Military and the big three

[jtannenbaum]

Hello,
I have a quick question about the big three and the military. I am active duty and if I use my goarmyed/TA is there a requirement to complete any in house classes or can I use AARTS and clep?

Thanks

[dcan]

Active Duty AF here. You can use TA but in exchange TESC requires you to complete six courses through them. Not sure about the others but I haven't heard of any requirements like that other than the capstone classes required of all students in some degrees.

Plus, I think Charter Oak has capstone and "cornerstone" classes that every student must take regardless, so there is a class at the "2 year" point and a class at the "4 year" point. So if you are getting a bachelor's you will have to take two classes through them anyway. But that isn't a TA thing, just the school's policy now.

[CLEP101]

Active Duty AF here. You can use TA but in exchange TESC requires you to complete six courses through them. Not sure about the others but I haven't heard of any requirements like that other than the capstone classes required of all students in some degrees.

Plus, I think Charter Oak has capstone and "cornerstone" classes that every student must take regardless, so there is a class at the "2 year" point and a class at the "4 year" point. So if you are getting a bachelor's you will have to take two classes through them anyway. But that isn't a TA thing, just the school's policy now.

:iagree:

Just to add to this, the reason you must have a "residency" (even though there really isn't one) with TESC or Excelsior is so you don't get charged their enrollment fees. For example with TESC, for an Associate Degree you need to take 9 semester hours with them and 18 semester hours for a Bachelors under their Military Degree Completion Program. This will waive their huge enrollment fees. At Excelsior, it's 6 semester hours for an Associates and 12 for a Bachelors (unless rules have changed since I graduated).

Other than that, you can still test out of pretty much everything, use your military transcripts, and just take the one or two capstone courses required, but pay their fees of you go this route.

[dcan]

Other than that, you can still test out of pretty much everything, use your military transcripts, and just take the one or two capstone courses required, but pay their fees of you go this route.

Someone else around here actually did that believe it or not. Can't recall who though. He just took the free CLEPs and paid the $3K and graduated. May have used the GI Bill to pay the $3K.

[drewthedude]

Yup, and you can also forego the residency requirement by using the GI bill to pay the enrollment fee. I asked, and as long as you complete at least one credit through TESC - it could be a TECEP - you can use veterans benefits to pay those fees. The only problem is, from what I understand, even if you only took a TECEP, it would still cost a full term of GI bill benefits - so at least twelve weeks of your GI bill would be zapped. However, depending on your goals, this might be worth it. If all my political science credits transfer over, I may use this option to complete a polisci degree through TESC - twelve weeks of the GI bill isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

[fiveninerzero]

I completed my TESC BA without bothering to take any of their classes. I just ended up paying about $2000 (I do not recall the exact amount) out of my pocket to enroll, and ended up graduating shortly afterwards. I didn't have time to sit through 8 months worth of classes that I could've knocked out with 2 days of CLEP/DSST just to save a couple of grand.

[valsacar]

I just recently completed my degree with EC, I started while on AD. I did take more than enough credits with them, so no enrollment fee. I finished up my last year on GI bill (after ETS) and they still waived the graduation fees as I had started while AD and met the residency requirements for the military program.