Transcript Review - Help, which of the big 3?

[rebel100]

You could have the AA pretty quick with COSC....for that matter you are reasonably close to a BS/BA in Independent Studies with a concentration in Organizational Leadership. I'm not a computer guy, but otherwise my story bears a resemblance to yours...and I found COSC to be the best choice for me.

Compare what you already have to the Gen Eds at COSC here:
Charter Oak State College - General Education Requirements

You can correlate that to the available tests with the Master List of Exams (COSC) Here:
http://www.charteroak.edu/Current/Academ...r-list.pdf

At a glance for the AA you would need the following:
DSST Technical Writing (Eng Comp 2 requirement)
CLEP Analyzing and Interpreting Literature (Lit and Fine Arts requirement)

A 3 hour course on Ethics, there's a DSST or the "free Saylor.org course that should suffice.

Was your Biology only 3 credits? if so, and if you have no other science your looking at needing another 1-3 credits, CLEP and DSST have offerings.

The Tech Writing and A&I Literature are exams that most people can pass with very little study...like you can probably do them by the end of the month (by the end of next week maybe?)

The Ethics via Saylor isn't hard...just get on it, and go take the exam....by all accounts it's quite staightforward and the only cost is about $25 for a proctor (your local library might do it for free)

Difficulty on the Natural Science Course is dependent on YOU....it can be a stumbling block, but you sound pretty squared away and the resources to study from are plentiful.

Your looking at about $300 in cost for the above exams.

COSC is , in my opinion, the cheapest of the Big 3. They do however require a Cornerstone course to be taken via the internet that you would need for Associates and or Bachelors degree's. It costs around $900, There will also be a $228 semester fee (COSC charges this every semester your actively enrolled compared to the $3K enrollment fee of TESC) there will also be a $205 graduation fee for the AA and they will hit you again for that when/if you do the Bachelors through them.

So the total cost of the AA from COSC from where you are is about $1700.00 give or take a bit.

For a BS in Independent Studies with an Organizational Leadership concentration you will need 30 upper level (UL) courses mostly in the concentration plus free electives to get you to a total of 120 credits.

The UL requirement can be met almost entirely through exams and it might look like this (all UL):
DSST:
Business Ethics in Society (if you went ahead and did this skip the Saylor Ethics altogether) this exam satisfies both the Ethics Gen Ed and its UL...it's a twofer!
Business Law 2
Money and Banking

TECEP (Thomas Edisons in house CBE)
Strategic Management
Operations Management
Advertising
Marketing Communications

ECE (Excelsiors in house CBE)
Human Resource Management
Organizational Behavior

Capstone (taken at COSC via internet)

the Bachelors list above would run you about $100 per exam plus $900 for the capstone. COSC is pretty flexible, in the Cornerstone you develope your goals including every exam or class you plan to take so long as you have 36 business/organizational leadership credits overall with at least 18 at the UL you should be fine with the Org Leadership Concentration (in that case you could swap out some from my list above with other UL exams like the Civil War DSST or the Substance Abuse DSST)....you will need 36 hours in the concentration , in this case intro to business, and economics, etc... would count...plus the 18 UL credits. the rest of you UL could then be in a second concentration or some combination that would allow a few UL electives.

Your looking at another semester enrollment fee $228, the $900 capstone, a second graduation fee of $205 (for the Bachelors), plus the $1000 or so in testing fees. That's another $2400

You will likely need another 20-30 "free electives" to get yuou to that magic 120 credit number....I think you can make them legitimately FREE by attaining them free from FEMA. This makes sense for you as Emergency Management, IMO, is a good match for both your stated skills and the Organizational Management concentration. Think of taking the continuity of operations and management related FEMA, even the FEMA Professional Development Series would be cool for you to have. The FEMA are rediculously easy...you can do 20 of these in a few weeks while drinking beer and watching the kids swim in the pool....it's almost an unfair way to earn college credit. COSC may also give you credit for some computer certs you already have and there are some ace approved cyber security credits you can get for free that Sanantone can direct you to.

