CCs that accepts out of country international students?

[sanantone]

It doesn't hurt to ask TESU again. I did ask about the Saylor courses about a year or two ago, and TESU told me that they would not count as programming courses.

I had a good experience with NMJC. Clovis was another option I looked at for science classes.

[Merlin]

[...]
As mentioned above, I'm interested in the computer science degree program in HES so I'm hoping to be able to transfer in as many credits as I can and then do the rest with them. I read here that in COSC you can get letter grades from SL. I wonder if that will work for eventual transfer to a university.
[...]

FYI, regardless of the concentration or field of study, every HES bachelor's degree is a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies. Any minor, concentration, or field of study (Computer Science in this case) is listed only on the transcript, not on the diploma itself. Though this may not matter depending on your goals. The HES degrees confuse some people, so I wanted to make sure you are aware it is a BALS degree, not a BACS degree.

For COSC, the way the letter grades thing works is that the courses you take at Straighterline (and Study.com I believe) can be transferred directly to COSC (rather than transfer via ACE). Courses transferred directly will reflect a letter grade which can be applied to your overall GPA from the school. This means when you graduate you will have a GPA based on more than just a handful of credits.

However, unless you graduate from COSC the GPA you earn won't matter since you cannot transfer courses from COSC to another university unless they were taken at COSC directly. Transcripts must always come directly from the school (or provider) that issued the credits. This is why each school always asks for all transcripts from any schools you've attended in the past.

So, for example, if you take a bunch of Straighterline courses and transfer them to COSC, and then transfer to HES, the Straighterline credits will not appear at all on the COSC transcript. You would have to send a transcript from ACE to HES to get credit for those courses; but, as far as I know HES does not accept ACE, so they will not transfer anyway. The same applies to Study.com or any other alternative credit provider.

If you want graded credits that can transfer to other schools, you'll need to take actual college courses from an RA school.

[dfrecore]

I'm from Singapore and have a 3-year bachelor's degree from Australia from 16 years ago which is not equivalent to a 4-year bachelor's degree in the US. I was thinking that since it's not recognized, I can probably do a 4-year US bachelor's degree online. I also have 2 - 3 classes from a US CC that can probably transfer into the prospective university.

Why wouldn't you just get your degree evaluated and transfer all those credits?  Most US schools will accept international students, with evaluated credits by a reputable company.  Here's a list from TESU:

• Academic Credentials Evaluation Institute, Inc. (ACEI)
  
  
• Center for Applied Research, Evaluations & Education, Inc.
  
  
• Educational Credential Evaluators, Inc. (ECE) 
  
  
• World Educational Services, Inc. (WES)
  
  
• SDR Educational Consultants
  
  
• SpanTran Evaluation Services
  
  
• Transcript Research
  

[celerius]

FYI, regardless of the concentration or field of study, every HES bachelor's degree is a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies. Any minor, concentration, or field of study (Computer Science in this case) is listed only on the transcript, not on the diploma itself. Though this may not matter depending on your goals. The HES degrees confuse some people, so I wanted to make sure you are aware it is a BALS degree, not a BACS degree.

I was aware of this and thank you for the heads up.

For COSC, the way the letter grades thing works is that the courses you take at Straighterline (and Study.com I believe) can be transferred directly to COSC (rather than transfer via ACE). Courses transferred directly will reflect a letter grade which can be applied to your overall GPA from the school. This means when you graduate you will have a GPA based on more than just a handful of credits.

However, unless you graduate from COSC the GPA you earn won't matter since you cannot transfer courses from COSC to another university unless they were taken at COSC directly. Transcripts must always come directly from the school (or provider) that issued the credits. This is why each school always asks for all transcripts from any schools you've attended in the past.

So, for example, if you take a bunch of Straighterline courses and transfer them to COSC, and then transfer to HES, the Straighterline credits will not appear at all on the COSC transcript. You would have to send a transcript from ACE to HES to get credit for those courses; but, as far as I know HES does not accept ACE, so they will not transfer anyway. The same applies to Study.com or any other alternative credit provider.

If you want graded credits that can transfer to other schools, you'll need to take actual college courses from an RA school.

Thank you very much for this very useful piece of information.

---

Why wouldn't you just get your degree evaluated and transfer all those credits?  Most US schools will accept international students, with evaluated credits by a reputable company.  Here's a list from TESU:

• Academic Credentials Evaluation Institute, Inc. (ACEI)
  
  
• Center for Applied Research, Evaluations & Education, Inc.
  
