TESU - I am Probably Doing This All Wrong

[Prloko]

You can take classes at any college you want, but if you're asking a math question, it's going to cost you a loan to take classes at TESU whereas you can just use your Pell and attend for free somewhere else. All of your lower level 100/200 can be accomplished through a community college (any- take your pick) and sent back in to TESU. You can also keep paying cash for Saylor courses at $25 each. When you're full of your 100/200 options, you can use some of the upper level exams at Excelsior or TESC (and a handful of DSST) and still probably cash-flow everything one at a time. There *may* come a time when taking upper level classes makes sense (I took mine at TESU) but if you're just talking about the math, I'd drop the loan, switch your Pell to your community college and just keep sending everything to TESU for now.

P.S. your Saylor courses are 3 credits for $25 bucks. TESU classes are $1500 bucks for 3 credits -and 10 years worth of student loan repayment if you're financing.

This is excellent advice, and loans should be minimized. But we are forgetting about the $2,000 residency waiver. If the OP is planning on taking courses (16 residency credits) and qualifies for the full pell grant (currently $5815). The out of pocket cost for the remainder of the tuition is around $2100, which is not that far off from the waiver. Or considering the fact that the OP is planning on taking two courses, that is $5000tuition - 1453 (pell grant for 1 quarter) which is around $3500 out of pocket.