Metropolia UAS ACEI Evaluation

[mariobros1985]

Hi everyone,

The good news is that I got my unofficial copy of the Metropolia evaluation from ACEI 3 days ago. The bad news is that I had nothing but bad experiences with ACEI. Like I promised, I will make a post about my experiences with them and attach my unofficial evaluation as well.

First of all, they gave me 0.5 US Credits for every 1 ECTS and indicated that that all the courses were Lower Level. When I tried to appeal the evaluation, here is what ACEI said:

Thank you for your inquiry.  We have reviewed your evaluation and it will remain as originally produced.  ACEI follows the following policy in regards to converting ECTS credits into U.S. semester credits: 1 ECTS credits = 0.5 U.S. credits.   We are unable to make an exception to this policy in your case.  In regards to awarding an upper level designation to some of your coursework, ACEI awards lower level designations to coursework completed during the first two years of a four-year program.  Upper level designations are awarded to coursework completed during the last two years of a four year program.  Based the documentation provided, your coursework was taken within your first year of the undergraduate program .  Please check with your institution of study to determine whether they will grant you upper-level credit for transfer credit.  

 

Kind regards,

ACEI Evaluation Department

Unfortunately, it seems like they wouldn't consider any of the Metropolia nonstop courses as upper level because they thought that I was taking them as a first year student in Metropolia (well technically I was, but not as a regular student).

In any case, I already told them to send the official evaluation to TESU and will appeal with TESU in case they end up finding any of the courses as upper level. I really hope they accept 1.5 US credits (I think they might) into the AOS electives for the BACS.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any evaluator who is going to give more than 0.5 US credits for every 1 ECTS, but there might be another one that gives upper level credit recommendations for the courses. I don't want to waste any more time and money unless someone knows for sure about another evaluator that will give me a more favorable evaluation. If anyone wants to try another evaluation company, please be my guest.

The only good thing is that ACEI accepted my transcripts as official after Metropolia sent the transcripts to them directly despite not having any stamp or signature on it. For now, I'm not sure if I can recommend ACEI; they accepted my transcripts but they gave me practically the worse evaluation that I was thinking of. The user ROYISAGIRL probably got very lucky with the ACEI evaluation for XAMK.

Once again, I'll post my results of the TESU evaluation once I get them.

[bjcheung77]

Transfer it over and wait for an evaluation, things change over the course of time, evaluations will differ as well due to other reasons... We can only speculate on what may be transferred over, but it seems you've got 22.5 lower level credits to place into your TESU degree, these can go into the gen ed/electives, and in some cases in the area of study...

[AllThose299s]

It will be interesting to see the TESU evaluation, speculation-wise it might not be so bad.

Data Structures and Algorithms & Introduction to Operating Systems both being 2.5 credit might be enough to fill Data Structures & Operating Systems sections within the Computer Science AOS & they might just require you to have an additional credit as part of your electives to fill that it.

The Discrete Mathematics on the other hand might not be enough to fulfill that requirement but you never know. Depending on what was covered within Engineering Mathematics 2, you could try to appeal it and see if they would accept it or not. On a positive, just on pure speculation, this could have hit at least 2 AOS sections which gives you additional room to use credits from ACE.

[mariobros1985]

Hi everyone!

I got my evaluation from TESU today and will share it with you all here by attaching it.

I will say that several of my courses were basically no surprise when I saw them. These include Data Structures and Algorithms, which came in as COS-2410 and filled in the Data Structures requirement for the BACS, Python Programming (came in as COS-2050), Discrete Math (came in as MAT-2700) and Probability and Statistics (came in as STA-2010). The other courses were rather interesting, but because of the lack of upper level recommendations by ACEI, I didn't get a single upper level credit. I made an appeal about this with TESU today and sent them over to the online syllabi that Metropolia hosts on their website in English in hopes of getting a better evaluation. Also, they accepted all of my courses, too, which is a good thing at least.

I was kind of surprised why they didn't make Introduction to Operating Systems equivalent to COS-2400 to meet that requirement and instead it's equivalent to CIS-2190 (no idea what that is), but, like I said, I made an appeal with that info included. I think that some of them could definitely be candidates for UL credit such as Robotic Process Automation, the Robot Framework course and the Artificial Intelligence with Python course. I was kind of expecting them to be special topics courses anyway, which is fine, but I will see what TESU says. Interestingly, the Engineering Mathematics 2 course transferred in as an Engineering course rather than a Math course, so it didn't seem to apply to any degree program.

