Help/Recommendations needed (studying abroad)

[Jon-Jon]

Hi everyone.

Just to start off, thank you so much for this amazing resource! It’s been very helpful, especially this summary - Degree Forum Wiki. I wish I could’ve found that sooner.

I’m seeking some advice, but here’s some contextual background info. I’m a South African living in Qatar with my wife - she has a BSC which enables us to live here (you need a degree to sponsor your spouse). If she wanted to stop working, I would need a degree to be able to sponsor her… Hence, the reason I’m researching the how-to’s of getting a degree.

I haven’t officially studied, so no prior credits. From looking at the list of degrees on TESC and Excelsior, this BA in Humanities caught my attention - Thomas Edison State College: Humanities. I think I’d like to concentrate on philosophy, english/lit and music (if thats even possible?). I’m also interested in music production, but those courses are very expensive ($60 000 at Berkley, crazy).

For now I’m looking for something more general and based on my interests… Something I can do quick, at a low cost, and must be internationally accessible. Any advice here?

From what I’ve read, once you know what degree you’d like to do, you can then take those individual courses before applying with a university like TESC. Is this true?

I'm a noob, so any advice is welcome

[smf6824]

These boards typically advise you to go through the BIG 3 colleges for distance education: Charter Oak, Excelsior, and Thomas Edison. The reason they suggest this is that you can get a regionally accredited degree for a low cost by utilizing CLEP, ECE, TECEP, and DSST exams and other ACE approved sources such as TEEX courses and Straighterline courses. The other benefit to approaching college with this route is it can be done rather quickly too. There are plenty of resources and degree plans on this forum so do a bit of research: http://www.brain4weeks.com is a good resource as well. If you prefer to go through college and not test out of courses consider the college for america..... It is cheap (2500 dollars a year) and you get your degree from Southern New Hampshire University. You could also check out WGU, Patten university, and Fort Hays. If you don't care if the college is nationally accredited (which you should since you are in a foreign country: GET REGIONAL ACCREDITATION) consider new charter university or even the university of the people. Best of Luck

[bricabrac]

Welcome,

I think there are/were a few international students on the forum but the most actively vocal seems to be Saharapost, he is a TESC student. You may want to research some of his threads/posts to get an idea on his approach/methods/lessons learned.

For music courses (with prior knowledge/experience) you might want to follow the recent path set by forum member FallingWaters who with Learning Counts, an organization used to build PLA portfolio's, earned affordable upper level music credit. Final approval thread.


Most important - once you dive in, stay the course!

Good luck!

[EI2HCB]

Jon-Jon
Welcome to the forum, Sahara has been successful in amassing a number of credits while out of the country so he'll have some definite advice. There are a number of questions which need to be addressed.
Timeframe: When do you need a degree? Even overseas particularly in the middle east there are options for getting your degree quickly. There are testing centers in U.S military installations and in private schools in Switzerland and Germany. (some forum members have flown stateside and taken a week long session of tests) As an international student you'll pay higher fees in some schools. I think TESC is the most reasonable for International students.

You will need a high school diploma, If you are not American you'll need to have it evaluated to "prove" that it is indeed the equivalent of a high school diploma. If you have any British education (A levels) some can translate as college credits depending on the courses. (check out TValba or AlbaTV profile on this forum).

Courses are charged by the credit hour, usually there are 3 credit hours in a class. 120 credit hours are required for a degree. Many of us take tests as it is an inexpensive way to demonstrate mastery of a subject without paying $1000 for a 3 credit class.

You can prep by doing tests and courses with external companies before you enroll at a school. (Highly recommended if you can take CLEP or DSST tests with some help from your friends ) Then once you have a bunch of credits accumulated you can transfer them into the school of your choice which means you can pay enrollment fees only for the time it takes you to complete your degree. The only issue is that schools and advisors at colleges are changing rules every six months or so. The most recent being that TESC won't take FEMA credits and apply them to your transcript directly anymore. Someone posted this morning that this resulted in a loss of 35 credits from their degree plan. If you enroll in a school you usually can argue that the catalog /year you enrolled should apply to your degree not new rules recently instituted (as long as you maintain your enrollment) but if you aren't enrolled you haven't a leg to stand on.

You can take courses via straighterline and accumulate credits reasonable cheaply. $40 a course plus a monthly fee of $100 plus books so this can be economical if you can rapidly knock out a course per month or less.

For mathematics courses are available through ALEX

For Humanites and Communications can be taken for free through Saylor.org

Plus a little bit of research can determine if you want to travel to take CLEP / DSST in Europe or even Stateside which can help you rapidly accumulate some credits.
feel free to continue to ask questions.

Then there is Excelsior's Uexcel tests which are administered by Pearson Vue which may have locations outside of the United States.
feel free to continue to ask questions.

[AlbaTiVo]

Since you are from South Africa, have you considered the University of South Africa? They have a good reputation and prices too.

[sanantone]

I have a test out plan for humanities.
Sanantone's BA in Humanities - Degree Forum Wiki
Sanantone's General Education Options - Degree Forum Wiki

[Jon-Jon]

Thanks for the replies and info guys.

