Is excelsior still the quickest and cheapest?

[bjcheung77]

I'm sorry everyone.  Forgive me, but I'm not familiar with a lot of this stuff and the various terms, so I am super confused right now.  

Can I take any Sophia classes that Excelsior will give credit for or do I need specific ones?
I would recommend taking all the courses that can transfer to Excelsior and on the transfer link I have above and below.

Someone said that Excelsior is no longer accepting comp 1 and 2 from Sophia is that true?  
Verify with Excelsior after you apply and have an advisor: Here's a list of Sophia.org options for Excelsior: Sophia

By my calculation, if I took every Sophia class I can that's on Excelsior's list excluding calc and programming, that would give me 92 credits so I'd just have to get the other 21 from somewhere.  

You basically want to take up to a max of 90 lower level credits, having a couple or more credits should be fine.  You need 30 Upper Level credits, 3 from your cornerstone and 3 from your capstone at Excelsior.  Choose your UL courses wisely using mainly Study.com or another provider.

I just want to make sure, I'm not wasting time taking things I don't need to or that won't be counted. 
No worries, I skimmed through that link I have and scanned the number of courses, you have at least 33 courses and up to 99 credits to transfer, you just need to email your advisor and make sure all 99 can be transferred and those 9 extra credits are upper level.  

Thanks everyone!

[rachel83az]

Per other students in this forum, Excelsior won't advise you properly until after you enroll in your first class(es) at the school. They're even worse than TESU in that regard. If you want to stick with Excelsior, one suggestion would be to take as many credits at Sophia as possible that have 2 or fewer Touchstones. See https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/So...lency_List for assistance there.

Once you hit 60+ credits, apply to Excelsior and register for the UL cornerstone. (Or Maybe the 1-credit Info Literacy?) That should unlock full access to advising.

In regards to English Comp, I think the issue has been arising with Business degrees. They have slightly different requirements than BALS or BSLA degrees. Sophia English Comp should still work fine with Excelsior for a Liberal Studies degree. However, I believe that the Study.com courses that Excelsior accepts (English 204 & English 205 https://study.com/college/school/excelsior-college.html ) fewer/easier assignments to complete than Sophia does.

English 204 has 5 assignments listed, same as Sophia's English Comp I. English 205 has 6 assignments listed, to the 7 of Sophia's English Comp II. Fortunately, with Study.com, you don't need to complete every assignment to finish the course (with Sophia, you do). With Study.com, you get 100% on the quizzes (easy enough, once you get the hang of it), then score as high as you can on the final exam. That tells you how many points you need to get from your assignments.

A SDC course has a pool of 300 points, and you must reach at least 210 to pass. For these two courses specifically, 30 points come from the quizzes and up to 60 points can come from the exam. The remaining 210 points are from assignments. If you score 80% on the final exam, that's 48 points + 30 points from quizzes = 78. Then you'd need at least 132 points from the assignments to pass. If you look at the SDC assignments, you'll see that they give you rubrics showing you how many points each assignment is worth and what you must do to get those points. Pick out the assignments that are easiest for you to write, giving you the most points, and keep track of your final grade for each. Once you hit your point goal, you can submit blank assignments or just a couple of half-hearted paragraphs to get a grade for those assignments and to pass the class.

By doing it this way, you can potentially cut the number of assignments needed for the English Comp courses approximately in half. Instead of 5 and 7 assignments needed for each at Sophia, you might be able to get away with just doing 3 or 4 at Study.com.

[bjcheung77]

And it depends if you want to use Sophia.org or Study.com - I think either one will do just fine for you. It really boils down to which service you're more familiar with and like more - either proctored exams or non-proctored, and the number of assignments you can handle. Since I recommend Sophia.org and Study.com for lower level and upper level, you may want to "package" these to see how you do with the non-touchstone courses on Sophia.org, then work on the ones with touchstones, and decide if you want to continue on with Sophia.org for the English classes or jump over to Study.com to try out the upper levels...

[mikehart82]

Per other students in this forum, Excelsior won't advise you properly until after you enroll in your first class(es) at the school. They're even worse than TESU in that regard. If you want to stick with Excelsior, one suggestion would be to take as many credits at Sophia as possible that have 2 or fewer Touchstones. See https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/So...lency_List for assistance there.

Once you hit 60+ credits, apply to Excelsior and register for the UL cornerstone. (Or Maybe the 1-credit Info Literacy?) That should unlock full access to advising.

In regards to English Comp, I think the issue has been arising with Business degrees. They have slightly different requirements than BALS or BSLA degrees. Sophia English Comp should still work fine with Excelsior for a Liberal Studies degree. However, I believe that the Study.com courses that Excelsior accepts (English 204 & English 205 https://study.com/college/school/excelsior-college.html ) fewer/easier assignments to complete than Sophia does.

English 204 has 5 assignments listed, same as Sophia's English Comp I. English 205 has 6 assignments listed, to the 7 of Sophia's English Comp II. Fortunately, with Study.com, you don't need to complete every assignment to finish the course (with Sophia, you do). With Study.com, you get 100% on the quizzes (easy enough, once you get the hang of it), then score as high as you can on the final exam. That tells you how many points you need to get from your assignments.

A SDC course has a pool of 300 points, and you must reach at least 210 to pass. For these two courses specifically, 30 points come from the quizzes and up to 60 points can come from the exam. The remaining 210 points are from assignments. If you score 80% on the final exam, that's 48 points + 30 points from quizzes = 78. Then you'd need at least 132 points from the assignments to pass. If you look at the SDC assignments, you'll see that they give you rubrics showing you how many points each assignment is worth and what you must do to get those points. Pick out the assignments that are easiest for you to write, giving you the most points, and keep track of your final grade for each. Once you hit your point goal, you can submit blank assignments or just a couple of half-hearted paragraphs to get a grade for those assignments and to pass the class.

By doing it this way, you can potentially cut the number of assignments needed for the English Comp courses approximately in half. Instead of 5 and 7 assignments needed for each at Sophia, you might be able to get away with just doing 3 or 4 at Study.com.

I just signed up for Study.com and enrolled in comp 1.  It might be fewer assignments, but the course itself seems MUCH longer and more involved.  My paper for Sophia's business law course was graded ahead of schedule.