Amberton has recanted...half way at least...

[taylor]

Amberton - $5400 if 12 credits are transferred, and the MA in Professional Development sounds better than the MA in Liberal Studies... I think anyway...

Between those 2 choices I would go with Amberton as well. In my case I will have an AA and a BA in Liberal Arts so the MA in Professional Development sounds much better to me as well. Plus the fact you can add 1 or 2 Graduate certificates on top of that is like a Xmas present.

[TMW2010]

Norema -
I'm curious, how much were the books/software for the VESI courses above the credit cost of the course?

Thanks much
-T

[norema]

There weren't any separate books or software to buy. It is all included in the purchase price. If you pay by credit card, they can will email you the course, and you could start it the same day. You don't have to pay by credit card though, and if you prefer they could send the course on Cd's instead. Then you would have up to 6 months to finish. What I took advantage of was finish as soon as 2 weeks. It was a bit to do, but I did both courses within that time. The courses are pretty easy though. Here is the link for VESi courses that are linked with Morningside prices.

Morningside College Continuing Education for Teachers - Distance Learning for Teachers - Professional Development for Teachers

[TMW2010]

There weren't any separate books or software to buy. It is all included in the purchase price. If you pay by credit card, they can will email you the course, and you could start it the same day. You don't have to pay by credit card though, and if you prefer they could send the course on Cd's instead. Then you would have up to 6 months to finish. What I took advantage of was finish as soon as 2 weeks. It was a bit to do, but I did both courses within that time. The courses are pretty easy though. Here is the link for VESi courses that are linked with Morningside prices.

Morningside College Continuing Education for Teachers - Distance Learning for Teachers - Professional Development for Teachers

Sweet, thanks... Options Options Options....

[pilot]

They are allowing their graduate certificates to be included in their degrees. The one degree that I find that it really works with is the Professional Development degree, because 30 out of 36 credits can be made up of ANY graduate course. They accept 12 transfer credits, which is what I thought I was able to transfer. They allow 9 graduate credits per term to be taken, unless you come down to only have 12 credits left. This is the case for me. Well, with them transferring 6 credits instead, all I have to do was 30 credits. I technically finished my Bachelors degree with Excelsior in October. I completed 9 credits fall semester that began in September and ended in November. That was a 10 week term. I am doing 9 more credits right now that ends in a couple of weeks. This term was an 8 week term. Then I will be taking 12 credits in March which is a 10 week term that will end May 21st. So from receiving my Bachelors in October to my Masters in May is 7 months. I initially didn't realize this until someone pointed it out to me.

My advise to anyone looking to create their own Masters degree is to go with Ambertons MA in Professional Development degree. You can INCLUDE TWO graduate certificates within the degree, being 12 credits each. Although if 12 credits are transferred then only one graduate certificate can be done. They have 2 required courses that take up 6 credits. This would give you 3 in 1 or 2 in 1. However, first make sure that the conferral date is before the date that you take any transferable graduate courses. I HIGHLY suggest to transfer the 12 graduate credits that they allow. To save you TREMENDOUSLY in time and cost. I would take courses from VESi and send them to Morningside College. They are very cheap and can be completed in 2 weeks.

Hello Norema
Thank you very much for sharing your experience; I am planning to do exactly the same 12 Graduate credits through VESI and then transfer to Amberton:
I have a couple questions & would really appreciate your help...

1) You mentioned that the VESI courses can be done in 2 weeks; can you please expand on that; Also are these pass/fail courses or do they transfer with a grade at amberton? and does Amberton Charge anything to have them transfered?

2) Can you please share your experience with Amberton? How are the classes structured? I understand that everything is proctorless does that mean that there are no exams and just papers to write? How intensive/demanding are the classes? can I take two classes with a full time Job and a family or shall I stick with one class..

Thank you very much & all the best

[norema]

Regarding Amberton: I'm sorry to not have responded sooner, I haven't been on the forum in quite some time. However, if you still are seeking answers I will try and remember.

Now, I mentioned that VESi courses can be done in 2 weeks. That is with great attention to them. There was some writing, I believe, most of the work was a matter of answering questions to the online text. Very easy. When I transferred the courses to Morningside College they applied a letter grade to the courses. I'm not sure if Amberton would have accepted the courses transferred from VESi directly or not. They aren't on the list of colleges accepting VESi listed though. I just went with the cheapest school that would transfer graduate credits, and one of them was Morningside.

At Amberton once you find out exactly what the professor requires out of you, as with any other teacher, you were golden. The only problem was that you had to figure it out quick. Most of my classes had very few assignments to grade, sometimes only 4 assignments for the entire class, so messing up big time on the first one could hinder your final grade. Therefore, asking even the menial question can save you. I really did like most of my classes, as well as the professors. A few classes had test, they weren't proctored at all, just emailed to you at a certain time with an aloted period of time to email it back. Most of the classes were just based on papers being written. The classes to me weren't intensive, or demanding because you had just a few assignments. Each assignment just might take you a bit of time to finish. Most of my classes had assignments stretched out over 2 weeks or more sometimes. I think you ought to be able to take 2 classes at a time. Just make sure you look at the online syllabus first before figuring out which ones. They could help you determine how many to take. You never know you might even want to take 3 courses at a time. Although the professors have changed them before after you were enrolled, in my case it was for the good though. By changing a 20 page research paper to a 10 page paper instead.

Well, I hope this helped. Now that I think about it I really enjoyed my journey, and I hope when you look back upon yours, you can say the same thing. I actually miss the roller coaster ride I was on for 23 years, but I must move on and start anew.

Norma

[barcotta]

Well, I waited a couple of months and decided to push the issue again. I explained again to an adviser that Excelsior takes 2 months to confer their degrees, and that those courses were done after I was done with completing my requirements for the Bachelors degree. The adviser told me to have someone at Excelsior send a letter explaining all of that and to indicate when I was actually done with the degree. Well, after I had my Excelsior adviser send a letter explaining that I was done with my degree 2 months before the conferred date. The Amberton adviser finally allowed those 6 credits to transfer.... Whew!!! Now I can graduate in 7 months time as I wanted to on May 21st.

That's a great result and a great way to handle situations like that. I frequently advise people at my office to wait and try again as opposed to getting all worked up when you don't get the answer/result you are looking for. While you are waiting, you may think of another approach, or get some advice, or the people at the other end might leave or maybe they were just having a bad day and you'll get a different result based on the same set of facts. You can often save years of your life by simply regrouping and trying again.