Need help deciding between the big three.

[dfrecore]

I am enrolled at TESU and have done a combination of straighterline and study.com and sophia courses, then transferred them to TESU. My experience with TESU has been very good. I would say, if you ever need help, EMAIL them rather than call them. If you call, someone rude answers the phone, lol. But by email, everyone is super helpful and patient.

I will say that when I was trying to choose a school, I spoke to Excelsior College and decided against them because they said i had to pay thousands up front (i believe it was $2000) in order to enroll as a non-traditional student (i.e. study.com and test outs). They essentially make you pay the equivalent of a residency waiver fee up FRONT, regardless of when you want to graduate. So once you pay, you are stuck with them.

I spoke to COSC and they seemed super nice and helpful, and familiar with nontraditional degree students (like us on the forum). I decided against them because, at the time, they took the actual grade from Straighterline/Study courses, rather than just a pass/fail. So if I did badly on a Straighterline course it would affect my overall GPA. I did not want to go this route because I had some bad experiences with Straighterline courses, where the final exams were worded poorly and I would miss them due to not understanding the question.  I am not sure if COSC still does this or not.

So just for others on here in the future:

1) TESU has terrible customer service in general, and their advisors routinely don't know the answers to questions, and give incorrect information regularly.  Email, phone whatever, your chances of the answer they give being correct is 50/50.  You NEED this forum if you want to test out of that school.

2) We don't tell people to enroll with EC until they are almost ready to take the capstone and graduate.  Their enrollment fee is $1095 (so yes, similar to the residency waiver), and you do pay it up front, so no sense paying it without having had a full eval, knowing where all of your courses are going to come in, and then taking the capstone.  They are still cheaper/faster than TESU, because they don't require a cornerstone.

3) COSC will only give grades for SL/Study.com if you want them to!  If you don't, then you just send those courses over to your ACE transcript, and send that to them, and they get on as a P or CR (not sure which).  No messing with the GPA.  This leaves the ability to only transfer any A courses over there if you want.  We also don't tell people to enroll at COSC until you're ready to take the Cornerstone and Capstone, because you pay per-term fees of $319 (with Study.com or SL discount). That can add up if you need to spend several terms there.