please help me finish my tesu or exc degree plan

[any4yeardegree]

Hiya!  I've been an occasional lurker here for a while.  ACE's new policy with transcripts is forcing me to make a decision very soon or risk losing 16 hard-earned credits.  I would prefer not to enroll at this time and I'm struggling with ACE's seeming not-well thought out decision, but that's another thread.

I'm focusing on TESU or Excelsior, because I don't want to take additional RA classes (now required by COSC) other than the required capstone and cornerstone.

I'm focusing on a BALS, BSLS or General Studies, however, it can be any degree - it really does not matter.  I just need a 4 year degree from a RA college.  I'm not concerned about an AOS or concentration, unless things seem to fall into place and it happens organically, on the path to my BA or BS.

Here's a list of my RA credits, my non-traditional credits and what I think I have remaining. 

Can you make suggestions about how to complete my degree using mostly Sophia and SDC?  

Based on my current credits and goal, which is likely to be the best choice - TESU or Excelsior or are there options I've missed?   

Affordability is the most important consideration, followed by the most number of credits that would hopefully transfer, followed by ease of completion using mostly Sophia and SDC.

Thanks!


RA UNIVERSITY CREDITS EARNED:
(Listed by Class, Credit, Grade, Source)

• Research Skills, 1, A, RA college
  
• Accounting I, 3, D, RA college
  
• Understanding Computers & Data Processing (>20 yrs), 3, B, RA college
  
• Software Applications & Spreadsheets (>20 yrs), 2, B, RA college
  
• Phys Ed, 1, C, RA college
  

RA college credits total:  10


NON-TRADITIONAL CREDITS EARNED:
(Listed by Class, Credit, Grade/Score)
DSST:

• General Anthropology, 3, 411
  
• Intro to World Religions, 3, 402
  
• Intro to Computing, 3, 474
  
• Management Info Systems, 3, 427  (Hoping this is UL credit)
  
• Health/Human Dev, 3, 461
  
• Soviet Union, History, 3, need score, UL
  
• Ethics in America, 3, 404
  
• Personal Finance, 3, 451
  
• Principles of Supervision, 3, 422
  

DSST credits total:  27


ALEKS:

• Principles of Statistics, 3, A
  
• College Algebra, 3, A
  
• Trigonometry, 3, C
  

ALEKS credits total:  9


TEEX:

• Cyber Ethics, 2
  
• Cyber Law & White-Collar Crime, 2
  
• Info Sec for Everyone, 1
  

TEEX credits total:  5


SOPHIA:

• Intro to Sociology, 3, A
  

AICPCU:

• Ethics & CPCU Code, 2
  

Total Credits Earned:  56



CREDITS REMAINING:

SOPHIA:

• Visual Communications (in Progress)
  

• Public Speaking
  
• Intro to Ethics
  
• Ancient Greek Philosophers
  
• Art History I
  
• Art History II
  
• US History I
  
• US History II
  
• Intro to Psychology
  
• Macroeconomics
  
• Human Biology
  
• Environmental Science
  
• Business Law
  
• Principles of Finance (does this duplicate DSST Personal Finance?)
  

SDC:

• Eng Comp 1
  
• Eng Comp 2
  
• Biology Lab
  
• UL credits
  

(UL Credits Earned (if DSST MIS is UL):  6;  UL Credits Needed:  12)



TESU OR EXC:

• Capstone
  
• Cornerstone
  

Total of Remaining Credits:  64

[person8612]

FWIW, COSC's RA credit requirement doesn't necessarily need to be fulfilled via classes. TECEP and UExcel exams are also considered to be RA credit sources. This would potentially add a few hundred dollars worth of expenses (though you may end up saving money given COSC's lower overall costs) and require travel for proctoring, but it does potentially expand your options.

[bjcheung77]

Hey there... You pretty much decided on which school and program you wanted with the "UL credits earned/needed".  That indicates you're heavily into TESU's 18 UL requirements VS the 30 UL needed at Excelsior.  It won't really matter which school/program, your focus right now is to complete all the Sophia.org courses that doesn't duplicate your current courses, every single one of them but the college readiness and foundation courses.  Excelsior accepts these remedial courses for transfer but TESU doesn't...

If you're really feeling you want to excel and speed up a bit faster, you can work on CSM Learn, InstantCertCredit, and do all the FREE TEEX and/or Death Investigation course from TEEX at $75 for 3 easy UL credits.  If you're going Excelsior, that UL course may not transfer over.  When you're done with the Sophia.org courses, update this thread, for now, I would recommend to follow the Generic TESU BALS template on the wiki here:  https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/Ge...egree_Plan

The last piece of the puzzle, is the Upper Level requirements, you can decide if you want to go for a concentration such as Humanities or Social Science, if not, a BALS with no concentration would work as well.  The main providers for these UL I recommend are as follows: Coopersmith, Davar, Study.com, you can pick and choose your courses by viewing their course lists and update this thread with the courses that interest you.

[rachel83az]

The personal finance DSST and Sophia's Principles of Finance do not duplicate one another at TESU. You're good there. Unfortunately, DSST MIS does not come in as UL credit. It's a 200-level.

Although cost and ease of transferring credits seem to be unrelated, they are really one and the same thing. For instance, Excelsior accepts many fewer classes in transfer than TESU does and you could wind up having to take some courses from them. COSC also doesn't accept as many sources, plus they have the RA requirement, again driving costs up. Because of these issues, they're all roughly in the same ballpark as one another as far as anticipated costs go. Because of this, TESU is almost certainly going to be the best choice for you here.

