Will graduate schools in the United States and abroad accept an online college degree

[HogwartsSchool]

If time and financial resources are not a concern.
1. UMPI for 60 credits, still need excellent grades.
2. Transfer to Penn (Ivy League school), it's Penn LPS Online’s Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences.
3. Graduate with a bachelor's with magna cum laude. Now you have a bachelor's degree from a Ivy League school in the US.
4. Apply to Harvard Graduate School. The overall acceptance rate won't change for Harvard's program but your odds might improve some because you graduated from a Ivy League School.

Of course there is always the other route I mentioned earlier. At the end of the day, it's all about drive, time and financial resources.

Summa cum laude is higher and would be better than magna cum laude. Not nearly as easy as it sounds. Keep in mind that Latin Honors varies by school as well.

Yes, I know, I mentioned Summa cum laude for the alternate route in a previous post, graduating from UMPI. Getting Summa cum laude would be far easier at UMPI than Penn, that's why I changed to Magna cum laude for Penn.

[KSoul]

If time and financial resources are not a concern.
1. UMPI for 60 credits, still need excellent grades.
2. Transfer to Penn (Ivy League school), it's Penn LPS Online’s Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences.
3. Graduate with a bachelor's with magna cum laude. Now you have a bachelor's degree from a Ivy League school in the US.
4. Apply to Harvard Graduate School. The overall acceptance rate won't change for Harvard's program but your odds might improve some because you graduated from a Ivy League School.

Of course there is always the other route I mentioned earlier. At the end of the day, it's all about drive, time and financial resources.

Summa cum laude is higher and would be better than magna cum laude. Not nearly as easy as it sounds. Keep in mind that Latin Honors varies by school as well.

I think the point was to get at least manga cum laude. I agree that it is more complex than one would expect to secure summa cum laude. I thought I would breeze to it, and between managing the speed of completion and the quality of work submitted, it was a tricky balance to hit those high marks.

[nykorn]

My degree was entirely online from Scandinavia. Nowhere on the degree or transcript does it state they were online classes. Domestic ranking-wise it's actually one of the worst schools in the country, but is still a normal accredited school. 

Haven't had any problems except for where a foreign degree itself is a problem. I'm a native English speaker, all my gradeschool education was in America but my college was abroad. I had a hiring manager insist that company policy was to only accept degrees 100% taught in English from native English speaking countries, supposedly it was a visa requirement. Checking the visa laws there was no such legal requirement, it was some sort of discrimination tactic. 

10 years ago Americans assumed any online degree was a diploma mill but that's no longer the case.

[raycathode]

If the goal is to get into a Harvard graduate school, it really depends on WHICH specific program OP is trying to get into. The criteria for applying to the different graduate/professional schools are all unique, and the individual programs have different rates of acceptance. For the Mid-Career MPA and the "regular" MPA at Kennedy School for example, the acceptance rate is over 50% for both. I think someone on another forum figured out several programs at Divinity School were well over 50%.
GSAS programs are harder to get in. Business School programs are a rung above that. And Law School is another rung higher in selectivity.

I did an alumni directory keyword search for "Big 3" college undergrads. There is a section you can fill in "Non-Harvard degrees" on your alumni profile. It turned up the following results:

1 TESU grad holds a Harvard Dinivity School MDiv.
1 COSC grad holds a Kennedy School MPA.
2 Excelsior grads hold Kennedy School MPAs.
1 Excelsior grad holds a Harvard Graduate School of Design MDS
1 Excelsior grad impressively holds both a GSAS MA and a Harvard Law School JD
1 Excelsior grad holds a Harvard Business School MBA

I found a few WGU faculty/employees but nobody listing a WGU bachelor's as their non-Harvard degree. Note this does not constitute a complete list of every non-Extension school Harvard grad - only the ones who have A. opted to be listed in the directory and B. went through the trouble of filling out their non-Harvard degrees on their profile.

There are likely more that are opted out of being listed or just didn't add in their non-Harvard degrees. The system doesn't auto-populate your entry with previous degrees. You have to fill it out manually. A surprising number of alumni are listed, yet have never logged into the directory.

Like Hogwart said. Where your degree is from is only part of the package. If you made a strong GPA on at least 60 regionally accredited credit hours, score high on the GRE (if applicable) and have a good application package, I think you have a very realistic shot. If an Ivy master's degree is your goal, you can achieve it.

