(12-17-2020, 08:53 PM)rachel83az Wrote: That plan does not take the new policy into account. But it is a good place to start. Since you are starting from scratch, I would suggest:

1. Apply to and enroll at TESU right away to lock in the current catalog year and get full student privileges.
2. Sign up for Sophia for $149 for the year. This is a STEAL. The price is only good until the end of December so you want to snag that first. Then you'll have 12 months to work on that.
3. Plan to take 8 courses from TEL Learning. It doesn't matter which, but you may want to avoid the communications/public speaking one due to the sheer amount of work involved. You could also take some from ASU Earned Admissions or similar but TEL Learning is the cheapest.
4. Take everything at Sophia that fills out your general eds and doesn't overlap with the courses you've chosen at TEL Learning.
5. Take the AOS requirements at Study.com/Coopersmith.

You might want to move the AOS to the top of the list, at least the UL requirements, but that's essentially what you need to do. Whether or not you can do this in a year will depend upon how much time you have to devote to your studies. It's certainly possible that you'll have your degree by next Christmas but it's not guaranteed.

(12-17-2020, 09:20 PM)rachel83az Wrote: Yes. Start with the ULs and the other AOS courses; those will remain the same. You could take Intro to Psychology from TEL Learning ($200) or Outlier.org ($400) to get that RA credit but that would be the only change to the AOS as of right now.

A new plan is being worked on for the general education portion of the degree that should be more helpful in choosing what to take where. The gen eds should be available within the next few days; Sophia will still play a major part.

(12-17-2020, 09:20 PM)rachel83az Wrote: Yes. Start with the ULs and the other AOS courses; those will remain the same. You could take Intro to Psychology from TEL Learning ($200) or Outlier.org ($400) to get that RA credit but that would be the only change to the AOS as of right now.

A new plan is being worked on for the general education portion of the degree that should be more helpful in choosing what to take where. The gen eds should be available within the next few days; Sophia will still play a major part.

(12-17-2020, 10:18 PM)dfrecore Wrote: First, I would say that you should see if you qualify for financial aid, because that will make a difference in which school you choose.  There are many options that you could look at other than the Big 3 if you had aid.

For instance, if you could go to Snow College for their Accelerated Online AA competency-based degree ($1743 for 4 months), you might want to consider that - especially if it's fully paid for.  Then you have 16 weeks to take as many courses as possible, and they will transfer to several other schools.  You could actually do this in conjunction with Sophia if you wanted, but at $108/week, and with it fully paid for, it will probably get you at least 24cr of RA.  They accept Sophia (and other ACE) so you could probably get an AA pretty quickly.

You could look at Capella's Flexpath program, which is also Competency-based ($2300 for 12 weeks).  They have a BS in Psych and take ACE credit.

Or you can stick with one of the Big 3, and get a BA in Psych from TESU, a BS in Psych from EC, or a BS in Psych from COSC.  I think TESU is the easiest one to get out of those 3 for the Psych major.  You'd need 24cr of RA from somewhere, and this is where Snow or TEL or one of those would come in.  Snow is eligible for Financial Aid but TEL is not, so that's why it makes a difference in making this choice.

All of the options are good, now it's just a matter of figuring out the different costs for all of them.  If you aren't sure, apply for FAFSA.  If you know for certain you won't qualify for aid, then no worries, that's when you narrow it down - and the best way to do that is to figure out a budget and make the most of your money.

(12-17-2020, 11:10 PM)rachel83az Wrote: RA credit essentially means credit that comes from a university source rather than an alternative provider like Sophia or SDC. TEL Learning courses are RA because they get added to a University transcript. As far as TESU is concerned, these courses come from the university itself.

TESU's new policy means that you need:
6 credits (2 classes) at TESU - capstone/cornerstone
24 credits (8 classes) of credit from RA sources
90 credits (30 classes) from ACE/NCCRS sources like Sophia, Study.com, and Coopersmith

I've made a start creating a plan for the updated policies. You can see (some) of the suggestions here: https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/Sample_TESU_General_Education_Requirements_Roadmap