How I'm earning a bachelor's degree by 18

[RANSOMSOUL]

Sorry, but college is much harder than HS. Even AP courses run at half the pace of a college course. Yes there are HS students who can handle a college course or two, but it is definitely not a majority.

It's not an unbalanced position to challenge the comparison in the difficulty with HS vs College. There are a few factors that could heavily influence HS actually being harder than some courses (e.g. general ed/electives) My daughter graduated with a 4.7 in high school and her workload was off the charts. However, she is now testing out (pass/fail) with the majority of her college courses (general ed/electives/major math), she feels the workload is less than half. Now, if she was gunning for A scores (90%+) then she would most likely feel some additional weight in prepping for exams. There are of course certain specialties that by default are considerably harder in college (e.g. biology, physics, engineering) but even with those, it's dependent on the student's skills, they may not feel a significant bump in the challenge. 

With all this being said, by average, I completely agree that college is harder - take an average or poor high school student, place them in college and they are sure to be completely overwhelmed in their first year with the new workload. Homeschool kids are outliers when measuring the difficulty in college and I am not surprised the OP isn't feeling that much weight with the task at hand.

[Bibby]

This is awesome indeed! Your plan is challenging, but it's also completely doable. As long as you can read and write proficiently and understand basic math, you should be able to tackle any business/liberal arts degree if you put in the effort.

Learning isn't a race, but knowing what I know now, I wish I'd gotten an earlier start. In some ways, having more life experience makes learning business topics a bit easier - people pick up some knowledge about marketing, accounting, finance, and such in their day-to-day lives. On the other hand, however, it's a lot easier to learn when you have lots of free time and aren't encumbered with full-time jobs, spouses, kids, and other responsibilities - I've known a lot of people who returned to college when they were much older, and it was a lot more difficult for them.

I knew someone who got an A.A. degree when she was 17, and most of the classes she took were prerequisites for a career path that requires a doctorate. She was probably the best student in her class, despite most of her classmates having a lot more life experience (including some directly related to the career path she was pursuing). It's totally possible to excel in academically rigorous classes at a young age.

[zapproximator]

Thanks so much Bibby! That's totally how I feel "it's challenging but completely doable".

[topdog98]

Okay, so I've attached a plan for you based on what you have completed so far. I chose mostly exams for you since that is what you seem to like based on your sig. Many of these choices could be substituted with courses from Straighterline, Study.com, Davar, etc. I can't guarantee this plan 100% since things could change at COSC. An advisor/registrar at COSC could tell you for certain. But based on my experience at COSC, this is a good plan.

Reply with any questions, or send me a PM.

[homeschoolmom1]

Just out of curiosity, Zach, how did you decide on COSC vs. TESU?

[bjcheung77]

There's a couple of things you can do to help you with your studies: From looking at your signature, I see that you've not done any FEMA which COSC takes, I would take at least 33 credits and you can take the 7 credits that make up the PDS Certificate. You need 30 UL credits, 15 in the AOS. Are you going for a BA, BSBA or something else like a BGS with a concentration?

[zapproximator]

Topdog98, thank you so much!

That's so helpful. Also, my parents are really grateful too

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bjcheung77, thanks! At this point, a BSBA.

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Homeschoolmom1, sorry I didn't see your question before! I settled on COSC because I saw a lot of other homeschooled students who used it and a lot of people just seemed really happy with it as compared to TESU/Excelsior. If anyone wants to convince me on another of the Big 3, please do

[triforce828]

Homeschoolmom1, sorry I didn't see your question before! I settled on COSC because I saw a lot of other homeschooled students who used it and a lot of people just seemed really happy with it as compared to TESU/Excelsior. If anyone wants to convince me on another of the Big 3, please do

Our family has had experience with COSC and TESU.
DD1 earned her AA from COSC in a little less than a year after she decided to do it (technically it was intended to be a gap year, but is it still considered a gap year when you earn 48 units?).
DD2 is earning her AA (before high school graduation) and her BALS probably in September from TESU.

Both schools have been fine to work with. We have had no problems or surprises with academic advising or evaluations.
COSC seems "cozier" and my daughter only dealt with one admission adviser, one academic adviser and the cornerstone instructor.
They sent the nicest form letters and sent the achievement award since we didn't go to the ceremony.
The ACORN portal is a nice one stop shop. TESU has too many places to log in: application status website, myEdison, OSS, and the paying portal never works for me.

TESU has been really quick with emails and routing questions and concerns to the right places -- we have encountered 2 admission counselors, a bunch of academic advisers, the bursar department.
We used online chat during the application/admission process. It happened to be staffed in the late night and the chat representative was so nice and knowledgeable.
My only TESU complaint is the time between when a transcript arrives and it is put on the academic evaluation is a solid two weeks. We are impatient.
Oh, and if we're being really picky, the TESU academic evaluation is way goofier-looking than COSC.

We were going to use COSC since it was familiar. Then we looked harder at TESU because it wasn't going to be any more complicated to earn an AA and a Bachelors...
So, here are some reasons why DD2 is going with TESU:
- doesn't want to take a science lab
- didn't want to write TWO giant research papers for two classes (COSC's cornerstone and capstone)
- getting answers from this forum is easier because there are a lot of TESU alumni/enrolled students (thanks y'all)
- likes study.com format over straighterline -- so the study.com discount pricing was a plus
- tried the FEMA courses. Did not want to do very many of them. The FEMA courses are such a great freebie if you are headed to COSC.
- getting UL liberal arts units from study.com was convenient last year. It seems like there are a lot of UL study.com business courses since the new year, so that's good if you're pursuing a business degree..
- last summer she applied to both COSC and TESU seeking just the AA. COSC required a commitment to enroll within a couple of weeks. TESU's allowed six months before your application expired. In those couple of weeks before committing to COSC, we scoured this forum, made charts, applied for Guardian scholarship, and realized a BALS was not far out of reach with a little bit more time. She wasn't ready to take the COSC cornerstone in September with some of the other school and extracurricular commitments.
- TESU's new terms starting monthly gives some flexibility in scheduling

Good luck on your journey Zapproximator! You have a great start with the CLEPs.