Coopersmith??

[TorsMama]

Hi friends! I have applied to Excelsior but trying to not enroll until I am ready to take their 3 required classes in order to save money. After I finish my Sophia.org courses, I will ONLY need 24 Upper-Level credits! 

I thought I would go with Study.com but now I found Coopersmith and though a bit more expensive that SDC, they don't have papers to write apparently! SO I think I could knock them out much faster. 

Has anyone had experience with Excelsior accepting them? Which Coopersmith Upper-Level credits have you done and what did you think?! How fast were you able to take them? 

I am getting a BS in Liberal Arts and apparently can take any kind of UL classes to fulfill. I think.

[ctcarl]

I took six Coopersmith psych/counseling courses and enjoyed them.  None of them had papers or assignments, just an exam.  They're entirely self-paced, you can complete them as soon as you're confident that you know the material well enough to take the test.  Excelsior accepted them all, but I got them approved in advance.  You do have to watch out for duplication, as with any provider.

The only real downside I found to Coopersmith was that they force you to use ProctorFU, which I loathe.

If you need any UL business courses, Davar Academy has them @ 2 for $99.  They also offer some gen eds for $70-80 each, and they give you the choice of RPNow or ProctorFU for exams.  They're very similar to Coopersmith otherwise.

[rachel83az]

Having taken my first ProctorU exam, I agree with ctcarl's assessment. They are awful. Only use ProctorU if you have no other choice and/or the absolute best wired internet connection available with a separate webcam. The connection drops, the staff are not great, and it's just a terrible experience all around. I have my fingers crossed that my exam is accepted anyway but I will not be surprised if it is not. RPNow is a much MUCH nicer experience.

An investment of $75 (IIRC) to take the medical terminology TECEP would be a small price to pay to see if you really want to go through the ProctorU experience 8 more times. Personally, I'd rather write all the papers than have to go through ProctorU again.

[cecilgambe7]

Based on what i learn in this forum (not in my own experience)

EC accepts courses from DAVAR acodring with NCCRS recomendation (LL and UL).

All three "big three" universites accepted Coopersmith courses up to January 2020 where COSC stops accepting it, currently EC accept it, but i have no other information about UL and LL status of the courses, research a little before enroll in courses because sometimes Universities accepts as LL a course that is UL under provider classificaction.

I cant gives you feedback about Coopersmith being more easy as SDC, but without paper work, it is probably more easy.

I think SDC is more "safe" as they public the transfering equivalence of them courses with EC:
https://study.com/college/school/excelsior-college.html

While this does not give 100% guarantees because universities change their transfer policies all the time; i feel more safe with SDC.

Please, share with us the credits that were successfully transferred to you once you have the EC papers.

[scorpion]

I'm surprised that ProctorU has such a negative rep here. They tend to be stricter but I've used them for industry certification tests before I took any Coopersmith exams, and I've never had an issue with them. I actually preferred them to the RPNow proctors at SDC; with RPNow's delayed review, I was worried that something could go wrong and I wouldn't find out until weeks later.

I've taken the Coopersmith PSY-303 Physiological Psychology course and transferred it to TESU (my degree plan). The format was a single comprehensive exam, with around 35 multiple choice & 5 short answer questions. I did not use MyPsychLab but I did use the textbook.

I had a lot of domain knowledge going in, so I was able to finish within a couple weeks. If you're starting from scratch, I'd set aside a month to learn the material comfortably and make time for the textbook readings. Coopersmith provided an outline of expected readings, practice questions, a comprehensive powerpoint outline, and a short crash-course powerpoint and video. If you hit all of the practice questions and topics covered in the outlines, you shouldn't have any surprises on the exam.

My grades were posted within a week, but I didn't get any notification when they sent my transcript to TESU. You may need to prod them if you're in a time crunch.

[rachel83az]

I'm surprised that ProctorU has such a negative rep here. They tend to be stricter but I've used them for industry certification tests before I took any Coopersmith exams, and I've never had an issue with them.

What kind of connection do you have? Maybe if you have one of the better plans your ISP offers then you'll have fewer issues with them. Mine isn't the best but I don't have issues with Skype so this was a surprise.

