Free Winter term for Sophia members, Strayer U

[jch]

Those $20 challenge exams are the real prize with the free Strayer term! Some useful and rare options there including an UL project management course and an UL CIS course : CIS375 Human Computer Interaction.

All of the CIS exams are on my list of things to attempt. Even if they don't work for my AoS, I can theoretically use them as RA gen ed electives. 

• CIS210 Systems analysis and development doesn't seem that far off for me. I'll likely attempt that some time in January
  
• CIS255 Operating Systems may be a challenge. I intend to take this after I pass the CompTIA Linux+ exam, likely sometime in early spring. At Strayer those would actually duplicate, but it's always nice to have RA credit instead of alt sources. 
  
• CIS375 Human Computer Interaction would indeed be a nice and rare UL catch. I haven't really reviewed it yet, but would like to get around to it eventually. 
  

Regarding the business courses, you reminded me of another Strayer frustration: their Sophia transfer equivalencies are nutty. One may think that being owned by the same parent company would lead to strong integration. However, my TESU evaluation was far more favorable. Taking a look at https://strayer.sophia.org/ you can see that everything except a few developmental courses has an equivalency. What is not immediately obvious is that most of the Sophia courses transfer in as a departmental or general elective that doesn't satisfy their course requirements, or is incompatible with their way of doing things. The result is that over half of my Sophia courses didn't transfer in at all! Much of the rest just filled up my gen ed electives, instead of going where I needed. An example of this can be seen with economics. TESU will take Sophia as the required econ courses for many of their degrees. For doing both courses, Strayer will award ECO100 plus a general elective. Problem is, the economics course they actually want is ECO110 and Sophia doesn't work for that. It's a similar deal with US History. The end result is that my Strayer degree plan is full of holes that are already filled at TESU. This is just another nail in the coffin for my chances of continuing at Strayer after the free term.  

Despite the general stinginess toward Sophia credits, there are a few areas where Strayer is abnormally generous. An example of this is Project Management. They bring this in as BUS375, an upper level course! Although it would duplicate, I plan to use Sophia to study for the BUS375 challenge exam in order to get real RA UL credit that will hopefully transfer.  

I plan to eventually attempt much of the ACC, BUS, CIS, ECO, FIN, and MKT exams, as they should work for various TESU BSBA requirements. Nearly all of them are UL as well, which is fantastic. I'm curious to see how difficult they will be as I move up the ladder. Will they stay in the same multiple choice format that I excel at? I'm confident that there are not any written responses required, as the challenge exam instructions state that a pass/fail result will always be provided immediately after submitting the exam. If I have time, I'll try to finish the CRJ tree as well; it looks like that will mostly satisfy the AoS for an AAS in Criminal Justice at TESU. It seems that I may be suffering from the same credit addiction as some of you. I can't just take a degree and go, I have to get ALL THE CREDITS. 

Something else on my list is BUS309, Business Ethics. I plan to use the Sophia intro to ethics course to study for this, along with a few of the relevant TEEX courses. 

Still nothing showing up anywhere for my completed challenge exams. I think I'll focus on other things for a little while, so don't expect too many more exams from me soon.  

EDIT: I remembered some additional annoying Strayer things: 

First, their registrar seems to handle credits in an "opposite" way compared to TESU. I am used to the process where TESU adds any/all accepted credits from everywhere to your transcript and then applies them to your active degree plan as part of the academic evaluation. Even if a credit isn't currently used, it's kept on there for future use. You can use the 'what-if' tool to look at adding or changing your plan. 
Strayer reverses that way of doing things. Incoming credits are immediately checked against your degree plan. If there is no place for them, they are reported as REFUSED and not added to your record. Transcripts are then generated from the degree plan. If a credit/course isn't on the degree plan, it won't show up on the transcript. I've only looked at the unofficial transcript so far, but I think the official one will be similar. I'm not sure if this just applies to transfer credits, or if all credits are this way. If the latter is true, that could be a major limitation on the use of challenge exams. In that case, you'd have to fit the exams in your selected major and/or as electives in order to get them on your transcript. Still not sure how this will all work out.  

Second, Strayer is a very "high-touch" institution when it comes to advising. Many of us are used to the way things work at TESU and the big three, where you're basically left to your own devices unless you ask for assistance. Strayer is probably much closer to a "normal" school, where staff works closely with students to guide them through their education. A contributing factor is that a significant portion of their student body are first-generation college students and don't understand how things work. Strayer handles this by providing students with a rigid plan and progression. Because of this, it's unlikely that they'll let us take the classes that we really want this term. Despite the fact that many degreeforums members have made degree planning their hobby, Strayer prefers to handle all of that for their students. 

Related to this, anyone enrolling at Strayer will want to make sure to have some specific things done before applying:

• College Algebra and English Comp I/II. Sophia works for these. Otherwise, Strayer will attempt to place you into remedial courses. If you don't have any English on your record yet, immediately take the placement exam. That will nix the english developmental course. It takes about twenty minutes and isn't proctored. You must complete Math and English ASAP. Strayer will require you to take it no later than the second term of enrollment.  
  
• A College Readiness course. Sophia's one works for this and is easy. This will take care of their Foundations of Success (FOS 100) requirement, which would typically happen during the first term. 
  
• Something that covers the COM100 Communication at work requirement. Sophia also works here. 
  
• Any other "intro to" courses that they will take, in order to go directly to what you want. Sophia's Intro to business, IT/MIS, psychology, sociology, biology, etc work. 
  

One possible way to get around the above issues may be to apply as a nondegree-seeking student with an undeclared major. This disables the planning infrastructure. You should then be able to get everything listed on your transcript without degree plan restrictions, and register for whatever you want. Financial aid is prohibited while in this status, and a student can only remain for one year before declaring a major. For those of us on the Sophia free term offer, we were naturally required to enroll as degree-seeking students. Hopefully it may be possible to change after the free term ends and then request a reevaluation of credits. I will continue to investigate.