Ace Credits and Master Degrees

[potato patato]

Hi guys anyone has any idea about i'm currently doing my gen eds at sophia and i will continue my education in europe with a B&M university for masters degree. But some people says that many college won't accept those sophia credits and you are gonna retake them. Is that true? Those credits looks like a "CR" on my transcript. Couldn't i do my masters with that transcript? What should i do? Thanks in advance. I'm a Cs Major student btw.

[Merlin]

Hi guys anyone has any idea about i'm currently doing my gen eds at sophia and i will continue my education in europe with a B&M university for masters degree. But some people says that many college won't accept those sophia credits and you are gonna retake them. Is that true? Those credits looks like a "CR" on my transcript. Couldn't i do my masters with that transcript? What should i do? Thanks in advance. I'm a Cs Major student btw.

ACE credits, in general, are not accepted in a lot of schools. Grad schools in particular are less likely to accept them as being equivalent to traditional courses if they represent prerequisites or are part of the core courses required for GPA calculation or admittance into a competitive degree program.

If you think you'll want to apply to a competitive graduate degree program after completing your bachelor's degree, you should investigate what the requirements are at your target school(s). Many competitive grad schools require a minimum GPA and/or minimum grades in prerequisite courses for admittance.

All schools have their own method for how they calculate incoming GPA, but the common methods include looking at the most recent (highest level) 60 credits in your degree or looking at the prerequisite courses required for entrance to the degree and calculating GPA from there. For this purpose, ACE courses will likely be ignored for GPA purposes and may limit your options for admittance. At best they may provisionally admit you pending completion of "leveling courses" (which means retaking the undergrad courses from them and basing GPA off those courses). Alternatively, they may require placement exams to test your programming and math skills for entry if you don't meet the entry prerequisites.

So for a CS degree, you'll want to make sure that your core CS courses come from an RA school if you want them considered for entry. Ideally, you'll also want them to come with high grades, or at least not poor grades. So you don't want to take all your core CS courses from ACE providers, as that is likely going to make it difficult for your grad school application to be considered (at least not without significant support), and you may end up having to retake many, most, or all of them anyway at full tuition prices from your target school.

When I say core CS courses, I'm referring to foundational CS topics like Calculus, Linear Algebra, Discrete Math, Statistics/Probability, Data Structures & Algorithms, Object-Oriented Design, Programming Languages, Computer Architecture, Operating Systems, etc. There isn't a definitive list since each school or degree program will have their list of prerequisites, or may just have general topics that need to be represented on your transcript.

If you're looking at less competitive schools, they may waive specific course prerequisites if you have a bachelor's in CS or a related degree. That is the best-case scenario if most of your core CS courses come from ACE providers.

[potato patato]

Hi guys anyone has any idea about i'm currently doing my gen eds at sophia and i will continue my education in europe with a B&M university for masters degree. But some people says that many college won't accept those sophia credits and you are gonna retake them. Is that true? Those credits looks like a "CR" on my transcript. Couldn't i do my masters with that transcript? What should i do? Thanks in advance. I'm a Cs Major student btw.

ACE credits, in general, are not accepted in a lot of schools. Grad schools in particular are less likely to accept them as being equivalent to traditional courses if they represent prerequisites or are part of the core courses required for GPA calculation or admittance into a competitive degree program.

If you think you'll want to apply to a competitive graduate degree program after completing your bachelor's degree, you should investigate what the requirements are at your target school(s). Many competitive grad schools require a minimum GPA and/or minimum grades in prerequisite courses for admittance.

All schools have their own method for how they calculate incoming GPA, but the common methods include looking at the most recent (highest level) 60 credits in your degree or looking at the prerequisite courses required for entrance to the degree and calculating GPA from there. For this purpose, ACE courses will likely be ignored for GPA purposes and may limit your options for admittance. At best they may provisionally admit you pending completion of "leveling courses" (which means retaking the undergrad courses from them and basing GPA off those courses). Alternatively, they may require placement exams to test your programming and math skills for entry if you don't meet the entry prerequisites.

So for a CS degree, you'll want to make sure that your core CS courses come from an RA school if you want them considered for entry. Ideally, you'll also want them to come with high grades, or at least not poor grades. So you don't want to take all your core CS courses from ACE providers, as that is likely going to make it difficult for your grad school application to be considered (at least not without significant support), and you may end up having to retake many, most, or all of them anyway at full tuition prices from your target school.

When I say core CS courses, I'm referring to foundational CS topics like Calculus, Linear Algebra, Discrete Math, Statistics/Probability, Data Structures & Algorithms, Object-Oriented Design, Programming Languages, Computer Architecture, Operating Systems, etc. There isn't a definitive list since each school or degree program will have their list of prerequisites, or may just have general topics that need to be represented on your transcript.

If you're looking at less competitive schools, they may waive specific course prerequisites if you have a bachelor's in CS or a related degree. That is the best-case scenario if most of your core CS courses come from ACE providers.

