11-21-2023, 07:21 PM
I'm posting this in hopes of helping others that come after me!
I just completed the UMPI Bachelor of Applied Science degree with a 4.0 GPA and Summa Cum Laude. I started with zero college credit. Following the advice and degree plans here, I built up 141 credits, all from online sources, picked up the Pierpont BOG Associates along the way, then transferred them to UMPI.
Taking several of the Google courses as well as the free Teex cybersecurity courses along with the technical courses at Sophia gave me enough technical credits to be accepted into the BAS program. I decided to go for the BAS vs. BLS primarily because I like the way the degree name sounds better.
Now that I'm done, I'm seriously considering the Masters of Organizational Leadership (MAOL) at UMPI as well.
My general takeaways from the experience:
UMPI is a ton of writing. There are no more exams for the most part, so all of your finals will be 1,000 - 3,000 word essays or detailed PowerPoint projects. The professors are generally great and very kind and truly want to help you succeed. There are a couple of professors that people consistently don't like, but luckily I didn't have them and even those that do manage to survive and pass the class. The professors will give you feedback on your milestone and draft final submissions. LISTEN TO THEM. It doesn't matter if you agree with them or think they're wrong. They're the gods of their courses and if you implement the suggestions they give you, you are very likely going to get an A on your final.
The big surprise for me what how much taking English Comp 1 and 2 at UMPI helped me. I'd recommend people do take them at UMPI and plan on taking them first. You'll learn how to properly use APA formatting and citations and it'll teach you everything you need to know on how to research scholarly sources for the papers you'll have to write in all of your other UMPI courses.
Download this APA format Template and use it for all of your papers. I had very few formatting complaints from my professors with it. https://library.olivet.edu/help/citation...te_ug.docx
Use citation generators like Mybib.com not only for good citation formatting, but also as a search engine. You can use it as a search engine for scholarly sources by adding a citation and choosing Journal, then typing in keywords for the topic you're writing about and it will spit out pages of potential sources that contain those keywords.
When you're doing your citation hunting, make sure you sign into the UMPI library site and launch Google scholar from there. You will get many more results and a lot more of them will be accessible that way. Search for sources in Mybib.com then copy and past the article name or DOI number into Google Scholar launched from UMPI and you'll be golden.
Join the unofficial Discord channel for students. There's a ton of good information there that people have shared and it's searchable.
When you hit a wall with a class (and you most likely will), don't let it mentally shut you down. Remind yourself that hundreds of others have gotten through the class and so will you. Break the assignment down into bite sized pieces and keep moving forward. Even slow progress is way better than no progress. Ask your peers for help here and on Discord, ask the professors for help via email or schedule a zoom call with them. They genuinely want you to succeed and will help!
So here I am. About a year since I started this journey while working full time and parenting the rest of the time having started with exactly zero college credit, I now have Associates and Bachelors degrees and am investigating grad school for a Masters. Good lord, I never thought this would happen for me.
Thank you so much to the mods here, everyone that came before me and shared their paths and secrets to success. You're the ones that brought me to this point and I'll be forever grateful. If anyone has any questions I can help with, feel free to DM me or reply to this thread.
Onward!
I just completed the UMPI Bachelor of Applied Science degree with a 4.0 GPA and Summa Cum Laude. I started with zero college credit. Following the advice and degree plans here, I built up 141 credits, all from online sources, picked up the Pierpont BOG Associates along the way, then transferred them to UMPI.
Taking several of the Google courses as well as the free Teex cybersecurity courses along with the technical courses at Sophia gave me enough technical credits to be accepted into the BAS program. I decided to go for the BAS vs. BLS primarily because I like the way the degree name sounds better.
Now that I'm done, I'm seriously considering the Masters of Organizational Leadership (MAOL) at UMPI as well.
My general takeaways from the experience:
UMPI is a ton of writing. There are no more exams for the most part, so all of your finals will be 1,000 - 3,000 word essays or detailed PowerPoint projects. The professors are generally great and very kind and truly want to help you succeed. There are a couple of professors that people consistently don't like, but luckily I didn't have them and even those that do manage to survive and pass the class. The professors will give you feedback on your milestone and draft final submissions. LISTEN TO THEM. It doesn't matter if you agree with them or think they're wrong. They're the gods of their courses and if you implement the suggestions they give you, you are very likely going to get an A on your final.
The big surprise for me what how much taking English Comp 1 and 2 at UMPI helped me. I'd recommend people do take them at UMPI and plan on taking them first. You'll learn how to properly use APA formatting and citations and it'll teach you everything you need to know on how to research scholarly sources for the papers you'll have to write in all of your other UMPI courses.
Download this APA format Template and use it for all of your papers. I had very few formatting complaints from my professors with it. https://library.olivet.edu/help/citation...te_ug.docx
Use citation generators like Mybib.com not only for good citation formatting, but also as a search engine. You can use it as a search engine for scholarly sources by adding a citation and choosing Journal, then typing in keywords for the topic you're writing about and it will spit out pages of potential sources that contain those keywords.
When you're doing your citation hunting, make sure you sign into the UMPI library site and launch Google scholar from there. You will get many more results and a lot more of them will be accessible that way. Search for sources in Mybib.com then copy and past the article name or DOI number into Google Scholar launched from UMPI and you'll be golden.
Join the unofficial Discord channel for students. There's a ton of good information there that people have shared and it's searchable.
When you hit a wall with a class (and you most likely will), don't let it mentally shut you down. Remind yourself that hundreds of others have gotten through the class and so will you. Break the assignment down into bite sized pieces and keep moving forward. Even slow progress is way better than no progress. Ask your peers for help here and on Discord, ask the professors for help via email or schedule a zoom call with them. They genuinely want you to succeed and will help!
So here I am. About a year since I started this journey while working full time and parenting the rest of the time having started with exactly zero college credit, I now have Associates and Bachelors degrees and am investigating grad school for a Masters. Good lord, I never thought this would happen for me.
Thank you so much to the mods here, everyone that came before me and shared their paths and secrets to success. You're the ones that brought me to this point and I'll be forever grateful. If anyone has any questions I can help with, feel free to DM me or reply to this thread.
Onward!
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