Need help deciding between the big three.

[saraholson]

My roommate is doing a teaching degree thru WGU right now, and he had previously done a couple courses thru Study.com. He says that Study.com is actually higher quality course material compared to WGU (so far). I am sure it varies class by class.

When I first started my journey, WGU would not admit me because I had zero college credits. They sent me away, saying i had to do some classes thru Straighterline first, then take a 'readiness assessment'. Well, sending me away was the best thing they ever did for me, because then I found this forum! I will add, my experience with WGU "mentors" and customer service has been BAD, bad bad. Same with my roommate. The dedicated mentor he has for his class now, often does not show up to their meetings and gives dumb excuses like 'oh i forgot' or 'oh i was running late'. She wastes his time because he is sitting there waiting around at home for their video chat.

I am enrolled at TESU and have done a combination of straighterline and study.com and sophia courses, then transferred them to TESU. My experience with TESU has been very good. I would say, if you ever need help, EMAIL them rather than call them. If you call, someone rude answers the phone, lol. But by email, everyone is super helpful and patient.

I chose TESU just so my degree would say 'university' rather than 'college'. That seems shallow but it was important to me.

I will say that when I was trying to choose a school, I spoke to Excelsior College and decided against them because they said i had to pay thousands up front (i believe it was $2000) in order to enroll as a non-traditional student (i.e. study.com and test outs). They essentially make you pay the equivalent of a residency waiver fee up FRONT, regardless of when you want to graduate. So once you pay, you are stuck with them.

I spoke to COSC and they seemed super nice and helpful, and familiar with nontraditional degree students (like us on the forum). I decided against them because, at the time, they took the actual grade from Straighterline/Study courses, rather than just a pass/fail. So if I did badly on a Straighterline course it would affect my overall GPA. I did not want to go this route because I had some bad experiences with Straighterline courses, where the final exams were worded poorly and I would miss them due to not understanding the question. I am not sure if COSC still does this or not.

Just my personal two cents!

[TwinMom]

My roommate is doing a teaching degree thru WGU right now, and he had previously done a couple courses thru Study.com. He says that Study.com is actually higher quality course material  compared to WGU (so far). I am sure it varies class by class.

When I first started my journey, WGU would not admit me because I had zero college credits. They sent me away, saying i had to do some classes thru Straighterline first, then take a 'readiness assessment'. Well, sending me away was the best thing they ever did for me, because then I found this forum! I will add, my experience with WGU "mentors" and customer service has been BAD, bad bad. Same with my roommate. The dedicated mentor he has for his class now, often does not show up to their meetings and gives dumb excuses like 'oh i forgot' or 'oh i was running late'. She wastes his time because he is sitting there waiting around at home for their video chat.

I am enrolled at TESU and have done a combination of straighterline and study.com and sophia courses, then transferred them to TESU. My experience with TESU has been very good. I would say, if you ever need help, EMAIL them rather than call them. If you call, someone rude answers the phone, lol. But by email, everyone is super helpful and patient.

I chose TESU just so my degree would say 'university' rather than 'college'. That seems shallow but it was important to me.

I will say that when I was trying to choose a school, I spoke to Excelsior College and decided against them because they said i had to pay thousands up front (i believe it was $2000) in order to enroll as a non-traditional student (i.e. study.com and test outs). They essentially make you pay the equivalent of a residency waiver fee up FRONT, regardless of when you want to graduate. So once you pay, you are stuck with them.

I spoke to COSC and they seemed super nice and helpful, and familiar with nontraditional degree students (like us on the forum). I decided against them because, at the time, they took the actual grade from Straighterline/Study courses, rather than just a pass/fail. So if I did badly on a Straighterline course it would affect my overall GPA. I did not want to go this route because I had some bad experiences with Straighterline courses, where the final exams were worded poorly and I would miss them due to not understanding the question.  I am not sure if COSC still does this or not.

Just my personal two cents!

Thanks for sharing your experience!

[dfrecore]

I am enrolled at TESU and have done a combination of straighterline and study.com and sophia courses, then transferred them to TESU. My experience with TESU has been very good. I would say, if you ever need help, EMAIL them rather than call them. If you call, someone rude answers the phone, lol. But by email, everyone is super helpful and patient.

I will say that when I was trying to choose a school, I spoke to Excelsior College and decided against them because they said i had to pay thousands up front (i believe it was $2000) in order to enroll as a non-traditional student (i.e. study.com and test outs). They essentially make you pay the equivalent of a residency waiver fee up FRONT, regardless of when you want to graduate. So once you pay, you are stuck with them.

I spoke to COSC and they seemed super nice and helpful, and familiar with nontraditional degree students (like us on the forum). I decided against them because, at the time, they took the actual grade from Straighterline/Study courses, rather than just a pass/fail. So if I did badly on a Straighterline course it would affect my overall GPA. I did not want to go this route because I had some bad experiences with Straighterline courses, where the final exams were worded poorly and I would miss them due to not understanding the question.  I am not sure if COSC still does this or not.

So just for others on here in the future:

1) TESU has terrible customer service in general, and their advisors routinely don't know the answers to questions, and give incorrect information regularly.  Email, phone whatever, your chances of the answer they give being correct is 50/50.  You NEED this forum if you want to test out of that school.

2) We don't tell people to enroll with EC until they are almost ready to take the capstone and graduate.  Their enrollment fee is $1095 (so yes, similar to the residency waiver), and you do pay it up front, so no sense paying it without having had a full eval, knowing where all of your courses are going to come in, and then taking the capstone.  They are still cheaper/faster than TESU, because they don't require a cornerstone.

3) COSC will only give grades for SL/Study.com if you want them to!  If you don't, then you just send those courses over to your ACE transcript, and send that to them, and they get on as a P or CR (not sure which).  No messing with the GPA.  This leaves the ability to only transfer any A courses over there if you want.  We also don't tell people to enroll at COSC until you're ready to take the Cornerstone and Capstone, because you pay per-term fees of $319 (with Study.com or SL discount). That can add up if you need to spend several terms there.

[Merlin]

A couple of quick comments related to saraholson's post about her and her roommate's WGU experience from my perspective for those who may consider attending WGU in the future:

1. WGU program mentors are mainly there to encourage you to keep moving forward to complete your academic progress requirements. Like any mentor, they vary in quality and mentoring style. Some are terrible or incompatible with your learning style and some are excellent. The nice thing is if you get a bad or incompatible mentor you can "fire" them and ask for another that suits you better. This is also helpful since it helps WGU know so they can find better mentors. I lucked out and got an amazing mentor at the first go, so I've been very happy so far. So don't let a bad course mentor hold you back.
   
   
2. Some of WGU's courses are older and are purchased from textbook and course developers just like the ones from Straighterline so their quality varies as well. I've heard horror stories about the poor quality of some of their older courses, but I haven't run into any terrible ones yet. Their newer courses tend to be internally developed and better suited for competency-based learning.
   

For anyone considering going to WGU for a bachelor's degree, you should still take the same path that you would for the big 3. That is, you should take the lion's share of your courses via Straighterline, Study.com, Sophia, etc. (up to 90 credits worth), transfer them to WGU, and then just take the balance (like the harder to find courses) from WGU directly. This allows you can work at your own pace and make the decision to finish the last 10 courses whenever you're ready. It also means you can complete a degree at WGU in a single 6-month term, which is much less expensive than TESU or any of the other big 3 schools. Using this approach may also allow people to avoid the concerns Sarah raised above since you'll be nearly done by the time you sign up so you won't really need to worry about the program mentor or any of the other issues.

That's my perspective anyway.