Thank you for your long and informative reply Merlin.
I'm trying to keep my GPA high but i already transferred 49 ECTS credits to my school and doing my Gen eds and some of my math courses with ACE. RA credits are so expensive and i can't afford them. My budget is very limited. It is $12000 maximum. I will complete my core courses from my regional university with a letter grade.
But was worrying about masters. Maybe i could apply for Gatech's OMCS masters but don't want to retake those ACE courses again.

[Merlin]

I'm trying to keep my GPA high but i already transferred 49 ECTS credits to my school and doing my Gen eds and some of my math courses with ACE. RA credits are so expensive and i can't afford them. My budget is very limited. It is $12000 maximum. I will complete my core courses from my regional university with a letter grade.

Completing your upper-level math and CS core curriculum from your university is the best bet if you want to get into a good CS master's program.

Given your limited budget, you may wish to investigate options for financial aid, grants, and scholarships. If you're working, you may also be able to get your employer to pay for part of it as well. I don't know about companies in Europe, but in the US, any business can provide up to $5,250 per year in tax-deductible educational assistance to each employee. So that is an option for some people.

You should also consider that these courses don't have to come from a big-name university or even a 4-year college. You can take them from any degree-granting college, even a community college or junior college (or the equivalent in Europe). As long as the school is regionally accredited (or the foreign credits are evaluated as comparative) then you're okay. So if you can take the math & CS courses from a less prestigious college and save yourself some money, then go for it. I know there are places in Europe where a college education is free or greatly subsidized, so look for those schools.

But was worrying about masters. Maybe i could apply for Gatech's OMCS masters but don't want to retake those ACE courses again.

The OMSCS seems to be pretty flexible on entry requirements. While they prefer students with a traditional bachelor's degree in CS (or a related stem degree like math, computer engineering, or electrical engineering), they will accept students with any degree as long as they have a 3.0 or better GPA and have the requisite academic background (as proven by having completed a decent number of core CS courses and earning a B or better in each of them). Even if you have a CS degree, they are still going to be looking at the grades you received in those core courses to judge your ability to succeed in their program.

To minimize your costs, you can complete all your General Education courses and any elective or other courses that are not directly related to a CS degree using ACE credits without any issue at GA Tech. But you'll at least want to take as many of the following as you can from your current college to give you the best shot at being accepted: Calculus (I/II/III), Discrete Math, DS&A, Computer Architecture, Operating Systems, and any programming languages you're interested in.

As long as you didn't already take most of those courses from ACE sources you should still be okay and not require taking the courses again. The idea is to take as many of them as you can from a proper college or university so you'll look good when they review your application. You want to have as few questionable areas as possible to avoid a denial. But this doesn't mean there isn't wiggle room.

[potato patato]

Thank you Merlin for your explanations. Things getting more clear now. I just took a greek philosophers and a college algebra course yet from sophia and i will take hist 1/ hist 2 and eng comp1 / eng comp 2 courses too. Also i was planning to take my precalculus and some of my upper level courses from saylor, straighterline and study.com. It is better to look for an RA options then for those courses. And lastly, my foreign credits looks like a "T" letter grade on my transcript. Could be that a problem when applying for a masters? It does not effect my total GPA. Thanks in advance.

[Merlin]

Also i was planning to take my precalculus and some of my upper level courses from saylor, straighterline and study.com. It is better to look for an RA options then for those courses.

You can take any of your non-CS courses from ACE, whether they are upper-level or not. Precalculus is generally not considered part of the core CS courses, but it prepares you for the Calculus series which is generally considered part of the CS curriculum. So. you can take Precalculus from Saylor if you wish. Just be aware that it may not properly prepare you for entry into a Calculus course aimed at CS or engineering majors. Your university may even require you to take their precalc course if they don't accept ACE.

And lastly, my foreign credits looks like a "T" letter grade on my transcript. Could be that a problem when applying for a masters? It does not effect my total GPA. Thanks in advance.

As long as the grad school doesn't have any issue with your foreign credits it should be fine. "T" usually means transfer and transfer credits don't always need grades associated with them. As long as the original transcripts show a letter grade that can be used for GPA purposes, it won't matter.

[Pats20]

I wonder about regular “not top tier” schools like for example
Tesu , snhu, old dominion , liberty , ect ect. Does it matter if you’ve completed your undergrad with all study.com and the likes ? Let’s say your gre scores are acceptable ( not outstanding but acceptable ) ?

[Merlin]

I wonder about regular “not top tier” schools like for example
Tesu , snhu, old dominion , liberty , ect ect. Does it matter if you’ve completed your undergrad with all study.com and the likes ? Let’s say your gre scores are acceptable ( not outstanding but acceptable ) ?

As I mentioned above, less competitive schools generally aren't as strict about meeting entrance requirements. In many cases, they may only require that the incoming student have a bachelor's degree. In other cases, if your undergrad degree is in the same field as the master's program, then that is all they will require. For those schools, they may not look at the classes you took in your undergrad degree at all and may have much lower GPA expectations (if any at all).

If the university you're applying to accepts ACE credits at the undergrad level, then this is likely to be far less of a big deal. I wouldn't worry about it at all at places like TESU since they are not competitive entry and super flexible about incoming credits anyway.

My comments above are really only meant for people who are interested in applying to competitive entry graduate degree programs.