Hi, new Here, with a couple questions.

[Merlin]

Thank you for responding.  You said " You don't even have to decide on a school, until you're further along" but wouldn't I have to decide on a BA degree from a specific school first so I know what classes are required and then I can see if I can test my way out of them all?

It is generally best if you have a school in mind before you start taking courses for exactly the reason you mention. There are some General Education (GE) courses that you will usually have to take no matter what college you decide to graduate from, but after that it will all depend on the specific college and degree plan selected. Without a plan, you'll just be taking courses willy nilly and hope they fit into a degree.

Here on this forum we generally recommend people look at one of the "Big 3" (so named because they are the most flexible schools in terms of accepting transfer credits) which refers to: Thomas Edison State University (TESU), Charter Oak State College (COSC), or Excelsior College (EC).

In addition to the Big 3, we also recommend Western Governors University (WGU) for people who are interested in a degree in teaching, IT/CS, or business.  Particularly for people who are just starting out, since WGU is the least expensive overall (if you approach it right) and doesn't require as many Gen Ed credits as other schools. However, WGU only allows you to transfer in 90 credits max towards a bachelor's degree, where the Big 3 will allow you to transfer in between 114 and 117 credits.

The reason why the Big 3 only accept up to 114-117 credits is that all three colleges require you to take an online Capstone course direct from the school, two also require you to take a cornerstone (intro) course as well.

All of the schools mentioned above are pretty generous about accepting credits from most any legitimate credit source which are usually credit recommended by ACE (which includes CLEP/DSST as well as many online course providers) or other colleges. The Big 3 also accept courses recommended by NCCRS (an alternate to ACE), though I don't believe WGU does; however, WGU also accepts credit from nationally accredited colleges where the Big 3 generally only accept regional accreditation (Excelsior will accept some NA credits, but I don't know how it works).

As for the fastest degree, most here will probably suggest either a liberal arts degree (BALS for example) or a business degree (like a BSBA), since both of those are can be completed using online courses and CLEP/DSST without having to take extra courses direct from a college.  You can also get these degrees from any of the big 3. For that TESU used to be the favorite (there are a ton of people who have degrees from there on this forum, so a lot of experts) but they have recently become more expensive and more difficult to get a fast degree from. COSC is rapidly becoming the favorite of the big 3 now.

However, in my opinion, the fastest (and cheapest) degree right now would probably be a BS in Business Management from WGU, but it also depends on how much time you have available to work on courses and how quickly you can get through them.

If you take a few days (weeks) and read through the forums here, doing searches and reviewing older posts, you should be able to get up to speed pretty quickly and that will give you a better idea of what the current landscape looks like. From there you may be able to create an idea of what degree and maybe even which school you want to look at. You should also check out the degree forum wiki, it also has a ton of great information for people new to the forum.