EC......UGH

[Life Long Learning]

It is strange as two-year colleges could care less, but 4-years colleges seem to think they own you!

[rachel83az]

It is strange as two-year colleges could care less, but 4-years colleges seem to think they own you!

Probably because they've gotten used to students not having any other choice. Or, at least, students thinking that they have no other choice. For every university, it seems like there are 5 community colleges. The competition is much more fierce.

[Life Long Learning]

Just the opposite.


Out of the 5,300 institutions in the USA, there are 1,626 public colleges, 1,687 private nonprofit schools, and 985 for-profit schools. 

2-year colleges, 1,528
4-year colleges, 2,832

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84

[BBryant165]

What info were you looking for?

I’m in the same boat. Got my unofficial review, about to enroll, but I’m still enrolled at my last school. I asked the person I’ve been coordinating with at EC. Haven’t heard back yet. Did you change your status at the other school?

Nope. I did leave CSU Global, but I went to UMPI. EC is not very cooperative at all. The advisors take FOREVER to respond to phone calls and emails. It's always at least a week and a half and that's the fastest I've ever had a response.

Bummer. Now I’m nervous about enrolling.

If speed is something you want from advisement, you may have a hard time with it there. I was not impressed with how long they take to do everything. I was actually enrolled and put the brakes on everything once they came back with you need to not only complete the degree requirements, but you need an additional 30 credits of upper level courses. It took almost 3 weeks to get that info after I asked again. I have no idea how this wasn't caught during admissions! I find their policies and timeliness very off putting, but it may work for you. I'm glad it worked out this way though because I would have completed a degree I didn't want. It was just the fast and easiest one to finish. It's not the degree I actually want. UMPI has the degree I actually want and I start the end of the month.

I will caveat that as an enrolled student I have received nothing but quick and efficient responses from my advisor once enrolled. Ultimately there appears to be separate teams at Excelsior, the sales and the education advisors. When I was in the process of first enrolling and waiting on my unofficial evaluation I spoke with a front-end individual, once I made it known I intended to enroll and register for classes I was quickly shuffled off to an advisor that worked my specific degree plan. My current advisor takes less than 24-48 hours to respond and always is willing to do the research for my degree plan and my requests for course approval. I think there might be a disconnect between those who answer requests for information and those who actually are the degree plan advisors for enrolled students IMO.

[ss20ts]

I’m in the same boat. Got my unofficial review, about to enroll, but I’m still enrolled at my last school. I asked the person I’ve been coordinating with at EC. Haven’t heard back yet. Did you change your status at the other school?

Nope. I did leave CSU Global, but I went to UMPI. EC is not very cooperative at all. The advisors take FOREVER to respond to phone calls and emails. It's always at least a week and a half and that's the fastest I've ever had a response.

Bummer. Now I’m nervous about enrolling.

If speed is something you want from advisement, you may have a hard time with it there. I was not impressed with how long they take to do everything. I was actually enrolled and put the brakes on everything once they came back with you need to not only complete the degree requirements, but you need an additional 30 credits of upper level courses. It took almost 3 weeks to get that info after I asked again. I have no idea how this wasn't caught during admissions! I find their policies and timeliness very off putting, but it may work for you. I'm glad it worked out this way though because I would have completed a degree I didn't want. It was just the fast and easiest one to finish. It's not the degree I actually want. UMPI has the degree I actually want and I start the end of the month.

I will caveat that as an enrolled student I have received nothing but quick and efficient responses from my advisor once enrolled. Ultimately there appears to be separate teams at Excelsior, the sales and the education advisors. When I was in the process of first enrolling and waiting on my unofficial evaluation I spoke with a front-end individual, once I made it known I intended to enroll and register for classes I was quickly shuffled off to an advisor that worked my specific degree plan. My current advisor takes less than 24-48 hours to respond and always is willing to do the research for my degree plan and my requests for course approval. I think there might be a disconnect between those who answer requests for information and those who actually are the degree plan advisors for enrolled students IMO.

