Planning advice and strategy - student seeking to do a second degree at UMPI

[kaa314]

Hi all,

I am new to here. Have been doing some research online about second bachelor and want to seek some advice here.

Background

• International student residing outside US, graduated from a US uni >5 years ago
  
• Looking to do a second bachelor's degree to beef up my GPA as I am planning to apply MD in the US and abroad
  
• I had 3.55 GPA for my previous degree (~90 credits) 
  

Specific criteria from 3 of the schools I am considering

• School 1 in my home country - Just last 90 credits with GPA above 3.7 (my last 30 credits from my first degree is >3.7), so it is ok if I just do 60 credits at UMPI with 3.7+
  
• School 2 in my home country - 3.8 + for the best 2 years of a second bachelor, the best 2 years should consist of at least 60 credits and 3/5 courses of every semester for will need to be upper level
  
• US school - basically the higher GPA the better, preferably I need ~3.7+ for a realistic shot. I will take another 20-30 more credits from CC/BYU IS/ASU UL to meet prerequisite requirements so I will need a total of ~80-90 credits with A/A- grades 
  

With these criteria in mind, I am struggling to decide whether UMPI is the best and how I should structure the best degree plan

• As a degree holder, I believe all my GE requirements are waived. Some of the courses such as math / economics could also be waived I guess
  
• However, I am not sure if I should take them as 1) I have graduated for quite some time and it would be helpful to refresh my knowledge, and 2) I guess some of these courses are relatively easier and will help boosting my GPA. But then my course selection may also be constrained by school 2 in which I need 60% UL courses every semester
  

Other questions

• Is it possible to start at UMPI first, see if those GE / LL courses are easy and straight forward and only transfer over some courses later from my first degree?
  
• Is it easy to get an A with enough effort, as in whether courses are lenient with regrading, etc. I read from other posts that you can submit a rough draft but I wonder if this applies to most courses and whether you can secure an A by revising accordingly to comments the instructors made. How is the dropping policy like, will it show as "W" on transcript?
  
• I majored in economics and statistics in my undergrad so I am not really an essay person. I think 300-500 words would be fine but doing something like 1000-3000 words on a single topic would be pretty tough for me. Is there any long essays in BABA (any concentration)
  
• To work around school 2's UL requirement, one way I thought about is adding a minor and hitting 75 credits instead of 60, frontload 4-5 LL courses as the first 15 credits, with the remaining 60 credits having only 1-2 LL courses for every 5 courses. Is it easy to go beyond required credits to get a minor without doing another degree? I know MLS is often mentioned as a fast and easy major here, why so? Is it essay heavy and is there any other major / minor options that are relatively essay-light that I can supplement to my degree?
  
• I noticed quite a number of courses were suggested to transfer from SDC or Sophia. May I know besides BIOL in GE being too difficult, what are the main reasons these courses are transferred? I guess I should also avoid them if they are too intense.
  

Thanks a lot in advance guys!

[ss20ts]

Your first step is to have your degree evaluated to see if would transfer to the US as a bachelor's degree. If it does, then you're waived from the GEC and will not complete any general education courses. You'd have to complete 30 credits at UMPI. You don't mention what subject your degree is in or which one you're interested in fro UMPI.

You don't get to pick and choose which courses transfer to UMPI. You must submit all transcripts when you apply not after you're a student.

All YourPace courses have the option for the Rough Draft submission.

No one can say classes are an easy A. Sure I found American Government to be a piece of cake, but I'm not an international student. International students have not found that class to be a piece of cake because they didn't learn about the US government in elementary school and high school. So they have no idea how it all works.

You won't know what your grade is until a week after the session ends. Yes, if you drop a course,, you get a W on your transcripts.

The Final Assessments are papers not essays so forget 300-500 words. Think 5+ pages. Depending on the course it will be a 15+ page paper.

What UL requirement are you talking about?

[kaa314]

Your first step is to have your degree evaluated to see if would transfer to the US as a bachelor's degree. If it does, then you're waived from the GEC and will not complete any general education courses. You'd have to complete 30 credits at UMPI. You don't mention what subject your degree is in or which one you're interested in fro UMPI.

You don't get to pick and choose which courses transfer to UMPI. You must submit all transcripts when you apply not after you're a student.

All YourPace courses have the option for the Rough Draft submission.

No one can say classes are an easy A. Sure I found American Government to be a piece of cake, but I'm not an international student. International students have not found that class to be a piece of cake because they didn't learn about the US government in elementary school and high school. So they have no idea how it all works.

You won't know what your grade is until a week after the session ends. Yes, if you drop a course,, you get a W on your transcripts.

The Final Assessments are papers not essays so forget 300-500 words. Think 5+ pages. Depending on the course it will be a 15+ page paper.

What UL requirement are you talking about?

Thanks for the reply. I graduated from an RA uni in the US so I don't think transferring electives / GEC would be an issue. However, maximizing my GPA would be my key consideration so I wonder if it is possible to actually pick and choose how many credits I wish to transfer over. Do they impose a strict limit of 120 credits for a degree? Let's say I transferred over 75 credits, can I still do 90 credits and graduate with that instead of 45 (120-75)?

I haven't taken business courses in my undergrad. With my first bachelor's degree, I guess my GEC and free electives requirements are fulfilled completely.

[rachel83az]

If you want to take more than 120 credits, you can add additional minors or concentrations (which ones you can do will depend on the degree) and keep going.

[allvia]

Your first step is to have your degree evaluated to see if would transfer to the US as a bachelor's degree. If it does, then you're waived from the GEC and will not complete any general education courses. You'd have to complete 30 credits at UMPI. You don't mention what subject your degree is in or which one you're interested in fro UMPI.

