Overwhelmed newbie needing degree plan advice please.

[icytwilight]

Hi everyone! I'm so glad I found this forum. I've read though a some posts and honestly my head is spinning. lol I've read that cost wise, TESC may be better than COSC, so I'd like to see what degree plan I can make for them.

Also, I really just want a Bachelor's degree, in anything, the quickest and cheapest way. I know, I'm asking for a lot. I've just found that my two crappy associate degree's w/o a bachelors are holding me back.

Is it even possible to test out of classes and get a bachelor's with he amount of credits/the AA I have?

Can anyone please take a look at the courses I've taken and advise on a degree plan?
Thank you all so much in advance for any help/advice you can offer!

I hold an Associate of Arts degree (Sociology major) and a Associate of Applied Science (Office Technology major) and those were gotten from 2003-2005 from Southwestern IL College. The classes I took are below.


The list is Course title, name, and credit hours earned for each.

art101, art appreciation, 3
eng101, rhetoric & composition I, 3
math097, intermediate algebra5H, 5
oat175, electronic spreadsheets excel 2002, 3
soc153, intro sociology, 3

biol101, principals of biology I, 4
eng102, rhetoric & composition II, 3
hlth151, health, 2
math112, college algebra, 4
psyc151, general psychology, 3

anth150, cultural anthropology, 3
cis160, internet basics, 1
geog151, geography of the us & canada, 3
math111, liberal arts mathematics, 4
pols150, intro to american government, 3
soc203, social problems, 3
bus209, business computer systems, 3

es101, earth science, 4
lit113, introduction to literature I, 3
mus101, music appreciation, 3
soc255, the family, 3
spch151, fundamentals of public speaking, 3

oat121, intro to office support, 3
oat169, auto application/general transcription, 3
oat185, database applications access 2003, 3
oat260, admin office procedures, 3
oat261, business communications, 3
oat273, document processing III, 3

cis171, computer graphics Illustrator CS, 3
oat180, word processing Word 2003, 3
oat293, office admin & technology internship, 3

[superzim]

Fastest will probably be the BA in liberal studies is my guess. You would need 18 upper credit general education I. Area of Study: Liberal Studies 33
A. REQUIREMENTS

1. Students complete 30 credits in the liberal studies concentration



2. At least two or more different subjects must be included to provide breadth of knowledge in the liberal studies concentration.



3. Courses transferred to Thomas Edison State University are equated to the following levels: 100, 200, 300 or 400. A maximum of two college-level courses equating to the 100 level can be applied toward the liberal studies area of study. A minimum of 18 credits equating to 300 or 400 Thomas Edison State University are required.


4. LIB-495 Liberal Arts Capstone is required. 3
EXAMPLE I: 30

Humanities

(9)

Social Sciences

(3)

Natural Sciences

(6)

Mathematics

(12)
EXAMPLE II: 30

Social Sciences

(15)

Natural Sciences

(9)

Humanities

(6)
EXAMPLE III: 30

Humanities

(24)

Social Sciences

(6)
III. Electives 27

I believe your office courses will just fall under electives but I think this may be the fastest option for TESU.

[dfrecore]

These would all transfer to a BALS at TESU easily, except that you will max out at 90cr (that's the most they will take from a single source), you have 96cr.

I think if you take the following courses, you'll be very close to your degree:
Info Lit requirement: World Religions DSST or SL; A&I Lit CLEP; or Tech Writing DSST or TECEP
Ethics requirements: Free Ethics course
Any Gen Ed course (non-business)
5 UL Liberal Studies courses (Humanities, Social Sciences or Natural Sciences)
2 LL Liberal Studies courses
1 Free electives course (3cr) - basically anything
Everything can be tested out of for roughly $100 per course, except the free courses (obviously)


The cornerstone and capstone courses at TESU must be taken there.

You could be ready to enroll and take the TESU courses in just a few months, and get your entire degree for less than $5000 including all fees.