I was speaking as enrolled student. I had paid for classes at EC as well. I stated I was speaking about my interactions with my academic advisor. This was loooooong after admissions. My advisor always took a minimum of a week and a half to respond to phone calls and emails. Why it takes anyone that long to respond to an email is beyond me.

[ctcarl]

I will caveat that as an enrolled student I have received nothing but quick and efficient responses from my advisor once enrolled. Ultimately there appears to be separate teams at Excelsior, the sales and the education advisors. When I was in the process of first enrolling and waiting on my unofficial evaluation I spoke with a front-end individual, once I made it known I intended to enroll and register for classes I was quickly shuffled off to an advisor that worked my specific degree plan. My current advisor takes less than 24-48 hours to respond and always is willing to do the research for my degree plan and my requests for course approval. I think there might be a disconnect between those who answer requests for information and those who actually are the degree plan advisors for enrolled students IMO.

Same here.

I've been enrolled at EC for a long time, and I've had advisors who were clearly just glorified salespeople, including one who outright lied to me about the availability of DANTES exams for civilians.  But my current advisor, a long-time EC staffer, has been nothing but responsive, helpful, and supportive.  If I had any complaints...and it's a nit-pick...it would be that when I was really picking up speed and signing up for many courses, getting specialist approval (the next level above advisor) wasn't as efficient as I wanted it to be.  I was asking for approval for five or six courses and was told, "you don't have that much credit banked yet, let's do these one or two at a time."

To their credit, once I had a substantial number of credits transcripted, that issue went away.  I think it was just a case of, "we only have so much staff time, we can't be dealing with these issues when we all know you have a year or more to go before graduation, we have students that are in the hopper for graduation and we have to take care of them first."  And to be fair, I'd never done any degree planning whatsoever up to that point.  Overall, I'm very pleased with my current advising team.

[BBryant165]

Nope. I did leave CSU Global, but I went to UMPI. EC is not very cooperative at all. The advisors take FOREVER to respond to phone calls and emails. It's always at least a week and a half and that's the fastest I've ever had a response.

Bummer. Now I’m nervous about enrolling.

If speed is something you want from advisement, you may have a hard time with it there. I was not impressed with how long they take to do everything. I was actually enrolled and put the brakes on everything once they came back with you need to not only complete the degree requirements, but you need an additional 30 credits of upper level courses. It took almost 3 weeks to get that info after I asked again. I have no idea how this wasn't caught during admissions! I find their policies and timeliness very off putting, but it may work for you. I'm glad it worked out this way though because I would have completed a degree I didn't want. It was just the fast and easiest one to finish. It's not the degree I actually want. UMPI has the degree I actually want and I start the end of the month.

I will caveat that as an enrolled student I have received nothing but quick and efficient responses from my advisor once enrolled. Ultimately there appears to be separate teams at Excelsior, the sales and the education advisors. When I was in the process of first enrolling and waiting on my unofficial evaluation I spoke with a front-end individual, once I made it known I intended to enroll and register for classes I was quickly shuffled off to an advisor that worked my specific degree plan. My current advisor takes less than 24-48 hours to respond and always is willing to do the research for my degree plan and my requests for course approval. I think there might be a disconnect between those who answer requests for information and those who actually are the degree plan advisors for enrolled students IMO.

I was speaking as enrolled student. I had paid for classes at EC as well. I stated I was speaking about my interactions with my academic advisor. This was loooooong after admissions. My advisor always took a minimum of a week and a half to respond to phone calls and emails. Why it takes anyone that long to respond to an email is beyond me.

I understand, after rereading, I see where you mentioned your enrollment status. There are not many Excelsior students active on here and I have had no complaints with them. I haven't had any experience with TESU or COSC but based on interactions with community colleges and schools like George Washington and George Mason I wouldn't consider transferring from Excelsior at all. My tuition and books are all covered by the veterans administration so I'm not sure how any of that works out, maybe I just got lucky, but I have no complaints for my advising team. Professors...that may be another story. It seems everyone has had different interactions with their team and they are either great....or absolutely horrible. It is what it is.