Psychology Degree Plan and class advice needed

[Tokyokacie]

Hi everyone, and thank you for this wonderful forum. It is helping me so much. I scour these forums all the time, but I feel stuck lately. Could anyone guide me? 

The conundrum-  I am going for a bachelor’s in psychology. I’m currently thinking of Charter Oak, but also wondering if I should get as many credits done through this exam approach and then transfer them to charter oak for about 90 credits and then apply to finish at University of Florida Online since it’s supposed to be a good program. This is mainly because I want to apply to grad school in Florida for either Clinical Psych or Counseling psych (probably first a Master’s and then maybe a PsyD or PhD later on since I’ll likely need a Master’s degree to be competitive.


 I need a little help with this degree plan. ( by my count, I currently have 27 credits)
(To say I’m bad at Math is an understatement… even basic Math is a struggle for me. Knowing this, which class should I take? (Same for statistics) 
Also I have taken a lot of Sophia credits, not many left I haven’t taken except Micro & Macroeconomics? Or do I need to take them? (Also math and statistics I still need but need advice)


Still need: 
English Comp 2- SDC? 
A Math class 
A science lab (can I take just a lab since I already took 2 science classes at Sophia?) (where should I look for this?)
Statistics
Probably 2 or 3 electives?  (Should I take another art class or another history class or anything at all? Can I just take a bunch of psych electives?)
I assume ethical decision-making and Info literacy requirements are in the cornerstone? Or maybe the capstone? I'm confused about this. ?

I need 39 credits in Psychology and 30 must be UPPER level. How can I do this? (I saw that Coopersmith offers a couple and SDC has a couple also but not many in the RA category) 


Credits taken at Sophia: 

 English Composition 1
Public Speaking
Biology 
Environmental science
 US History Two
World Religions
 Intro to psych
Art History 1 

Credits from Study.com:

Intro to sociology

12 credits in Japanese language from Idaho University through partner KCP International Japanese language school in Tokyo, Japan. 



For Charter Oak State College, they state: 

A Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology requires 120 credits. 
Thirty (30) credits must be upper level; 
60 credits must be liberal arts; 
and a minimum of 34 must meet the general education requirements.
Bachelor of Science in Psychology:

1. General Education requirements must be met.
   
   
2. Major: minimum of 39 credits
   
   
3. Electives and prerequisites added to General Education and Major requirements bring total credits to 120.
   

Thank you to the real hero of my life that took the time to read this. I am immensely grateful. ? 

[bjcheung77]

There are a few things you have to investigate before you begin your journey, research what programs and schools you want to get into at the Masters/PhD level and their requirements.  Once you know your requirements for undergrad and graduate school, work on the prerequisites.  The main reason you don't want to go to COSC and transfer into U of Florida for a Bachelors of Psych, is because the 90 credits you're transferring into COSC and then transferring to U of F most likely will not work as that's trying to launder your credits from a non RA source, and you're wasting energy, money, and time doing this!

What you might want to do is research the requirements for transfer into U of F - here's an example, they allow 60 credits from a community college, but they don't show anything in regards to alternative credit: https://catalog.ufl.edu/UGRD/academic-re...credittext  Just by reading this, you may be better off doing something else or doing this differently.  Here is the program info: https://catalog.ufl.edu/UGRD/colleges-sc...SY_BA_UFO/ and here's the info for graduate school: https://psych.ufl.edu/undergrad/post-bac...sychology/ and their admin link: https://psych.ufl.edu/graduate/prospecti...dmissions/

Just by skimming the admin link, you need a 3.8 GPA on the last 60 credits and their program is VERY competitive.  As I know Psychology is a rather common major people go into, many may not get accepted into the undergrad or graduate school of their choice, you can still go for a lesser known school or go for one of the competency based degree providers.  I would highly recommend if you want to go to a program that's better known, you will need to work on those final 60 credits of your degree program.  That means for the first two years, sure, go for CLEP/ACE credits, but once you get to junior/senior year, go for the degree at the school in question.

Here's a recent thread:  I got this individual to go for a BALS SS or Psych concentration at TESU, then a MS Psych at Walden.  They finished the Walden program in under two terms (6 months, 1 term is 3 months).  This is the cheapest MS Psych, as it's only $2700/term.  I would recommend applying when they have the 50% off for the lifetime of the program, if you finish in 6 months (2 terms), it'll be under $3000! Link: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...o-Learning  Walden Link: https://www.waldenu.edu/online-masters-p...logy#tempo

[Tokyokacie]

Wow, Bjcheung! You're so fast! I can't believe you answered so quickly with all of these links. Thank you so much for your work. ? I was wondering about that transfer issue... I'm new to the idea of college and alternative credits, so I find the whole system rather confusing.
Perhaps it would be best to see if University of FL will accept at least 60 credits from other sources. (How do I go about requesting these from Sophia and SDC and then have them sent to UF?)