The wiki has a list of Sophia equivalencies. The DSST list for TESU can be found at https://www.tesu.edu/academics/catalog/dsst Definitely do as suggested and complete everything at Sophia that doesn't duplicate what you've already done. Unless it was specifically managerial accounting, Sophia's Accounting would probably duplicate what you've taken previously.

[dfrecore]

First: what kind of credit you get depends on when you took the DSST exams - so if you took the MIS course prior to 12/31/2012, then it's UL. After that, it's LL. World Religions was UL prior to 12/31/15. So the number of UL courses you need depends on what these come in as.

For TESU, you need the following:
1) don't take so many Sophia courses, as you don't need all of those
2) don't take Sophia's Human Bio AND SDC's Bio w/Lab - they duplicate (and you don't need a lab for TESU or EC)
3) oral comm - use SDC or Sophia
4) written comm (you can't use SDC, TESU won't take those, so use Sophia)
5) civic engagement - use ICC's American Government
6) 4 UL AOS courses (unless you only need 2)

For EC
I'm not certain they've gotten rid of the depths requirement, which means you'd need 2 depths in the AOS - in which case you're going to have to be much more concentrated in what you take, it can't be random. You'll also need 30cr of UL - 6cr can come from the Cornerstone and Capstone, so you'll need 24cr of those.

You CAN use SDC's English Comp courses here
You don't need civic engagement or public speaking
You don't need a lab science
You don't need to take so many Sophia courses
You MAY need 2 depths - check on that - I'd probably ask about this prior to doing anything else. It's going to direct all of your future courses.

[rachel83az]

Human Bio at Sophia is BIO-101 while bio w/ lab is BIO-113. It's Intro biology WITHOUT lab at SDC that's BIO-101 and will duplicate. If you are in the US and actually want to take another bio because you like biology, head over to OnlineDegree.com and take "Organisms and Ecosystems" for $9. That comes in as BIO-105. Excelsior also accepts OnlineDegree's bio course but they don't give an equivalency for it.

[TwinMom]

For EC

You MAY need 2 depths - check on that - I'd probably ask about this prior to doing anything else.  It's going to direct all of your future courses.

I was on the webinar for Excelsior last week and asked about the depths.  Even though it is still in the catalog as required, the representative doing the webinar said it is not required any longer.

[any4yeardegree]

FWIW, COSC's RA credit requirement doesn't necessarily need to be fulfilled via classes. TECEP and UExcel exams are also considered to be RA credit sources. This would potentially add a few hundred dollars worth of expenses (though you may end up saving money given COSC's lower overall costs) and require travel for proctoring, but it does potentially expand your options.

I thought TECEPs could be taken at home using their approved proctor?   

I'll look into the TECEPs & UExcels.  I wonder how many are UL?  It could be worth giving COSC another look if there are 4 or TECEPs or UExcels (or combo) that are UL.

I'm running out of time to make a decision if I'm forced to get my transcript sent from ACE by the last day of November.

[ROYISAGIRL]

FWIW, COSC's RA credit requirement doesn't necessarily need to be fulfilled via classes. TECEP and UExcel exams are also considered to be RA credit sources. This would potentially add a few hundred dollars worth of expenses (though you may end up saving money given COSC's lower overall costs) and require travel for proctoring, but it does potentially expand your options.

I thought TECEPs could be taken at home using their approved proctor?   

I'll look into the TECEPs & UExcels.  I wonder how many are UL?  It could be worth giving COSC another look if there are 4 or TECEPs or UExcels (or combo) that are UL.

I'm running out of time to make a decision if I'm forced to get my transcript sent from ACE by the last day of November.

You can take TECPs at home via ProctorU. You can also do it via paper with certain proctors.

Sent from my SM-G981V using DegreeForum.net mobile app

[any4yeardegree]

Hey there... You pretty much decided on which school and program you wanted with the "UL credits earned/needed".  That indicates you're heavily into TESU's 18 UL requirements VS the 30 UL needed at Excelsior.  It won't really matter which school/program, your focus right now is to complete all the Sophia.org courses that doesn't duplicate your current courses, every single one of them but the college readiness and foundation courses.  Excelsior accepts these remedial courses for transfer but TESU doesn't...

If you're really feeling you want to excel and speed up a bit faster, you can work on CSM Learn, InstantCertCredit, and do all the FREE TEEX and/or Death Investigation course from TEEX at $75 for 3 easy UL credits.  If you're going Excelsior, that UL course may not transfer over.  When you're done with the Sophia.org courses, update this thread, for now, I would recommend to follow the Generic TESU BALS template on the wiki here:  https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/Ge...egree_Plan

The last piece of the puzzle, is the Upper Level requirements, you can decide if you want to go for a concentration such as Humanities or Social Science, if not, a BALS with no concentration would work as well.  The main providers for these UL I recommend are as follows: Coopersmith, Davar, Study.com, you can pick and choose your courses by viewing their course lists and update this thread with the courses that interest you.

The reason I'm attempting to focus on school right now is so I don't lose the credits on my ACE transcript.  Over the weekend, I emailed ACE to ask what happens to credits if I don't transfer them by the end of November but they haven't answered yet.

I have 6 months free with Sophia so I'm going to hurry through everything I complete with them before I move on to other vendors. 

Does CSM Learn duplicate College Algebra?  Other than the cybersecurity courses at teex, what else is free?  I'm not really a fan of teex since they seem to take an excessively long time but affordability is a priority for me since I'm currently between jobs.

I'm thinking of BALS with no concentration.  

You all know waaay more than I do, however, I must admit, I'm bit concerned about Coopersmith, Davar & TEEX and a few others, since they seem to be in the grouping with provisionally approved by TESU.  https://www.tesu.edu/academics/catalog/provider-directory