Principles of Finance at EC - DSST? UExcel? other?

[BarleyWhine]

Hello! Last time I was kicking around the idea of a backdoor bachelor's business degree, and now I have a specific question:

What's the best way to take a finance course credit exam that Excelsior College will recognize as BUS350 - Principles of Finance?

and then the corollary question:

What's the easiest way to get transcript credit for a business finance course at Excelsior College even if that ends up being lower-level credit?

Various options I'm looking at include DSST Principles of Finance, UExcel Principles of Finance, and vaguely aware there may be a TECEP or a Sophia or Study.com course that works too.

What I want to do is just take the DSST because I think that will be quickest, easiest, cheapest, and most readily accessible for me. But I'm curious how the DSST comes in at Excelsior.

For some background, here's what I've been up to since my last post:

- Prior Bachelor's Degree (Mechanical Engineering, 2010)

• In my program I had a class called "Engineering Economics" which covered topics like market valuation, depreciation of assets, and time-value-of-money calculations. I also had Micro- and Macro-economics and a basic statistics course.
  

- Current Enrollment at Georgia Tech, OMS Analytics (9/36 hours complete)
- CLEP Exams, all transcripted and sent to Excelsior College:

• Information Systems (74)
  
• Principles Of Marketing (77)
  
• Principles Of Management (73)
  
• Financial Accounting (67)
  
• Business Law (will take this week)
  

I'm not yet sure I want to get the whole business degree. I'm trying to get transcript credit for the courses typically taken as a business minor (with specific requirements to take a Finance class and a Supply Chain/Operations Management class) so that I can transfer them to Georgia Tech so that I can get out of doing a class I don't wanna do. (Yes, that sounds like a lot of extra effort. Yes, it's worth it to me.) If after accomplishing that it's then not a whole lot of extra effort to finish the second bachelors I may go ahead and do it especially if I can UExcel-test out of most of the core courses.

Curious to know what others have done and how I might best achieve this main goal of getting a finance class on my transcript. Thanks.

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By the way, I'm not dead-set stuck on Excelsior, they just happen to host the UExcel for courses I'm interested in. I will still need to take a Supply Chain/Operations Management course and then wrap the whole thing in a bow and present it as a "business minor" so if there's some minimum residency threshold I need to reach before they'll cut me a transcript, I'd better learn about that now too.

[rachel83az]

You get a transcript from Excelsior whether you transfer in 1 course or 100. So, no need to worry on that account. BUT, since you have a prior degree, Excelsior is NOT the school for you. They do NOT want you to get second degrees! They get really picky about this (especially with business degrees, IIRC), so it would almost certainly be more hassle than it's worth.

I would recommend either TESU or UMPI instead. Both are friendly towards students obtaining a second degree. With TESU, you could basically throw together any random 30 credits and get a Lib Studies degree, with a side of Operations Management certificate: https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/Sa...Management That would allow you to use Sophia for Principles of Finance if LL is okay. If you need UL for the OMS, I would recommend Davar. https://www.davaracademy.com/business.html Should be cheaper & easier (faster to study for) than a DSST.

With UMPI, you can transfer in an unlimited amount of credits and they would go on your transcript, but you'd still have to take at least 30 credits with them, as well as meet the specific UL/degree requirements. It'd be pretty fast, though, and you could probably get everything done in 2-4 months for $1400-$2800. They have a BABA with Supply Chain Management concentration, and I think that has most/all of the courses you would need. https://online.umpi.edu/programs/ba-busi...ement.aspx But, they mostly have essays/projects and not exams, so ease would depend on how you feel about writing. At least it would only be 1 paper/project per class.

[bjcheung77]

It seems like you're just looking to have the prerequisites covered for the Georgia Tech OMS Analytics program, I would recommend the TESU route to place all your transcript info, as they take ACE/NCCRS, if you have a specific provider such as Coopersmith/Davar, or Sophia/Study or another of your choice, get the credits and have a transcript created...

[BarleyWhine]

Thank you all for the exceptional advice, as usual. I'll be contacting UMPI to handle the transfer work (looks like they even have free application?! $50 deposit to get a transfer credit evaluation, applicable to a future term registration...totally fair even if I don't end up going.) TESU is the other option and I may do both just to see what my options would be.

Thanks for the heads up!

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As an aside:

I wanted to let you know I tried being stubborn and plowed a week's worth of effort into Saylor.org against advice. I have 40 pages of notes through 1/3 of the material and two failed practice exams to show for about 15 hours' worth of work.

I have put 3 hours' work into Study.com and I'm like 40% through one class's material and got 20% through the sister course's material for free. I was originally too stubborn to spend the money, but then I remembered how many hours I was spending to get nowhere on Saylor vs. what I'm supposedly pulling in on bill rate....

and I determined that though study.com is more costly than Saylor, it's much, much cheaper from a total value proposition standpoint.

Maybe I'm actually learning something from these business courses!

[BarleyWhine]

Hahahaha, no wonder I'm moving at a blistering pace. Study.com be like:

Q: Who manages the inventory in a vendor-managed inventory system?

a) the stockers
b) the vendors
c) extraterrestrials from the moon
d) George W. Bush