Thank you for the other thread, I'll check it and Walden out.
I appreciate your time. (:

[rachel83az]

FYI, most schools do NOT accept SDC/Sophia/other ACE sources. If you want University of Florida, you're probably going to need "real" credits from RA sources. You can get some cheap ones from places like TEL, ASU, and Olivet but they'll still cost more than SDC and Sophia.

That said, you will need to create an account at YourAcclaim.com to send the Sophia credits and SDC will allow you to send a transcript to a school right from their dashboard.

[ctcarl]

If you can use NCCRS credits towards your degree program...you can look for your prospective school here...Coopersmith has a good selection of UL Psych courses.  I completed six, and I certainly didn't take them all.

[dfrecore]

You can't "launder" your alternative credits through one school to get into another. Going to COSC isn't going to get those credits to be accepted by UofF. UofF will ask to see where the credits came from, and you'll have to send ACE/Acclaim/NCCRS transcripts to them, which they won't accept.

Instead, you need to find out how to get into UofF, and do that in the cheapest way possible. It's probably going to mean TEL, Outlier, EA/ASU, ONU courses.

[Tokyokacie]

FYI, most schools do NOT accept SDC/Sophia/other ACE sources. If you want University of Florida, you're probably going to need "real" credits from RA sources. You can get some cheap ones from places like TEL, ASU, and Olivet but they'll still cost more than SDC and Sophia.

That said, you will need to create an account at YourAcclaim.com to send the Sophia credits and SDC will allow you to send a transcript to a school right from their dashboard. 

Thank you @Rachel83az! I will set this up ASAP. I've heard of TEL, ASU, but not Olivet, so I'll have to do some research. Can I be enrolled at these different places at one time just to be able to transfer the credits or should I just choose one of them?

---

You can't "launder" your alternative credits through one school to get into another.  Going to COSC isn't going to get those credits to be accepted by UofF. UofF will ask to see where the credits came from, and you'll have to send ACE/Acclaim/NCCRS transcripts to them, which they won't accept.

Instead, you need to find out how to get into UofF, and do that in the cheapest way possible.  It's probably going to mean TEL, Outlier, EA/ASU, ONU courses.

I'd never heard of laundering credits til this thread. It is an interesting concept. I just assumed I needed to take classes for credits and then send them somewhere, but this whole college thing is much more complex than I realized. With the help of good people like you, though, I am beginning to put the pieces together. So if I got an AA degree through TESU or Charter Oak, through a mix of Sophia/SDC and actual TESU/charter Oak courses, most universities wouldn't accept the AA degree for entry into a bachelor's program? 

ps. Thank you for your kindness and taking the time to answer this.

[rachel83az]

No, it's up to the individual school in question whether or not they will accept the credits as transcripted. If a school doesn't accept ACE credits then they're not going to fully accept an associate's degree that was awarded mostly/entirely with ACE credits. It is sometimes possible to transfer an AA as a whole credit block due to reciprocity agreements between schools but that is the exception and not the rule. These block-credit transfers would only happen if you took all of your classes at that particular school, too, because they tend not to even accept any ACE/NCCRS credits.

I would highly recommend working backward: figure out what the grad schools that you're interested in want and work from there. For a super competitive grad program, you probably aren't going to be able to accelerate at all beyond taking inexpensive undergrad RA credits. Some grad schools for psych/counseling want a specific accreditation and none of the Big 3 have that.

Suggestion: try applying to Snow College and see if you can get a scholarship/discount. https://online.snow.edu/ These are all RA credits and would have the greatest likelihood of transferring.

Your next option would be to get an associate's degree worth of classes (but not an actual associate's degree) through Olivet/TEL Learning/ASU. 60 credits through TEL would be $4000. It'd be a little less if you took several Olivet classes and a little more if you took ASU classes.

[Tokyokacie]

No, it's up to the individual school in question whether or not they will accept the credits as transcripted. If a school doesn't accept ACE credits then they're not going to fully accept an associate's degree that was awarded mostly/entirely with ACE credits. It is sometimes possible to transfer an AA as a whole credit block due to reciprocity agreements between schools but that is the exception and not the rule. These block-credit transfers would only happen if you took all of your classes at that particular school, too, because they tend not to even accept any ACE/NCCRS credits.

I would highly recommend working backward: figure out what the grad schools that you're interested in want and work from there. For a super competitive grad program, you probably aren't going to be able to accelerate at all beyond taking inexpensive undergrad RA credits. Some grad schools for psych/counseling want a specific accreditation and none of the Big 3 have that.

Suggestion: try applying to Snow College and see if you can get a scholarship/discount. https://online.snow.edu/ These are all RA credits and would have the greatest likelihood of transferring.

Your next option would be to get an associate's degree worth of classes (but not an actual associate's degree) through Olivet/TEL Learning/ASU. 60 credits through TEL would be $4000. It'd be a little less if you took several Olivet classes and a little more if you took ASU classes.

Thank you, I'll look into Snow college. It seems that I'll need the RA credits if I have any hope of grad school in the future. Disheartening to say the least, but maybe I can still save time and money this way. I appreciate your answer.