[rebel100]

So yeah...depending on how you shake it out less than a year is VERY doable if you are flexible and pick the right program.

Your total cost all the way to a Bachelors at Charter Oak State would be somewhere south of $5000

You should explore TESC and EC to though.

None of the Big 3 is an inherently "bad" choice.

[publius2k4]

You say that you've been in IT for many years. What kind of IT certifications do you have? Those can also be easily turned into college credit.

[andrewtn]

You say that you've been in IT for many years. What kind of IT certifications do you have? Those can also be easily turned into college credit.

No IT Certs

I was programming in PHP and some Java for several years but next attempted any certs. The last 5-6 years I've been working as a Project Manager and now have the required experience (5 years) to sit for the PMP (Project Management Professional) test but I haven't taken it yet. My employer has put me through a few days of PMP training and I have 3 more days of training scheduled in July which will give me the required training needed to sit for the test. Thanks for asking

[publius2k4]

No IT Certs

I was programming in PHP and some Java for several years but next attempted any certs. The last 5-6 years I've been working as a Project Manager and now have the required experience (5 years) to sit for the PMP (Project Management Professional) test but I haven't taken it yet. My employer has put me through a few days of PMP training and I have 3 more days of training scheduled in July which will give me the required training needed to sit for the test. Thanks for asking

The Excelsior Bachelor of Professional Studies in Business and Management might be an option worth looking into. The PMP counts as one of the courses for the Professional portion of the degree:

Bachelor of Professional Studies in Business and Management - Excelsior

[KayV]

To give you more of an idea about Excelsior, you are very close to an Associate of Science degree- you would just need the Associate Capstone and the 1-hour Penn Foster Information Literacy course. As publius2k4 mentioned, you could look into a BPS or even a BS in Liberal Studies, perhaps using philosophy or econ and business as your depth requirements. Cost for the associate degree is about $3350, but you could look into their partnership programs for your bachelor's degree. Good luck!

Excelsior College

Associate of Science


I. Arts and Sciences Requirements

A. Written English Requirement 3

Eng 101 College Comp - 3 Credits

B. Arts and Sciences Electives 6

PSC 101 Intro to American Politics - 3 Credits

PHL 101 Intro to Philosophy - 3 Credits

C. General Education Requirement Distribution Areas 18

1. Humanities 6

ENG 102 College Comp 2 - 3 Credits

PHIL 1156 Logic and Critical Thinking - 3 Credits

2. Social Sciences/ History 6

HST 101 Amer History 1 - 3 Credits

PSY 200 Gen Psychology - 3 Credits

3. Natural Sciences/ Mathematics 6

MTH 140 Intermediate Algebra - 3 Credits

BIO 113 Modern Aspects of Biology (Lec) - 3 Credits

D. MISSING Associate Degree Capstone 3


II. Other Requirements

A. MISSING Information Literacy 1 (through Penn Foster)

B. Applied Professional or Other Arts and Sciences Credits 29

PHIL 1156 Logic and Critical Thinking - 3 Credits

Eco 151 Prin of Econ 1 (macro) - 3 Credits

IS 103 Info Systems for Business - 3 Credits

Eco 152 Prin of Econ 2 (micro) - 3 Credits

GEG 100 Regional Geo Eastrn Wrld - 3 Credits

BUS 104 Intro to Bus Admin - 3 Credits

ACC 100 Applied Accounting - 3 Credits

IS 251 Intro to Java - 3 Credits

MKT 203 Principles of Marketing - 3 Credits

HPE 105 Personal Hyg & Community Health - 3 Credits

[cookderosa]

Cookderosa - I normally would acede the ground to your experienced and insightful commentary, but in this case I have to stand-by my original recommendation that andrewtn should apply to all the schools, You are of course quite right, that in the current list of earned credits there is probably no "quirkiness" but there sure is a lot of it at each of the different degree finsihing schools wtih what's left to do fo complete a degree! With all that real life business experience that andrewtn brings to the table, each school will have some very different options available. Andrewtn seems like the perfect candidate to me to possibly qualify and earn a lot of credits via PLA. This is a very difficult area to navigate successfully. There are a lot of options, and you can't pick the best of the lot for your own circumstances without a lot of detailed investigation. Some time and a little money spent now will save a lot of both while working all the way to final bachelor goal.

