obviously be longer.

My classes are 15 weeks, but I've been told we have abnormally long semesters.

I don't know who told you that but they're wrong.

Semesters by definition are about 15 weeks long. Some schools (like RIT) operate on shorter quarter schedules of ~9 weeks, but this is definitely not the norm.

UW-Stevens Point, where I graduated last year, has 16-week semesters.