I Have 124 Credits - Need Help Figuring out the Most Efficient Path for a Degree

[jacobvanhelden]

It's not that Excelsior doesn't accept any of the Coursera credits. They probably accept most/all of the ACE-recommended credits. But we haven't had any Excelsior students report back after having taken any, so we don't have any equivalencies on the wiki.

Ah, I see.  So, theoretically, if I loaded up on UL ACE credits from Coursera and trasnfered them over, to Excelsior do you think that could be a good way to go?  Or would you still recommend going through UMPI?

[rachel83az]

The biggest problem with the Coursera credits is that most of them are probably going to count as "Applied Professional" at Excelsior. For a BSLS there, you need most of them to be "Arts & Sciences" credits. Arts and Sciences are: humanities, social science, history, natural sciences, mathematics. They can also be kind of weird about credit acceptance and will (sometimes? often? always?) deny LL and UL credit in the same subject. Example: let's say you had Kazoo Playing 101, 201, 401. They would probably only take one, and it might or might not even be the UL one.

[bjcheung77]

A trifecta is both a certain degree path and focusing on those 3 specific areas to get to that educational goal with extra ROI/Value added. Excelsior associates are expensive, you have to take an extra Associates Capstone, the BOG AAS is about 1/10th the cost and will ladder perfectly to Excelsior or UMPI. If your NASM credits do transfer to UMPI, great, if not, they're still going to be cheaper, easier, faster than Excelsior as Excelsior would be about $4K for all fees and the 7 credits combined, UMPI in 2 sessions of 30 credits is $3K.

Coursera subscription from Cali State is awesome, you get all these freebies, I would only shoot for the ones that grant ACE credit towards college credit, you can do the other certs for personal or professional development after you have your degrees.  These would work towards both the Excelsior BSLA and the UMPI BAS/BLS (as I mentioned, you have up to 60 credits for electives for both institutions).  Again, follow the steps of $25 ASU 1 credit, Coursera Cali, Sophia.org for all lower level/elective requirements. 

Excelsior does accept Coursera, it's just that not many people reported their findings and it's equivalency isn't really transparent.
General Education (Music = Arts/Science): https://www.excelsior.edu/policy/general-education/
Ed/Vocational (Coursera): https://www.excelsior.edu/start-with-mor...-programs/
IT Certs: https://www.excelsior.edu/start-with-mor...fications/

Edit to add: This is what you will end up with, if you follow through with what I mentioned, you get 'some experience' when you get the certs...
Excelsior route: Pierpont BOG AAS, BSLA, along with several Coursera Certs that grant ACE credit.
UMPI route: Pierpont BOG AAS, BAS or BLS, plus AALS, several Coursera Certs that grant ACE credit.
Note: UMPI AALS is a non Your Pace program, you add the degree but forget it, 15 credit residency requirements are done when you finish the BLS.