I think you make a good point, but he won't get any PLA feedback during an initial application process at TESC. (I don't know the PLA process for EC or COSC)

[cookderosa]

Enrollment went up? I'm still seeing enrollment as cheaper than that at Thomas Edison State College: Enrolled Options Plan

It looks like it is $2958 for out of state enrollment, $117 for technology fee, and $280 to graduate. In any case I definitely agree with everyone else, the end goal of a BA/BS degree should be your guide to what school to choose. Find one with a major/area of study you want and I am confident that most schools will be about the same in regards to being essentially done with your AA. Whatever your choice, good luck to you.

Yeah, I went back in and changed it. Not sure what I was thinking!?! $3355 is what I get too.

[cookderosa]

Thank you everyone (cooperalex2004, JohnnyHeck, Jennifer, Max Droid, Mrs B, sanantone) for taking the time to give me some input on this. I don’t think I would want to spend ~$3,000 just to obtain an Associates though if I could knock out both the Associates and the Bachelors for nearly the same cost it would probably be worth it.

Several of you talked about completing the Bachelors in less than a year which sounds great but worries me. We are talking about filling somewhere around 66 credits which I would imagine would therefore require somewhere around 20 tests in one year. That seems like a lot but if some can be done in days maybe it's possible. I have to remember that I have a full time job and 4 children.

It sounds like the next step most of you are suggesting is to go ahead and submit to TESC, and maybe to all three. Once I understand how things transfer I can build a plan for tackling the reqs.

The July 1 deadline for TESC is a bit concerning as well. I saw a separate tread today which stated that as long as you apply before July 1 you have 6 months to enroll so hopefully that is correct and would buy me a few extra months to complete the reqs. I wonder if we have an understanding as to what is changing as of July 1st? I'll search around on the forum and see if I can find any details on it.

Thanks Again!
Andrew

Let me help you with a tiny issue, you'll need to factor in the 2 tests I mentioned above (A&I Lit, SS&H) which total 12 credits. That overflows 3 into the bachelor's degree. Also, you have an unused PE class that gives another 3 into the free electives. So, upon filing for AA graduation, you'll actually be starting your bachelor's with 66 finished. Now, that leaves 54, and of those, you'll have 12 that can come from FEMA ($0 can be done in a long weekend) leaving only 42 to be completed in the year. Also, that would be a full 12 months, because you would't start your clock until you enrolled, and you wouldn't enroll until you've taken the 2 tests above. So, my math shows you working on only 10-14 exams/courses and that's if you can't pull together a PLA. A test schedule of 2 per month is absolutely reasonable, so at 1 per month, you'll be so incredibly bored that you'll probably start on your MBA.

[andrewtn]

Let me help you with a tiny issue, you'll need to factor in the 2 tests I mentioned above (A&I Lit, SS&H) which total 12 credits. That overflows 3 into the bachelor's degree. Also, you have an unused PE class that gives another 3 into the free electives. So, upon filing for AA graduation, you'll actually be starting your bachelor's with 66 finished. Now, that leaves 54, and of those, you'll have 12 that can come from FEMA ($0 can be done in a long weekend) leaving only 42 to be completed in the year. Also, that would be a full 12 months, because you would't start your clock until you enrolled, and you wouldn't enroll until you've taken the 2 tests above. So, my math shows you working on only 10-14 exams/courses and that's if you can't pull together a PLA. A test schedule of 2 per month is absolutely reasonable, so at 1 per month, you'll be so incredibly bored that you'll probably start on your MBA.

Jennifer, when you said that 12 can come from FEMA is that the case for the Business Admin Mgmt @ TESC? I'll have to search the forums to learn about this FEMA option. I paid the registration fee to TESC today and I also requested transcripts from all 3 of my previous CC's so hopefully I have some confirmation of what is needed in the coming weeks. Thanks!