Graduated - graduate school

[supernoms]

I graduated and I was thinking of eventually going to graduate school for a masters.  Does the study.com/sophia affect your ability to get in to schools or does it generally not matter as long as you have your degree/

[ss20ts]

ACE credits had absolutely no impact on my ability to get into grad programs. I have multiple master's degrees and grad certificates. The bachelor's degree was basically a check box.

[freeloader]

It really depends on the universities/programs to which you are applying. Many graduate programs are highly competitive (medical school, top 25 law schools, top 10 business schools, fully funded PhDs at ranked programs being a few examples); on the flip side of that, many graduate programs take virtually every applicant who meets their minimum admissions criteria. If you are wanting to pursue a degree that has competitive admissions, the university granting your degree and the presence of ACE credits on your transcript could certainly be factors that admissions reps will consider, but they will also look at your test scores (GRE, LSAT, etc), your letters of recommendation, writing sample/research proposal, work/volunteering history, and perhaps results of an interview. If you are just wanting a graduate degree, particularly if it's in a field like business or education where there are lots of options from decent universities that have near universal acceptance of qualified applications, you will have absolutely no problems. If you want to pursue a competitive degree, focus on what you can to improve your chances. Study hard and kill your standardized tests. Get relevant work or volunteer experience. Take additional courses in the field to show you are able to do high-level work. If you want to do a degree that has a major research component, like a thesis, reach out to faculty in the programs where you would like to study and discuss your interests and their willingness to potentially supervise your work.

[Jonathan Whatley]

ACE credits and similar alt-credit like AP and military training are more common than you might think, and they’re not scarlet letters that repel graduate programs per se.

There are just a few issues which may or may not be significant to you.

If you have no or very few courses overall or in major with a grade attached on your transcript, that might be a special case requiring an exception to a graduate program’s usual GPA policy. But there’s a long history of undergraduate schools where standard grading is unused or optional, and one of the largest universities in the US today is among them (WGU). You’ll have no problem getting into many credible graduate programs in this situation. It might be an issue if you’re applying for something highly competitive like ABA law school, a health profession, or fully funded on-campus grad school.

If the graduate program requires specific prerequisite courses, it might be an issue if those are alt-credit. This varies between programs. For example, I’ve seen a nursing school or two explicitly accept Sophia or Straighterline for science prerequisites. But I’ve conversely seen some other nursing schools explicitly reject them, and though I’m generally sympathetic to these providers, I don’t expect any US MD school to accept these providers for a core science prerequisite.

If the graduate program expects an academic reference, you’ll need a plan for that bearing in mind that many alt-credit courses have little or no instructor contact.

[supernoms]

Thank you all for the detailed responses. I am going to start looking into some masters programs!