Biology/Natural Sciences major—transferring into the Big 3

[wow]

No matter which school you choose, you'll have to come up with a plan to earn the sciences. As I'm sure you know, lab sciences can be expensive and take a lot of time.  As such, I wouldn't make it one percent harder on myself than it has to be. If you're finding EC to be tricky to navigate, drop them and pursue either TESU or COSC.  

I will toss something else into the mix that you might not have considered.  Have you thought of a master's degree INSTEAD of a bachelor's?

I also have a BA in Social Science, and a while back I'd considered nursing or med school - so I started accumulating my science courses. It felt frustrating to have so many undergrad credits not rolled into a degree, so I did try to do that (TESU) but it was just too much lower level general science - it felt a little like a waste of time.  But, I did take a graduate level biology course through Harvard University's extension program and loved it.
You can do a master's at Harvard University's extension without an undergrad degree in science.  Their master's degrees are 12 courses and you have to take 2 on campus.  They do have short sessions in January or summer when people can travel to do that - the rest is online.

https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academ...te-degrees

Bioengineering & Nanotechnology
Biology
Biotechnology

Thanks for your reply, and you have lots of good ideas to think about. Funny, it did occur to me on Friday to look more carefully at the entry requirements for various MS in Biology (and related fields). An MS would be more expensive, but at some places it wouldn't much more than a BA from TESU.

Of course, many of these programs say they require a bachelor's in biology "or related field," but most also have petition processes in place for prospective students who don't meet admission requirements to a T. So I've added "making calls to online masters in biology programs" to my to-do list for next week.

I hadn't come across Harvard Extension yet and I like the entry requirements, so thank you for pointing it out! The tuition is probably out of my reach, though being self-employed, these things fluctuate ... if I have an especially good year, it could work.

I wonder, do employers etc get confused by the title of the degree? MLA in Extension studies, field: Biology, makes it sound like I have a master's in running extension programs in biology.

Oh, back to the bachelor's discussion—for people looking for reasonably priced upper-level biology courses online, I found that UC San Diego Extension offers quite a few. No admissions process or prerequisites, and they offer at least one UL lab. They also have one intro level bio lab. Logan University offers UL online lab courses in human biology, $1100/4 credits.

For lower levels, New Mexico Junior College has Bio 1 & 2, Microbiology, and Anatomy & Physiology online with at-home lab. For out of state students, its $356/course (4 credits) or $828 per semester (I believe up to 18 credits,  but I'd have to doublecheck). NMJC only has one chemistry lab course online, and it's not geared toward majors. Study.com has two semesters of chem labs. From the course equivalency list on the  study.com site, it looks like they'd be accepted toward a TESU or COSC bio major, but I haven't reviewed this with an advisor so can't say for certain.

UNE offers completely online organic chem. It's not cheap. Oregon State (?) in Corvallis offers online organic chemistry with a  2-week residency for lab. If you have access to a community or state college where you can take organic chemistry, that's probably cheaper.