@ bricabrac, what she did with her music credits looks very interesting.

@EI2HCB - the timeframe would be less than 2 years… I can do this full-time though, so I’m keen to hit it hard.

With the high school diploma, I passed but didn’t get an exemption (wasn’t really thinking ahead), which is needed in south africa if you want to go straight to university after high school (but not if you’re older than 25). If I accumulated all the credits in courses through CLEP, straigherline etc, would my high school diploma hinder me from signing up with TESC? Or is this needed for CLEP, DSST, etc too? My initial idea was to only sign up with the university at the end of having done all the courses, to avoid the extra cost. But the changing rules thing could be a problem (could they possibly stop taking courses from CLEP, DSST, straighter line) .

Do they charge a yearly fee? I can read this up on their website.

@AlbaTiVo - Yes, I just missed the sign up date for the first semester

@sanantone - thats very helpful! Lets say I used this BA degree as my structure: Thomas Edison State College: Humanities. Would I be able to go through your Sanantone's General Education Options - Degree Forum Wiki, and pick identical (or similar) courses to the tesc page? and If I did that, got my whole plan together, could I submit that to TESC beforehand to see if it's correct? Sorry for all the questions, I'm very new at this.

More of a general question, if I did this full time, how quickly could it be done? I'm not wanting to rush, but just interested if it could be done with a year.

[EI2HCB]

Regarding the timeframe, some people on here can spend six to eight hours a day on courses and hammer out a degree fairly quickly. I've got three jobs and only managed 18 credits this year
Looking at Sahara's progress over the past few months he's been able to progress really fast through Straighterline courses which can certainly help you deal with general education credits in a convenient manner. Most schools charge some sort of yearly fee. TESC used to be around $3000 per year. Excelsior is around $1000 per year. Your high school diploma should be evaluated before you start taking tests and courses, because you want to be sure of what school you are building your classes toward. COSC allow you to enroll without a High School diploma if you have some other courses taken. Each school has a preference for evaluating your High School Diploma. If it is in Afrikaans you'll have to get it officially translated although mine was dual language (Irish - English) so I didn't need it translated thankfully. You shouldn't have any issues with your High School Diploma but I would have it evaluated, I think Excelsior now require you to have the evaluation sent directly to them from the agency as opposed to getting the envelope in a sealed envelope and sending it to the records department. Sahara might be able to clarify the process for TESC. It takes about a month to get enrolled in Excelsior plus at least 3 weeks for your high school diploma to be evaluated so make sure you plan ahead. There is no fear that they will end acceptance of CLEP/DSST since thousands of schools across America accept them. Schools do make decisions regarding ACE recommended credits from Alex and Straighterline occasionally but since "the big three" have partnerships with straighterline there's no fear there. Alex recently renewed their ACE certification which had been cancelled and caused some concern as people couldn't transfer credit for a very short period of time.
You can take a CLEP / DSST without a high school diploma (many high school students take the exam to save them money in College later) You will however have to find a testing center either close to you or plan to visit the United States and take the tests in Bulk. I'm not sure what you do if you don't have an American Social Security Number there are others who may be able to answer that since I had one already before starting my education testing at the CLEP test center.

[Saharapost]

Hello Minor Noble Jon-Jon and welcome to Degreeforum.

Like you, I am from Africa and needed a degree so "badly" that I ran to guys here to save my soul. You are in the right place.

While there are a handful of ways you can travel to get college credit, you may want to focus on those ways that make it easier for you to test without breaking the bank. I don't know how easy it is to take CLEP and DSST exams in Qatar where you live, but taking Straighterline courses can go a long way in helping you acquire college credits at a rate faster than some other credit sources...
In case it may help you or some other foreign student, I'll give you a breakdown of what I did.

I came "here" with college credits from my home country university studies. Based on evaluation from Education Credential Evaluator, I was given about 65 credits for my two years law studies.

I took Business courses at Straighterline. On the average, it took me between 2 to 3 days to finish a course. So, in a month or so, I was able to get about 45 college credits from SL. Since I had few college level credits from my previous enrolment at Penn Foster, I weeded them by sending the "good ones" (ACE recommended) to my ACE transcript while the bad ones remained on my PF transcript. I did not enrol at Penn Foster because I wanted to transfer them to any of the Big Three but because I did not know the difference between the different accreditation level in US. I had thought a school is a school as long as it government recognized. Anyway, I got credits for most of the courses I took there.

Like the proverbial seagull who will eat the living with the dead, I took other ACE recommended courses from TEEX and ALEKS, not minding what will duplicate or not. I also took Saylor.org Marketing course.

Today, I have about 135 credits to my belt with about 96 or more of them applied to my degree. I am taking 24 TECEPs (actually I have sat 3 TECEP tests, leaving me with 15 TECEP credit to take ) and 3 Penn Foster's (Financial Management) credits away from graduating with a BSBA-General Management. When I look back to when I started the journey, it feels like yesterday.

[EI2HCB]

Thanks for sharing Saharapost! In round figures how much do you think that this pathway will have cost you, not including the Education in NG.