COSC - My Honest Opinion

[studyingfortests]

Your advisor sounds like mine. She'll email, I'll email back minutes later, then not hear back for weeks. I get out of office replies or just silence. I'm sure they are busy, but it was very frustrating. I'm (sort of) glad that it's not just me who has had a frustrating COSC admissions experience.

Pretty sure it is THE same advisor.  By contrast, when they switched me to someone else, responses were often within an hour, never more than a day.  One of many reasons why I became really disappointed with COSC and ended up at TESU.

[SteveFoerster]

Your advisor sounds like mine. She'll email, I'll email back minutes later, then not hear back for weeks. I get out of office replies or just silence. I'm sure they are busy, but it was very frustrating. I'm (sort of) glad that it's not just me who has had a frustrating COSC admissions experience.

Pretty sure it is THE same advisor.  By contrast, when they switched me to someone else, responses were often within an hour, never more than a day.  One of many reasons why I became really disappointed with COSC and ended up at TESU.

That's interesting. I can understand why the first advisor was frustrating, but if they reassigned you to someone more effective, why would you then leave the school? Residual disappointment, or did something else happen?

[dfrecore]

Your advisor sounds like mine. She'll email, I'll email back minutes later, then not hear back for weeks. I get out of office replies or just silence. I'm sure they are busy, but it was very frustrating. I'm (sort of) glad that it's not just me who has had a frustrating COSC admissions experience.

Pretty sure it is THE same advisor.  By contrast, when they switched me to someone else, responses were often within an hour, never more than a day.  One of many reasons why I became really disappointed with COSC and ended up at TESU.

I find this quite hilarious, as TESU has notoriously terrible customer service; it's been bad since I've been on this forum, so more than 10 years.  Hasn't gotten better in all that time.

[Skirtlet]

I'd recommend Sophia! I did 22 credits on Sophia and transferred them to COSC. It doesn't get any better than Sophia.

Your advisor sounds like mine. She'll email, I'll email back minutes later, then not hear back for weeks. I get out of office replies or just silence. I'm sure they are busy, but it was very frustrating. I'm (sort of) glad that it's not just me who has had a frustrating COSC admissions experience.

Pretty sure it is THE same advisor.  By contrast, when they switched me to someone else, responses were often within an hour, never more than a day.  One of many reasons why I became really disappointed with COSC and ended up at TESU.

I bet we did have the same advisor. I don't mind waiting for replies, but she also didn't seem to grasp anything I was saying. She kept pushing me towards one AA/BA degree when I had said I was only interested in an AA right now. I had to go back and re-fill out forms to change back to the degree I applied to after she changed it on her own. Even then, she kept trying to push me to do a longer combined program and I kept having to tell her, over and over again, I didn't want a BA there... only an AA. The transfer credit process was also just painful.... they wouldn't start it without AP transcripts, which is fine, but I also kept having to inquire for months to finally see my results.

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COSC would be one of my last resort schools personally. They accept a lot of transfer credits, but not as many as some schools. I applied for an associate last June. COSC is incredibly slow. I applied in June and didn't have a transfer credit report for many months. I would still have to take 17 credits at COSC- even though I have an ungodly amount of credits. For some reason, they accepted nothing from sophia.org for me, even though my sophia.org grades are all A's. Interacting with COSC advisors is much like talking to a brick wall- not as bad as University of the People, but far worse than any random local community college or open enrollment school I've ever interacted with. Financial aid doesn't happen until after advising... and advising can take many, many months. I had to send AP transcripts from many years ago before they would be start my transfer credit report. That's fine, but I wish they would have told me before I had already waited for them for months. I should've sent them, sure, but COSC was still insanely slow. I had already applied to and graduated from Pierpont CTC before COSC was even done evaluating my credits lol.

What courses at Sophia.org did you take and what 17 credits besides the corner/cap did they say you need? They are partnered with Sophia so if they state you are missing specific Gen Ed courses you can have them reassess. They KNOW what they are doing and they are trying to force people to take more units with them.

I need to pull my old COSC evaluation and look at this. I took about 30 credits at Sophia. At least one of the COSC requirements was a gen ed science class, of which I should have had enough science credits from sophia and my old college.

[studyingfortests]

That's interesting. I can understand why the first advisor was frustrating, but if they reassigned you to someone more effective, why would you then leave the school? Residual disappointment, or did something else happen?

Well, quite frankly, I would have needed a whole lot more coursework, including courses I didn't want to have to take, at COSC than at Edison. If I'd gone with COSC, I would still be finishing coursework.  I finished with Edison in September.

To add to that, the fact they wouldn't accept things like CSMLearn (at least, not as a math course), required a lab science, and had a bunch of other picky requirements... I just got a much better feeling from TESU.

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I find this quite hilarious, as TESU has notoriously terrible customer service; it's been bad since I've been on this forum, so more than 10 years.  Hasn't gotten better in all that time.

Honestly, I had heard the same thing from everyone.  But I found them very responsive and helpful. 

I did learn the following worked for me (mostly based on input from here):

1. Find one advisor and always address emails to that advisor.  Don Stoltz was recommended, and he's the only one I spoke with or emailed to. Quick, responsive, accurate, and helpful in every way.

2. Never rely on anything you get if you call and reach their worthless third-party call center.  I think it's a contracted thing with some academic support company.  Everyone's nice, but they are utterly unhelpful and give terrible advice.

3. Be gently persistent and patient. I did this with financial aid and they were super helpful.

With the above said, I never had a situation where I did not feel my needs were addressed promptly and accurately.  I had heard all of the things about terrible customer service, but honestly, they were far better (for me) than COSC.  And had I not been persistent and gotten past the salesy guy at Excelsior, they would have been awful also.  But once i got to an actual advisor, she was super helpful and actually encourage me to go to whatever school was the best for me.   So Edision was first in meeting my needs, Excelsior second, and COSC a distant third.

[SteveFoerster]

Well, quite frankly, I would have needed a whole lot more coursework, including courses I didn't want to have to take, at COSC than at Edison. If I'd gone with COSC, I would still be finishing coursework.  I finished with Edison in September.

To add to that, the fact they wouldn't accept things like CSMLearn (at least, not as a math course), required a lab science, and had a bunch of other picky requirements... I just got a much better feeling from TESU.

Understood, and I appreciate the candor!