  
• Educational Credential Evaluators, Inc. (ECE)
  
  
• World Educational Services, Inc. (WES)
  
  
• SDR Educational Consultants
  
  
• SpanTran Evaluation Services
  
  
• Transcript Research
  

Hi dfrecore. Thank you for your advice and the list of credential evaluators. I intend to get all my transcripts evaluated to find out where I stand in the US education system. By the way, when choosing an evaluator, would you recommend to go for the cheapest or are there evaluators that are better somehow than others? Or does this not matter at all and just pick an evaluator that your prospective university recognizes?

[davewill]

Hi dfrecore. Thank you for your advice and the list of credential evaluators. I intend to get all my transcripts evaluated to find out where I stand in the US education system. By the way, when choosing an evaluator, would you recommend to go for the cheapest or are there evaluators that are better somehow than others? Or does this not matter at all and just pick an evaluator that your prospective university recognizes?

Different schools accept different evaluators. You need to check the websites of the schools you would be interested in to see which ones they accept. Hopefully you can find one they all accept. I've seen a few people here use WES, I think because all of the Big3 accept them. If you find you have multiple choices, THEN you can worry about price.

[armstrongsubero]

I used WES, to avoid problems courier your transcript and pay for rush everything.

[celerius]

Different schools accept different evaluators. You need to check the websites of the schools you would be interested in to see which ones they accept. Hopefully you can find one they all accept. I've seen a few people here use WES, I think because all of the Big3 accept them. If you find you have multiple choices, THEN you can worry about price.

I used WES, to avoid problems courier your transcript and pay for rush everything.

Thank you both for the WES recommendation.

[nyvrem]

I'm from Singapore and have a 3-year bachelor's degree from Australia from 16 years ago which is not equivalent to a 4-year bachelor's degree in the US. I was thinking that since it's not recognized, I can probably do a 4-year US bachelor's degree online. I also have 2 - 3 classes from a US CC that can probably transfer into the prospective university.

I did some fiddling around with the WES free degree equivalency tool. It says a 3 year degree from Australia is equivalent to a bachelor's degree from the US.

You can play around with

https://applications.wes.org/degree-equivalency-tool/

Of course it's not firm, best to have your stuff officially evaluated.

Note that if you have a polytechnic diploma or GCE A levels - Those are worth college credits as well. A full A level cert (Ds and above) gets you around 24 credit hours (again, you'll need to get your stuff evaluated) Not sure how much you'll get from a poly diploma.

Also, just an FYI, you might find it a challenge to get employed in civil service using a HES degree. They actually know HES is a part time DL degree. 

If you're looking to enter IT, maybe you could consider the UMass second degree in IT program (I have a friend who graduated from James Cook who's doing it now. They accepted his 3 year psychology degree.)

https://continuinged.uml.edu/degrees/und...degree.cfm

Anyways, good luck

- i'm from SG as well.

[celerius]

I did some fiddling around with the WES free degree equivalency tool. It says a 3 year degree from Australia is equivalent to a bachelor's degree from the US.

You can play around with

https://applications.wes.org/degree-equivalency-tool/

Of course it's not firm, best to have your stuff officially evaluated.

Hey thank you for that. I gave it a go and got the same results. But I highly doubt it's accurate lol

Note that if you have a polytechnic diploma or GCE A levels - Those are worth college credits as well. A full A level cert (Ds and above) gets you around 24 credit hours (again, you'll need to get your stuff evaluated) Not sure how much you'll get from a poly diploma.

Also, just an FYI, you might find it a challenge to get employed in civil service using a HES degree. They actually know HES is a part time DL degree. 

If you're looking to enter IT, maybe you could consider the UMass second degree in IT program (I have a friend who graduated from James Cook who's doing it now. They accepted his 3 year psychology degree.)

https://continuinged.uml.edu/degrees/und...degree.cfm

Anyways, good luck

- i'm from SG as well.

I actually went from O's to CC then to the Australian uni so I don't have a diploma nor A's. I'm not intending to get employed in the civil service so that's fine. I think won't go for HES' ALB.

---

I think I may go with getting a 4-year degree via the big3 first then think about grad school. That's probably the fastest and most cost effective route.

My 3-year bachelor degree from Australia consists of all IT classes and 1 math class. I also have an intro to biology, comp. and reading, and intro to programming from 2 CCs. The classes from Australia were in 2000-2002 and the CC classes were in 1999. That would make them 16-17 years old. If I want to get a computer science degree from one of the big3, would they still transfer just fine? I read a post on this forum that classes that old may not transfer into the AOS.

Is it possible to send all my transcripts to the big3 and find out how much can be transferred before I enroll?

Thanks

[bjcheung77]

Yes, you can apply to all three and get WES or ECE to send them your course by course evaluation. It should be $205 plus, $30, $30 for two duplicate copies. If you order the duplicates afterwards it gets expensive. WES and ECE are my only recommendations, the other agencies COSC and Excelsior will not accept.