Has anyone taken a lot of actual classes with any of the Big 3 in addition to testing

[LOC4ME]

I was just wondering if anyone has. I'm looking at very competitive grad schools for my field and the grad schools I'm looking into don't have a problem with testing out, but they want at least a portion of your grades to be from actual classes. More specifically, the upper level classes.

So, I'm thinking that I will actually take the major portion of my major at Excelsior and still test out of the majority of the degree.

It will cost a little more and take a little longer, but I'm trying to look at the big picture and use my degree to my advantage.

If you did take actual classes, how was your experience and how much time a week did you usually spend on your classes? Thanks for any input/advice.

[mm1988]

Depending on your major, you might be able to take Excelsior exams that meet the degree requirements. I believe the Excelsior exams give you a letter grade. Also, I think some of the DANTES exams give you a letter grade as well. However, I could be wrong, so make sure you ask an advisor.

[Yenisei]

You might want to mention what your undergrad major is and also your planned area of study for grad school.

[marianne202]

I took 7 actual classes to fulfill the requirement for my BSHS at Excelsior. I wasn't impressed with the quality of their online courses, but I guess since I teach online classes I'm more critical than most. Some of their instructors were horrible with little or no experience in the subject areas. The instructors also didn't know the course content since they have no input in the course creation. The course content has lots of errors as well.

The courses had a lot of busy work such as weekly discussion board postings and responses along with reading and writing assignments. I would say to allow yourself about 5 - 8 hours a week. I also took several of their exams for my degrees with them. You can see the exams I have taken in my signature. I will warn you that I had to wait almost 8 months for them to offer a class I needed to graduate, as they kept canceling it. I had to take it along with my Capstone class, so I had to get permission to take them all together, then the capstone used texts that the courses no longer used, it was a mess to say the least. I'm hoping that have improved things in the last year since quite a few of us gave negative feedback. I was accepted into all the grad schools that I applied to and I have a friend from the program that was accepted into an MBA program. Good luck!

[rebel100]

I have taken six classes at Colorado State University Pueblo for my degree at COSC and just transferred them back. They are a lot cheaper for me than the classes as COSC would have been, plus there is a great selection. Might be worth looking into them or maybe BYU to fulfill your requiremements. I have found the classes to be acceptably rigorous while still remaining very doable.

I reviewed the first three courses on here somewhere if you do a search.

Good Luck,

Reb

[bricabrac]

At TESC I took eight courses and enjoyed the experience. I would take two courses a semester and supplement it with 1-3 tests per month or alternate online courses(PF/SL). The amount of time spent per week differs on the course. I had two 100 level courses that took more time than the UL.

Guided study - spent approx 3-4 hrs a week - I would read text and write assignment at the same time. Online - probably 3-5 hrs a week - to research material, write and respond to discussion forum posts and every other week prepare a written assignment (in lieu of WAs some courses have a chapter quiz due each week). Some may have a separate bank of quizzes or a 8-15pg case analysis/project report. Preparing for midterm and finals was intense.

Good luck!

[peace123]

I took 5 online classes through Excelsior. I feel I learned information that was on par with courses I took at brick and mortar schools and the discussion boards made me feel like I was connected with the other students taking the course. I would say I averaged 6-8 hours a week ( except Information Literacy which I finished in a day or two) , and 9-10 hours a week for a few upper level classes that were more writing intensive, .

I feel the price of their courses is a bit high though. I took the courses because three were fully reimbursed by my employer and two were paid for by scholarships received.


Since I took 12 credit hours from them during my enrollment I was able to take advantage of the reduced tuition through their partnership agreement with *POAG which helped reduce some of my other fees too.

* Peace Officers Association of Georgia - excelsior.edu

[valsacar]

I've taken full time (2-3 at EC + 1 at UMUC) courses for the last 2 years. I mainly did it because I have the Post 9/11 GI Bill and wanted to get the housing money!

Most of the classes haven't been that hard, both my physical ones (at UMUC) and my online ones at EC. I had done online courses at UMUC a while back, I find the EC ones to be a bit easier as (with a few exceptions) they let you know up front what you're doing each week so you can work ahead (UMUC tried to keep it more like a physical class, which IMO defeats the whole purpose of taking online courses).

Most of my professors at EC have been fairly knowledgeable. Only issues I've had was one professor that had strange ideas about what APA format is (especially what an abstract is), and the absolute worst was Physics... didn't get graded assignments for a month (on a 2 month course, so took a midterm with no feedback). I (and many other students) complained to the school and things got straightened out pretty quick.

On the good side, I just started a Computer Forensics course with them (one of my last, December and I'm done!). The professor has a pretty impressive background, including authoring/co-authoring over 40 computer/IT related books.

I think overall the experience has been good, as even in B&M schools you sometimes get a crappy professor (and in 2 years of full time study, I've only had one really bad one and one that I just had to adjust to what he wanted, material of the course was fine). I have seen a few mistakes in some of the coursework, specifically quizes that have the wrong answer (or multiple right answers). Every professor has been great with those problems, I just inform them that I think there is a mistake and give detailed reasons why (citing the book whenever possible). In every case they have agreed with me, corrected my grade, and notified the school to fix it for the next class.