You don't get to pick and choose which courses transfer to UMPI. You must submit all transcripts when you apply not after you're a student.

All YourPace courses have the option for the Rough Draft submission.

No one can say classes are an easy A. Sure I found American Government to be a piece of cake, but I'm not an international student. International students have not found that class to be a piece of cake because they didn't learn about the US government in elementary school and high school. So they have no idea how it all works.

You won't know what your grade is until a week after the session ends. Yes, if you drop a course,, you get a W on your transcripts.

The Final Assessments are papers not essays so forget 300-500 words. Think 5+ pages. Depending on the course it will be a 15+ page paper.

What UL requirement are you talking about?

Thanks for the reply. I graduated from an RA uni in the US so I don't think transferring electives / GEC would be an issue. However, maximizing my GPA would be my key consideration so I wonder if it is possible to actually pick and choose how many credits I wish to transfer over. Do they impose a strict limit of 120 credits for a degree? Let's say I transferred over 75 credits, can I still do 90 credits and graduate with that instead of 45 (120-75)?

I haven't taken business courses in my undergrad. With my first bachelor's degree, I guess my GEC and free electives requirements are fulfilled completely.

If you're goal is to improve your GPA then you don't need a 2nd degree, you need more grade courses (with high grades). You can't choose which credits you'd use for the 2nd degree - as they'd want all transcripts and use what courses applied for the new degree), but they won't impact your new degree GPA = because the school would issue an institutional GPA (not overall). To make it easier to understand, worst case scenario, lets say you graduated from XYZ school with 120 credits and they were all Cs leaving you a 'perfect' 2.0 GPA, and now you're going to get a 2nd degree from UMPI and you take their min required 30 credits and you get all A grades. Your UMPI degree transcript will show you graduated there with a 4.0, but alas - your overall GPA would still only be a 2.40 (120 credits C grades / 30 credits A grades).  Again, I'm using worst case scenario GPA from first degree, you've already stated your current GPA is higher than my example.  Now I will add that although you don't need a 2nd degree, doing so through UMPI would a pretty affordable way to earn one; just there may be cheaper/easier RA graded credits to improve your overall GPA (on the last 90 completed)

[LevelUP]

I noticed quite a number of courses were suggested to transfer from SDC or Sophia. May I know besides BIOL in GE being too difficult, what are the main reasons these courses are transferred? I guess I should also avoid them if they are too intense.
Thanks a lot in advance guys!

It's often cheaper and quicker to do courses at Sophia and SDC. Also, many people here are working full-time jobs, and when doing courses at Sophia or SDC, there aren't any schedules they have to meet.

There aren't a lot of DFW courses at UMPI. Some courses are easier than SDC, some are about the same, and some are harder than SDC.

[kaa314]

Planning to do an accounting second bachelor's at UMPI to boost my grades for grad schools and also refresh my knowledge. 

I did an undergraduate degree in economics and I guess I can get most free electives and general education waived.

I plan to repeat courses like micro macro economics and business math as I have been out of school for 6-7 years so it would be great if I can retake them to refresh my knowledge while boosting my grades at the same time.

But for other business / accounting core classes, would there be any courses that I should consider doing outside due to harsher grading / excessive workload?

I am working 1 FT job and 1 PT job but I can spare 10-12 hours a week on the classes. Preferably finishing 60 credits in 3-4 sessions. Would that be too difficult?

Thanks a lot!

[bjcheung77]

@kaa314, I missed your original thread, it's a very good introduction post, and now you have an update to do the BA Accounting or BABA Accounting. You really need to make sure of a few things. 1) Are you abandoning the entry/GPA requirements for a prospective MD for now? 2) If you're continuing onwards to the MD... Are you planning to take enough science classes for entry into the degree after the second UMPI? 3) Would it be better to focus on the requirements of entry instead of getting a higher GPA - what I mean by that is, to make sure your sciences are completed, you can use those 'on the way' to bumping the GPA. If you put your energy and time into the degree, you may be able to finish in 3 sessions - 7 courses/session.

[kaa314]

@kaa314, I missed your original thread, it's a very good introduction post, and now you have an update to do the BA Accounting or BABA Accounting.  You really need to make sure of a few things. 1) Are you abandoning the entry/GPA requirements for a prospective MD for now?  2) If you're continuing onwards to the MD... Are you planning to take enough science classes for entry into the degree after the second UMPI?  3) Would it be better to focus on the requirements of entry instead of getting a higher GPA - what I mean by that is, to make sure your sciences are completed, you can use those 'on the way' to bumping the GPA.  If you put your energy and time into the degree, you may be able to finish in 3 sessions - 7 courses/session.

Hi Bj, thanks a lot. I am planning to do my MD in Australia where they look at UG gpa but do not impose any strict science classes requirements and I am planning to move there permanently. Getting A- would be equivalent to getting a maxed GPA in Australia (but a B+ would be much lower and below admission average) so I just need to make sure I am on track to get A- or above in every classes.

I am prioritizing grades first so I can do it slowly as long as I can maintain a decent GPA. Hence I am thinking how should I position myself to get better grades here. I am looking into BA Accounting but I am not sure if some of the other majors would have lighter workload or more lenient grading.

[bjcheung77]

Another option is you can do the double major to max the GPA and use the newest/most updated GPA at UMPI to offset the previous GPA. What I mean by that is, they'll see the newest 60 credits at UMPI and X credits at your previous institution, I would recommend not using any alternative credits and spend the 4 sessions you're looking at to get the BA Accounting and a BABA Management & Leadership double major. Have you compared or looked at institutions other than the ones in Australia, such as ones in New Zealand and EU/UK MD programs?