[darthweezy]

I cannot comment on Excelsior taking Coopersmith classes, but I can tell you I took Coopersmith for the exact reason you mentioned. Coopersmith provides you with the study material needed and then I would cram for a few days then test. I will note that I already had some familiarity with the courses beforehand so your milage may very. They were great to work with on the questions I had and I enjoyed their format very much.

[Lacedonia4]

I cannot comment on Excelsior taking Coopersmith classes, but I can tell you I took Coopersmith for the exact reason you mentioned. Coopersmith provides you with the study material needed and then I would cram for a few days then test. I will note that I already had some familiarity with the courses beforehand so your milage may very. They were great to work with on the questions I had and I enjoyed their format very much.

I never had a problem with ProctorU and at TESU that is what they use for proctoring.

As a side note: as a newbie here in the forum initially I thought ProctorFU was another proctoring provider, I know some dislike ProctorU, but some of us are new, and get confused trying to remember all these new sites. It is funny though.

[ctcarl]

I'm surprised that ProctorU has such a negative rep here. They tend to be stricter but I've used them for industry certification tests before I took any Coopersmith exams, and I've never had an issue with them. I actually preferred them to the RPNow proctors at SDC; with RPNow's delayed review, I was worried that something could go wrong and I wouldn't find out until weeks later.

I find that to be a very reasonable concern.  That is indeed the one benefit to ProctorFU over RPNow...a live proctor can and likely will rattle your cage in an effort to address a potential violation, whereas RPNow monitoring cannot do that as it is not performed in real time.

With that said, when I am ready to take an exam, I want to take it right now, not 72 hours from now.  With RPNow, if I close a textbook at 1:00 AM and say, "I'll never be more ready than I am right this minute", I can pay my $15, dive into the exam, be done with it, and sleep like a baby.

Not so with ProctorFU.  My first attempts with that service were awful.  Their setup and configuration is considerably more complex and invasive than RPNow, and on two occasions my exams were delayed for twenty minutes or more while they assisted me with tech issues.  Apart from that, there are the scheduling concerns.

ProctorFU requires that you schedule your exams 72 hours in advance.  That's three days of nail-biting, and three nights of tossing and turning for me, with very little sleep.  Their website will explain that you can pay a $5-8 premium for a service called "Take-it-Soon", and schedule your exam between 2-72 hours in advance.  Alternately, you can pay an $8-12 premium for a service called "Take-in-Now", and schedule an exam less than two hours in advance.

The first thing I discovered was that there were often large blocks of time, and sometimes even entire days where there were no exam time slots available, and when there were slots available, they could be at inconvenient times.  The other problem were the "premium fees".  I ended up taking six exams with ProctorFU, and when I would attempt to schedule them between 2-72 hours, the $12 "Take-it-Now" fee would be placed in my cart.  Each. And. Every. Time.

I had lengthy online chats and numerous email threads with ProctorFU staff, and the result was always the same.  They would cheerfully tell me that I could avoid premium fees by scheduling 72 hours in advance, and I would say, "I don't mind paying for "Take-it-Soon", but you are charging me for "Take-it-Now"."  They would just pretend that either they couldn't tell time, or that they didn't know the difference between "Take-it-Now" and "Take-it-Soon".  It was obvious to me that they were simply taking advantage of the rush of students taking online exams on account of the lockdown, and had been instructed to simply "play dumb" if asked about it.  I found that infuriating.

FWIW, I never had a single problem with RPNow.  Just thinking about ProctorFU still makes my blood boil.

[Lacedonia4]

I cannot comment on Excelsior taking Coopersmith classes, but I can tell you I took Coopersmith for the exact reason you mentioned. Coopersmith provides you with the study material needed and then I would cram for a few days then test. I will note that I already had some familiarity with the courses beforehand so your milage may very. They were great to work with on the questions I had and I enjoyed their format very much.

I never had a problem with ProctorU and at TESU that is what they use for proctoring.

As a side note: as a newbie here in the forum initially I thought ProctorFU was another proctoring provider, I know some dislike ProctorU, but some of us are new, and get confused trying to remember all these new sites. It is funny though.

Proctoring aside, is there a comprehensive equivalency list for Coopersmith courses?

Cannot find any info anywhere, I need only English / Literature courses equivalency, but it is back and forth between Coopersmith and TESU, neither one sending a full list.