[clep3705]

Can you afford to apply to Charter Oak State College, Excelsior University, and Thomas Edison State University? Apply to all three and see who offers you the best deal, whatever best means to you (cost, time, type of degree, anything).

[bjcheung77]

You may want to apply to the Big 3 and also WGU BS Business as they have a free application waiver going on right now to have your courses evaluated.
From the looks of things, you may have 90+ credits to transfer total, but not all credits will go over to the programs. You also need 30 UL for COSC.

For Excelsior and TESU, the UL depends on the program you go for, such as the BALS that was mentioned. See which one will provide you the most credits.
And see what they require for your graduation/fees, etc. Once you have an idea of who to go with and what's required, fees, etc, you can then go for it!

[icytwilight]

Thank you everyone.

I have already applied to WGU and after the evaluation they said they would only accept 42 of my 96 credits. Needless to say, I didn't go forward with pursing that school. I got my transcript evaluated by a local school and they accepted 64 credits I think, basically they just accepted all the AA credits, but the school ended up being too expensive for me.

I'd just hate to spend the $75 to apply for TESC and find out they would be like WGU and hardly accept anything. I'll have to think on it.

[davewill]

Thank you everyone.

I have already applied to WGU and after the evaluation they said they would only accept 42 of my 96 credits. Needless to say, I didn't go forward with pursing that school. I got my transcript evaluated by a local school and they accepted 64 credits I think, basically they just accepted all the AA credits, but the school ended up being too expensive for me.

I'd just hate to spend the $75 to apply for TESC and find out they would be like WGU and hardly accept anything. I'll have to think on it.

I don't think you'll have that problem. TESU is really good about transferring your credit. That is part of what makes them so popular here. You can transfer in everything but the cornerstone and capstone (total 4cr). I think the only limit for you will be the 90cr cap from one source, which is about the best you could find. I say go ahead and apply.

[dfrecore]

Yes, the problem with applying "everywhere" is that it can be expensive. I would only tell someone to apply at several places if I thought that they might get very different outcomes at different places, and it would be hard to figure out what would be accepted and what wouldn't.

In your case, I could tell that WGU wouldn't be a good fit necessarily - there's just not anywhere to put a lot of your credits, simply because they don't have a general degree like Liberal Studies. BUT, it still might be cheaper to finish your degree from them than at TESU. Just because a school doesn't accept all of your credits doesn't mean that it's not a good choice. If you have a few additional courses you can test out of, and then jump into the degree and finish in 1 or 2 terms, you might come out ahead. It's not always about what credits they bring in, but what it will take to finish the degree that matters. One key thing to remember with WGU - you cannot transfer any credits into their program after you've enrolled. So, after applying, but before enrolling, get a list of the courses you need to finish there, and if you post them here, we can tell you which ones have inexpensive test-out options. If you can do a few additional courses before starting, you increase your chances of finishing the degree more quickly, which there means less money.

At TESU, with the BALS degree, bringing in a lot of credits that don't "fit" into any other degree is actually a good plan. There's just a lot of room in the degree for Free Electives, of which you have a lot.

I forgot about one other TESU degree though. You can look at it and see if it would work for you. It's the BS in Professional Studies, and you could choose the Specialized Career Track of Office Systems Technology, this might work well for you. I'm not as confident in looking at that degree, but you can always apply for that one, see what they give you, and then do the what-if scenario with the BALS degree to see if that will be a better fit. Once you get your BSPS you can post on here, and we can help you figure out which courses would work best to finish your degree. We can do the same with the BALS, but it will be an easier one to figure out (I could almost do it off the top of my head).

And, I say that if you want to see what TESU has to say, that you should apply for the BSPS rather than the BALS (you can change your mind later). That's because if you apply for the BALS, I don't think they will spend a lot of time looking at a lot of your courses that would be considered free electives. If you apply as a BSPS, they will look at all of those and classify them correctly. Later, when you look at the BALS scenario, they will just drop down to the free electives section.