[nykorn]

2. How can I determine if schools in other countries/continents like Canada, Europe, and Asia will accept these degrees?

1) Check legal requirements for the types of degrees needed to get work or student visas.
2) Find several foreign schools in the country you are interested in, and check their admissions requirements.
3) Find government job advertisements in the country you're interested in, and check their degree requirements.

In smaller countries, you go to schools based on the subject you want to study and not the reputation - for example there may be only 1 school in the entire country that teaches 3D graphics so you have no choice but to go to that one. For that reason, in many countries the subject studied is far more important than the school it was studied at.

Even when you go to a highly ranked school in your country, that can be seen like dirt or be totally unknown in another country. As an example, Karolinska is, to Swedish people, seen as the best medical school in all of Europe. But how many Americans have even heard of it? Now say the opposite, and you go to the best medical school in America. American healthcare and medicine, as an entire industry, is seen as worse than the Swedish one overall, so you going to the "best" school in America may not help as much as you think. In a foreign country you are most likely not going to get accepted specifically because you went to Harvard, you will get accepted because you went to "a school" and have "a degree in the required prerequisite subject". In some countries the school you apply to itself does not even actually look at your application, all school admissions decisions are outsourced to a national service and the schools themselves are just in charge of running the classes and reporting your registrations/credits/grades to the national service.

Some people think GPA is the most important, but again that depends. In Sweden sometimes your high school grades matter more than your university grades (or are equal weight to your university grades) in the admissions process, even if you have finished university degrees. At the same time, in Sweden I have never been denied registration to a class due to poor grades - I have only ever been denied because I did a late registration and spots were full.

[ss20ts]

Thanks for replying with lots of information. 
Is Excelsior entirely an online college? If I choose TESU, Can I do a few courses on campus if I want to?

EU is entirely online. Same with TESU. You can't take courses in person. Campus is an office building.

[ArielB74]

I did my BA online at ASU; while my transcript doesn't say that it was online, it's pretty obvious because I live on the East Coast.  I realize it's not Harvard, but I was able to get into Johns Hopkins.  They looked at my college transcript (I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a 4.0 GPA), an essay, my resume, and two recommendations.  Of course, I'm doing the program online BUT the same program is also offered on-campus.

[bjcheung77]

People who do online degrees still have to put in good amount of work and create numerous assignments or complete assessments, there are more requirements than what many think... Some associate online with an easier to complete degree, essentially, it's the same as the butt-in-seat option, and the medium they use is mostly online for blended/hybrid classes or entirely online. It doesn't really mean easier, it's the energy, time, etc, it's all required to complete the class, it may be sorted differently...

[Duneranger]

People who do online degrees still have to put in good amount of work and create numerous assignments or complete assessments, there are more requirements than what many think... Some associate online with an easier to complete degree, essentially, it's the same as the butt-in-seat option, and the medium they use is mostly online for blended/hybrid classes or entirely online.  It doesn't really mean easier, it's the energy, time, etc, it's all required to complete the class, it may be sorted differently...

I will say UMPI was in general MUCH easier than my previous B&M BS degree. (even the gen eds were harder at my old school) and Sophia classes were nearly a joke. I got a 4.0 without much effort but barely scraped by with a 3.4 in my previous degree. Nearly everyone on Discord or here is getting honors, whereas honors were pretty rare when I was in undergrad. There is definitely grade inflation.

These schools (UMPI, Excelsior, TESU) certainly qualify people to apply to Ivys but there are also negatives. Its hard foster connections to get a good LOR, next to 0 opportunities to do research and they are just not well known schools. Are there people out there who did fast CBE online schools who got into Ivys? Probably, but the chances are lower than John Doe who went to more well known schools with opportunities for solid networking/research etc.

CBE accelerated degrees are great for checking the box for busy professionals who need that degree tick but not necessarily for getting into top tier grad programs that have single digit acceptance rates.

[Old Guy]

My advice - If someone is smart, young, and has money don't even think of these schools. These schools better suit underachievers, old people who missed the boat, or people with limited financial resources. You are aiming for a degree to tick a box. If you aspire to be an academic go to the best school you can afford and be prepared to work your butt off and above all write write write until you can write 20 pages without breaking a sweat. I have a cousin who teaches at a university. In his 30 year career he has written 60 or more scholarly papers. You don't learn how to do that banging out multiple-guess exams. That being said, you could be the 1 out of 10,000 who turns a bottom rung degree into an academic career.