Also, I already had the Discrete Math requirement fulfilled from a community college and also had the Python Programming and Statistics courses transferred in already (I did them just to see how they would transfer in as), but I can already see that the 1.5 credits can be a problem for sure. I actually asked TESU a while ago about transferring in a course that's less than the exact amount specified in the requirements (in this case, 3 credits) and I was told that the requirement can be fulfilled by transferring in a course that is at least 2 credits, but if it's less than that, you would need to transfer in or take another course to satisfy the requirements. This means that if, for example, you take the Discrete Math course at Metropolia, then it wouldn't satisfy the Discrete Math requirements for the BACS because it's less than 2 credits; you'd need to take another course to satisfy the requirements, which you might as well do at Study.com or a local community college in the first place.

Alright, I'm done with the long rant.

[bjcheung77]

Yes, that's cool... Exactly what ACEI recommended for credit, the same 22.5 credits came in as expected...

[mariobros1985]

Alright, I probably should make an update for anyone wondering how the appeal went.

Basically, TESU said that in order to appeal the courses, I needed to ask for an English syllabus for each course that I wanted to appeal and took at Metropolia. I asked Metropolia via the viopesupport@metropolia.fi email to give me just one detailed English syllabus for the Introduction to Operating Systems course and they told me this:

Hi, thank you for your e-mail. Unfortunately, we do not have possibility provide anything else which isn't already in our system. For Operating Systems' course, you can check this: https://hakija.oma.metropolia.fi/#3767.


Terveisin / Regards,

Viopesupport

Basically, I'm at a dead end since Metropolia isn't willing to give me a detailed syllabus of the course and TESU doesn't want to change anything without a detailed syllabus for every course that I want to appeal. I also tried showing TESU the online syllabi of the courses that I took such as the one mentioned in the email response I received above and TESU just said the the syllabi weren't detailed enough to give any considerations for appealing the credits that I transferred in. ACEI wasn't willing to change anything about the evaluation they gave me and I can't recommend them unless you've got no other choice (like if you need to use them for XAMK). TESU also said that I can't use another evaluator to replace the evaluation from ACEI (they called it mixing and matching evaluators) and that if I can't get any syllabus for any course, my evaluation would stay as is.

If anyone has any way to convince TESU to appeal the courses without a syllabus (or accessing the courses, which they didn't want to anyway), please let me know. I hope this was helpful, at least.

Also, I will be doing 3 courses, 2 from Study.com and 1 from Davar, before doing the 15 credit flat rate term now that I have a chance to do the flat-rate term with my BACS and ASNSM Math combo at least.

[jg_nuy]

If the course is via Viope, you can print out a PDF of the Table of Contents for the course in Viope with all options expanded out, which may help elaborate on the contents and support your dispute.

[mariobros1985]

If the course is via Viope, you can print out a PDF of the Table of Contents for the course in Viope with all options expanded out, which may help elaborate on the contents and support your dispute.

Good idea, I'll try to appeal with TESU to see if it works. I'll try a similar approach with the Operating Systems course, which is in the Codio platform, as well.

Edit: Never mind, I can't seem to make the Viope webpages neither uniform nor organized enough when I try to download them as PDF's. Do you know how else I can download them? I already tried Firefox and Chrome.

[jg_nuy]

If the course is via Viope, you can print out a PDF of the Table of Contents for the course in Viope with all options expanded out, which may help elaborate on the contents and support your dispute.

Good idea, I'll try to appeal with TESU to see if it works. I'll try a similar approach with the Operating Systems course, which is in the Codio platform, as well.

Edit: Never mind, I can't seem to make the Viope webpages neither uniform nor organized enough when I try to download them as PDF's. Do you know how else I can download them? I already tried Firefox and Chrome.

I print directly to PDF from the landscape view in Chrome and that seems to work pretty well.

[jch]

Here's an idea: could you get an official/certified English translation of the syllabus/course documents? Maybe TESU would be okay with that. Cost may be prohibitive though.