How Strict is TESU on the 100 Credit Rule

[Merlin]

One thing to keep in mind...

Previously TESU was allowing students to unlock their capstone course as long as they had 100+ credits applied to their evaluation, English Comp I and II completed with a C/CR or better, and most (meaning all but like 1 or 2) of their Core/Area of Study courses completed and on their evaluation (not in transit) at the time the unlock petition was reviewed.

However, recently we have seen a few people complain about having their petition declined because they didn't have ALL their Core/AoS courses completed, despite meeting the rest of the requirements listed above. So it may be that they are moving towards that as the official policy. That or perhaps there are multiple people who can make the decision for a petition and some are just more (or less) strict than others.

Given the above, it seems like the prudent thing is to plan ahead to meet the stricter requirements before petitioning, just in case.

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I gotta say this new strict policy really makes things more difficult than it used to be. Really hard to graduate on time you have to plan everything out more in advance now.

I suspect that the impetus for this change is to ensure that more people complete the capstone courses. Based on my own experience, it seems like there is a high drop-out rate on the capstone courses, possibly due to the fact that some people were registering for and taking the courses before they had gained the relevant experience and skills.

The courses are intended to be a culmination of a degree, and as such students are expected to be able to demonstrate their ability to apply what they have learned from their academic journey to the problems identified in the capstone (or to their research). When a significant number of students drop out (or fail the course) because they cannot demonstrate knowledge of the core subjects of their degree, or cannot meet the writing requirements due to lack of experience, then the school should step in to figure out why and fix it. I'm pretty sure that this capstone lock is the result of how they have chosen to address this problem.

I agree that it requires people to plan ahead a bit more, but it doesn't seem that unreasonable to me. Of course, my plan from the start was that the capstone would be the final course I took to earn my degree so this change wouldn't have impacted that. Assuming I didn't run into some unexpected issue towards the end that interfered with my plans. I'm glad I took the capstone last anyway since it would have sucked to be stuck trying to complete other courses while working on the capstone at the same time.