Degree Plan for Biology

[cookderosa]

An important consideration for this degree is how you'll pay for your upper level courses and science labs.  While it is true that you can take them somewhere and transfer them over, you're looking at no less than $10,000 to do that- and you won't be able to use financial aid at 2 schools to do that (TESU + somewhere else), so you'll have to technically apply for financial aid at the school where you'll be taking your sciences instead of TESU.  I paid cash out of pocket for my sciences- and my lab sciences cost more than my entire AA and BA degree combined.
While it wasn't mentioned in the thread, my advice is to seriously look at taking your core sciences at your in-state community college (many offer distance learning) because this will be the best potential for saving cash.  If your local CC offers tuition in the $100 range, you'll cut the costs WAY down.  You''ll still have the (expensive) hurdle of filling in your upper level credits, which you should figure out ahead of starting this degree.

Ok, dumb question.  In looking through this thread, I could not find where the OP asked about financial aid, or anything of that nature.  Did I miss something??

No, but this specific degree would have financial aid implications because of not being able to use Financial Aid to complete the degree at TESU- so I thought I'd mention it. Not everyone has 10-12 grand sitting around, many students use student loans- and that would be exceptionally tricky for this. If you use loans for your CC then you won't be able to use them for upper levels. If you use them for upper levels, then you won't be able to use them at TESU. And so on.... This degree is just expensive- no matter how you cut it. I believe it would be a fraction of the price to do Natural Sciences, but if a person wants Biology....that begs the question "why" which almost always takes us down the pre-professional degree path..... which then piles on more decision making that adds even more cost.

To Zetineb, it wouldn't matter if your local school accepted CLEP or not- you wouldn't need them to, it would be TESU's CLEP policy that would matter. What you need that you can't get via CLEP are the lab sciences. There are alternative credit sources if you piece-meal this together, but as an example- finding General Physics 1 and 2 with lab is no easy task - and if you use an alternative credit source you for sure are paying cash. Beyond that, it's the upper levels that are hard to find- and again, they can get pricy. You can do enough upper level sciences through Harvard Extension, but $$$$$.