IT degree with A levels & 7 years of work experience

[rachel83az]

It was a legitimate brick-and-mortar place that has been closed for about 10 years. 
There are thousands of people who have graduated from it since it's been in operation for many decades. It was actually called "The Chemistry and Technology College of D.I. Mendeleev". Rumor has it that he was part of its opening, but I'm not sure.

This one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Mendele..._of_Russia Looks like it's still going. I don't know how much of that might or might not be propaganda, but it seems valid enough. And potentially decently ranked.

The vocational school was in Russia, and given how bad a rap it has these days, I'm a bit afraid of possible prejudices.

A valid concern, but I don't think I'd be too worried. At least in theory, the evaluators are supposed to be at least somewhat politically neutral.

If you're anxious anyway, you can always get 2 or 3 evaluations at once. Not the cheapest way to go about it, but nothing says you have to stick with one evaluation company.

If you don't mind possibly signing up for emails from WES (or you can use a service like 10 minute mail), you can get an idea of what they'd say with this tool: https://applications.wes.org/degree-equivalency-tool/

[Sherwood]

This one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Mendele..._of_Russia Looks like it's still going. I don't know how much of that might or might not be propaganda, but it seems valid enough. And potentially decently ranked.

That's the university. In Russia, they call vocational schools "college".
If you google "ФГОУ СПО СПБ ЭТК Менделеева" there are actually a ton of records everywhere about it.
And yeah that is a really long name that actually has a transcription
So I guess it shouldn't be a problem, and even if it is, there is always a possibility to try and evaluate it in different places, as you have said.

[bjcheung77]

There really isn't too much you can do to be proactive now, I would suggest getting some credits from Sophia.org that you know you need to do, so create a spreadsheet and plug everything in from the WIKI. You can take courses you know you don't have yet and will go into the degree. Post that as a link to your google/one drive, make it viewable/not editable, and we can review the spreadsheet and advice of any changes that need to be made.

[Sherwood]

UMPI replied that they do accept Duolingo.
I got the diploma translation, and now I just need a few more days to do a translation of the economics university transcript.

I'll be applying to UMPI and maybe also to Metropolia later because it's so cheap and the subjects are actually very interesting.

I did some quick research, and my diploma is probably going to be the equivalent of an "Associate degree" in the US. A community college, basically.
So I guess my education would be considered an "Associate of Science"?

A few more questions:

1. If it turns out to be an "Associate of Science" degree, would UMPI allow credit transfer for some of the subjects?
Because I have: informatics, math, history, geography, physics, chemistry + lab (lots and lots of chemistry), biology, philosophy, law, the basics of economics, and management.
On some of the subjects, I have a B and some of them a C; is there a lower limit? Honestly, I would rather pass the subject from scratch again than transfer a C, which would later show on my bachelor's transcript and make applying for a good master's harder.

2. What is the difference between "Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration" & "Bachelor of Liberal Studies"? What would be better for a "business/management" degree?
Is it even important at all? As a reference, I took a look at Harward, and their Computer Science, Economics and Mathematics degrees are all Bachelor of Arts.
Their Business administration and Management was a Bachelor of Liberal Arts. All "arts" basically.

3. I'm considering one of these two degrees at UMPI:
a. https://online.umpi.edu/degrees/undergra...anagement/
b. https://online.umpi.edu/degrees/undergra...ems-minor/

a. 40 credit hours of general education courses, 59-62 of business core/Project Management Concentration courses, and 18-21 of electives
b. 40 credit hours of general education courses, 18 of Management Information Systems Minor core courses, and 62 of electives

It seems that A has a lot more business/management courses, while B, for some reason, is mostly electives.

What are the elective courses? Is it something that I have to choose that has to be strictly limited to course related subjects or could be anything IT related?

[rachel83az]

It doesn't matter if it's an "Associate" or not. It's going to depend on what the evaluation as a whole says. If the evaluation says that these are university-level courses and that you have "chemistry + lab", then that counts as chem + lab at UMPI. If you already have biology and chem + lab, you do not need any science courses from Sophia. On the other hand, if these somehow equate to just HS courses (which theoretically could happen), then they will not show up on your UMPI transcript.

You cannot transfer courses individually, so your C classes will show up whether or not you want them to. Solely because you are an international student, if you have multiple transcripts, you can selectively withhold one or two to avoid having the C grades show up on your final UMPI transcript. (Info for anyone who stumbles on this thread later: American students must submit all American transcripts to American schools. They cannot withhold a transcript.) I understand that this is a tricky balance for you because you need to prove HS graduation while also not wanting to transfer in the lower grades.

Depending on what GPA you have on your evaluated courses, it might make sense to take a few extra UMPI courses to balance that out. But it really depends on exactly how many C grades you have. Sophia courses are pass/fail while UMPI YourPace classes require at least a B to count as passing. Many students have historically been able to get all As at UMPI. For every C (2.0), you need an A (4.0) to raise your GPA to a B (3.0). You can use a GPA calculator such as https://gpacalculator.net/college-gpa-calculator/ to get an idea about where you stand now and what you might need to improve your GPA.

