COSC bad rep? TESU shooting self in foot?

[dfrecore]

I can sympathize in that I also live in the Deep South - Oxford, MS specifically. Home of U of Mississippi (aka 'Ole Miss'). And frankly, I'm concerned that it raises flags that I've lived right where there's a popular state college with notoriously low admission standards - but have an online degree from some obscure place in New England absolutely nobody has ever heard of. 

Notoriously low admissions standards doesn't equal notoriously low cost.  So if anyone were to ask, I'd probably say that I went somewhere less expensive because I had to pay for it myself.  That's easy enough for people to understand.

[ReyMysterioso]

Absolutely. By U of M's own estimates on their own website, it could cost over $9,500 for one undergraduate year. By comparison, my entire degree cost less than $5000.

[topdog98]

I'm now planning on getting my degree at COSC. I don't really care about the name, just the degree. I just want to be able to put the check mark in bachelor's degree box. I was planning on TESU until they quit taking Shmoop.
Name recognition really depends on the area you are in. In my area very few people have even heard of the big 3. You might get a pat on the back and bonus points if the degree is from Tennessee Tech or UT or one of the schools with a good football program. Harvard or Yale or something like that would raise eyebrows in my parts. If you have a degree from an ivy league school and ended up here you screwed up big time somewhere.
WGU is pretty popular in my neck of the woods. So is Ashford University due to a grant and partnership they have with my employer.  They are so popular that when people hear that someone got a degree, or is working on one, from there then they aren't impressed. Everyone can get one there. They have as much prestige as the University of Phoenix.
I sat in an interview last month trying to move up. 7 people were in there questioning me. They were more impressed that I completed over 100 undergraduate credits last year than what school I was planning on using. They thought more highly of the untraditional credits than traditional ones.

This is exactly my experience. If they hear about it, people tend to be very impressed with the non-traditional way the COSC degree was obtained. COSC has a much better reaction here than say, WGU (lots of advertising for this online school here), because no one has heard of COSC unless someone happens to be from Connecticut. Mostly people don't know or care. There is definitely not a negative reaction.

[davewill]

I don't really think you can go wrong choosing TESU. It's possible you might pay a little less at one of the others, but that depends on many factors. I can easily see someone choosing them for the name, program accreditation, and ease of planning on this board.

So Dave, you think TESU is worth the extra cost for the better name and avoiding needless headaches?

I meant what I said. The value proposition depends on your finances. For me personally, the most important factors are:

A) Getting started
B) Finishing

Cost is much farther down the list. However, if your finances are tight, then the cheapest choice may well be the ONLY choice. As was mentioned above, a degree from any of these schools is going to be MUCH cheaper and faster than other routes. The most important choice is the one to get started.

[cookderosa]

I don't really think you can go wrong choosing TESU. It's possible you might pay a little less at one of the others, but that depends on many factors. I can easily see someone choosing them for the name, program accreditation, and ease of planning on this board.

So Dave, you think TESU is worth the extra cost for the better name and avoiding needless headaches?

I meant what I said. The value proposition depends on your finances. For me personally, the most important factors are:

A) Getting started
B) Finishing

Cost is much farther down the list. However, if your finances are tight, then the cheapest choice may well be the ONLY choice. As was mentioned above, a degree from any of these schools is going to be MUCH cheaper and faster than other routes. The most important choice is the one to get started.

This.
I can count on 1 hand the number of times anyone here has ever posted that they regretted finishing their RA degree at one of the big 3.

[ReyMysterioso]

I will also add that on LinkedIn, TESU has 35,000 alumni where COSC only has 5,800 alumni. It seems TESU has a bigger alumni network to network with. Whether that's worth anything or useful for your goals, I dunno. Just a factor to consider.
I hadn't considered the fact that Charter Oak is not accredited by the ACBSP or AACSB when I made my decision. In retrospect, if I thought more about that factor, it may have leaned more toward TESU.

People say it's harder to know what courses to take to fulfill the COSC requirements... but I think that may be more to do with the fact that the vast majority of people do TESU and there's just more records of degree plans on the site - what people took and where it slotted. Not as many people do COSC, so there isn't as much first-hand information. I tried to help that by putting up my complete advising sheets to de-mystify the process here: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...Transcript
I didn't use FAFSA and just paid a combination of out-of-pocket and ran stuff on a credit card. If I had it to do over again, I'd have used FAFSA loans for lower interest.

In the future, I believe I will end up getting a second bachelor's at TESU for personal reasons, because this process got me hooked on learning and degree-hacking. If you ever have any COSC-specific questions, I'll be happy to try and answer them if I can.

[sanantone]

I'm now planning on getting my degree at COSC. I don't really care about the name, just the degree. I just want to be able to put the check mark in bachelor's degree box. I was planning on TESU until they quit taking Shmoop.
Name recognition really depends on the area you are in. In my area very few people have even heard of the big 3. You might get a pat on the back and bonus points if the degree is from Tennessee Tech or UT or one of the schools with a good football program. Harvard or Yale or something like that would raise eyebrows in my parts. If you have a degree from an ivy league school and ended up here you screwed up big time somewhere.
WGU is pretty popular in my neck of the woods. So is Ashford University due to a grant and partnership they have with my employer.  They are so popular that when people hear that someone got a degree, or is working on one, from there then they aren't impressed. Everyone can get one there. They have as much prestige as the University of Phoenix.
I sat in an interview last month trying to move up. 7 people were in there questioning me. They were more impressed that I completed over 100 undergraduate credits last year than what school I was planning on using. They thought more highly of the untraditional credits than traditional ones.

This is exactly my experience. If they hear about it, people tend to be very impressed with the non-traditional way the COSC degree was obtained. COSC has a much better reaction here than say, WGU (lots of advertising for this online school here), because no one has heard of COSC unless someone happens to be from Connecticut. Mostly people don't know or care. There is definitely not a negative reaction.

Since WGU has a "campus" in Texas, we have billboards advertising WGU along major highways.

---

I will also add that on LinkedIn, TESU has 35,000 alumni where COSC only has 5,800 alumni. It seems TESU has a bigger alumni network to network with. Whether that's worth anything or useful for your goals, I dunno. Just a factor to consider.
I hadn't considered the fact that Charter Oak is not accredited by the ACBSP or AACSB when I made my decision. In retrospect, if I thought more about that factor, it may have leaned more toward TESU.

People say it's harder to know what courses to take to fulfill the COSC requirements... but I think that may be more to do with the fact that the vast majority of people do TESU and there's just more records of degree plans on the site - what people took and where it slotted. Not as many people do COSC, so there isn't as much first-hand information. I tried to help that by putting up my complete advising sheets to de-mystify the process here: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...Transcript
I didn't use FAFSA and just paid a combination of out-of-pocket and ran stuff on a credit card. If I had it to do over again, I'd have used FAFSA loans for lower interest.

In the future, I believe I will end up getting a second bachelor's at TESU for personal reasons, because this process got me hooked on learning and degree-hacking. If you ever have any COSC-specific questions, I'll be happy to try and answer them if I can.

People usually don't need AACSB or ACBSP accreditation, but it's nice to have if your state automatically recognizes AACSB/ACBSP-accredited degrees for CPA eligibility. I also came across an MBA program that requires a course-by-course evaluation if your degree wasn't accredited by AACSB or ACBSP. I've seen a handful of federal government jobs that require these accreditations, but the vast majority of federal positions don't.