Need your help and advice - What school and what Degree

[Southpaw]

Hey guys this is a little long but I would appreciate any feedback you could give me. I am currently attending American Military University working towards a BA in Homeland Security with a concentration in terrorism studies. I have recently decided that I want to transfer to either TESC or Excelsior so I can finish up my degree faster and cheaper. What I am looking for is whichever program could be completed the fastest and preferably through testing only. I did do a year of college in 1996 and I will post all of my classes that I have completed. I plan to go back to AMU for my Masters degree and you do not need a certain GPA to get in, just a Bachelors degree.

The programs I’m interested in are the BA in Criminal Justice at Excelsior; I see that they have a Homeland Security emphasis available on that. I am also interested in Criminal Justice or Psychology at TESC, or if it would be faster the Liberal Studies at either school. I am leaning more towards TESC but I could be persuaded to go to Excelsior if it would be a better fit.

Grossmont College:

• HIST 141 Modern Western Civilization - 3 credits - B
• HUM 110 Principles of Humanities – 3 credits - B
• PSY 120 Intro to Psychology – 3 credits - B
• SOC 120 Intro to Sociology – 3 credits - B
• AOJ 110 Intro to Admin of Justice – 3 credits - A
• ASTR 110 Descriptive Astronomy - 3 credits - A
• ECON 120 Principles of Macroeconomics - 3 credits - B
• PHIL 130 Logic - 3 credits - B
• PE Beginning Tennis – 1 credit - A

American Military University:

• RQ295 - Academic & Career Planning – 3 credits – A
• HS102 - American History since 1877 – 3 credits – A
• MA125 - Math for Liberal Arts Majors – 3 credits – A
• GM160 - Emergency Response to Terrorism – 3 credits – A
• GM260 - Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Hazards – 3 credits – A
• GM261 - Weapons of Mass Destruction Incident Command – 3 credits – A
• GM263 - Regulatory Issues in Weapons of Mass Destruction – 3 credits – A
• IR310 - Homeland Defense – 3 credits – A

Current courses that I will finish soon:

• CJ319 - Global Terrorism – 3 credits
• IS312 - Terrorism and Counterterrorism – 3 credits

I have almost 11 years Federal Law Enforcement experience and AMU gave me 16 credits for the Border Patrol Academy, 6 were in Spanish. If TESC or Excelsior do not give me credit for this I’m fairly confident I could pass the Spanish CLEP high enough to get 12 credits.

I have about 25 FEMA IS courses done that I have not turned into credit yet.

Another question I have is if I apply to both schools to see what kind of credit they will give me do I have to pick a specific degree or can they show me what I would still need to do for more than one degree path such as CJ and Psychology?

Can the BA in Psychology from TESC be completed through testing only? Looking at it there are only 3 required courses besides the electives in PSY, the required ones are Intro to PSY, Statistics and Experimental PSY. The Experimental PSY is the one I’m curious if there is a test that will cover it. I also want to know if there are enough PSY tests out there to cover the 24 elective credits in PSY.

Can the Criminal Justice degrees from either school be completed through testing only? I guess it might also depend on what type, if any, CJ credits they give me for my Law Enforcement experience and Academies I have attended.

Looking at the credits I have now what do you guys think would be my best option?

[Katterina]

Welcome to the board!

I started out as a Psychology major with Excelsior, but later switched to Liberal Studies because it was a quicker rout for me to finish my degree, especially not having to take statistics. Are you a BPA? I am a CBPO job applicant (just the background pending) and am scrambling to get done before I get shipped off to FLETC so I can start at a 7. Anyway...

One big difference between TESC and Excelsior is that Excelsior will require at least 30 upper level (300-400 level) credits, while TESC considers anything 200 level and above to be upper level. Many DANTES and I think all CLEPS are considered lower level at Excelsior, so I used six of Excelsior's upper level liberal arts exams and a DANTES upper level history exam to fulfill their upper level liberal arts requirement of 21 credits. Many people use the ECE psych exams to fulfill that requirement because IC covers those topics.

I am not sure it is possible to completely test out of any majors other than Liberal Studies at this time with Excelsior. (Someone please correct me if I am wrong!) Excelsior changed the psych major this year to additionally require History & Systems and Biological Psychology courses, which are not testable that I am aware of. A Criminal Justice degree also looks impossible to completely test out of, although Excelsior looks like they offer many of the courses themselves. I am not terribly familiar with TESC and their programs, but they also have many psychology exams, so testing out of their Psychology major requirements may be possible, although they are not currently covered by IC.

If a quick degree is what you want, then I would apply to both TESC and Excelsior under the Liberal Studies programs and see what each will require for degree completion.

Anyway, good luck, and hopefully there will be some TESC students around to enlighten us about the TESC programs.

[Southpaw]

Thanks for the reply. I was a BPA for 5 years but soon after 9/11 I transfered over to become a Federal Air Marshal.

[ImustStudy]

Excelsior told me that their CJ program was their most flexible so I went with that. It is part of the liberal studies program I believe.

I brought in alot of transfer units however I think I can test out of most the remainign classes. Excelsior requires a 1 unit Info Technology class that can be taken as an independent study course at Penn Foster college (online) for $75. This class can be completed in an afternoon as you sit by the pool sipping cherry lemonaide. It is accrediated and I recommend using it instead of Excelsior's which is $250.

I processed to be a FAM here in LA but decided against because of what they said would be constant travel and uncertain hours. Decided to have a family instead. Hope you like the job.