As for your choice between the BABA and the BLS: go for the BABA. It's a Business degree. Solid. Widely accepted around the world. When employers see Business degrees, they have a good idea as to what they are and what the student studied.

On the other hand, BLS is a check-the-box degree. It exists. It shows you have completed some minimum amount of University-level coursework - not necessarily in one coherent subject. For some American students, all that is required is to be able to say that you have a degree in something. But Liberal Studies isn't really a category of degree outside of the US. Outside the US, there are subject degrees in the liberal arts (I.E. a Bachelor's in Art History), but many countries don't even know what on earth a full-on Liberal Studies/Liberal Arts degree is. And it might not fully count as a Bachelor's degree - depending on the country. So, I'd suggest avoiding that one.

Electives are/can be literally whatever you want. Most people on this forum fill them with random Sophia classes. If you want to fill them in with tech classes from Study.com, Metropolia, XAMK, etc., you can also do that. Coursera certificates can also be used as electives. https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/Coursera But it will probably take more time/money to fill electives with specific courses you're interested in. UMPI, unfortunately, doesn't currently have any tech classes that you could use here.

If you're going for a Project Management degree at UMPI (whether the BABA or BLS), I'd steer clear of Sophia's PM class and the PM Coursera certificates. They can make later classes more difficult, rather than making them easier.

[bjcheung77]

TESU & UMPI are your best options as they'll take the bulk of the credits you're interested in (even the Finnish credits from Metropolia/XAMK).  TESU BSBA, UMPI BABA are good options to select from... the BABA and a BSBA are pretty much the same, it's a Business Admin degree in the end... The distinction isn't big at all, not many people know the difference between the requirements (if there are any differences).  And sometimes, the university only has an Arts school and not a Science offering, even though their courses are exactly identical to another university that has a school with an Arts/Science offering with the same courses.

Depending on the energy, money, time and your scenario... If you're interested in the Metropolia/XAMK courses as they're practically free, you can use those towards a TESU BSBA CIS/BACS combo by following Rachel83AZ's guide on the WIKI, you can get that under your budget of $10K for two degrees.  If you're needing it cheap, easy, fast, in the first reply to you, I mentioned the UMPI PM&IS, you can skip the XAMK/Metropolia if you want and quickly get that completed, also by following the WIKI plans available.  It really depends on you, your needs/wants and the main thing is 'finishing off' the degree requirements.

[Sherwood]

You can use a GPA calculator such as https://gpacalculator.net/college-gpa-calculator/ to get an idea about where you stand now and what you might need to improve your GPA.

The diploma had 51 subjects; maybe 10 of them were the same thing across different semesters.

I'm not sure how many credits each separate one of them had, so I just entered 3 for all of them.

Preliminary GPA - 2.76

[rachel83az]

Definitely wait to see what the evaluation brings. If some/all of those wind up being 2 or 4 US credits, that completely changes the calculation.

An Associate degree in the US is 60 credits. Evaluators usually try to shoehorn a degree into the American credit system. If they do that, and if they evaluate your credits as being equivalent to an Associate degree, 60 credits of B- (2.7) is offset by 30 A credits (4.0) to be 3.13. That should be more than sufficient for most graduate programs that you'd care to apply to.

[Sherwood]

Metropolia wrote a reply to my email:

Mainly these remaining studies consist of Innovation Project (10 cr), compulsory language studies (10 credits), work placement (2 x 15 cr) and Bachelor`s Thesis (15 cr). These studies could be arrange on-line in many cases. Work placement means that student will work in field of IT, totally 20 week as fulltime work.

Information Technology degree daytime studies are full-time and studies require in average 40 hours of hard studies weekly. About half of the studies is guided by a teacher, rest of it should be filled by the student. Studies will include theoretical teaching, various practical assignments, independent and group studies as well as written assignments. There are also attendance %, so it is very hard or impossible to study fulltime, if working simultaneously.

20 weeks of full-time work is about 4.5 months. I'm not sure if you can just keep working at your current IT job abroad. But judging from their email, it seems quite difficult, so I guess for an IT degree, it would be best to just get those 180 credits from them and transfer them somewhere else.

Another quick question: can I transfer Sophia courses after I've finished them and canceled the subscription? Or do I need a paid subscription to do that?

[rachel83az]

The first half of the response from Metropolia indicates that you can finish the degree online, no need to move there. If you've got an understanding job, there's no reason why you couldn't work while finishing the degree online. Indeed, if you've already got an IT job, you may be able to use that as your "work placement".

It would certainly be something to inquire with Metropolia once you're closer to finishing the 180 ECTS.

Once you complete Sophia courses, you need to click on "get your badge" to send that information to Credly so that you can get a Credly badge. Your Credly transcript can then be sent 100% for free to the relevant school. No active Sophia subscription is needed for this.