Trying to make the most out of my situation

[rachel83az]

If you're active duty military, you can do TESU pretty cheaply. You would want to take 8 LL TECEP exams (similar in concept to CLEP) for a total of 24 credits. This fulfills residency requirements (only applies to active duty military and not to everyone) for a cost of $3600. It also fulfills TESU's RA credit requirements. The capstone & cornerstone would be another $1500 ($250 x 6 credits). https://www.tesu.edu/military/tuition-fees You'd fill out the remainder of your degree with approximately 6 UL courses at Study.com (and/or Davar, if you want a business degree) for about $600. Maybe Coopersmith (depends on the degree). Then 2-3 months of Sophia for a cost of about $250 for ~3 months. Total cost for a TESU degree for active duty military? About $6000.

UMPI would be a bit cheaper at around $4000 total. However, UMPI has a competency-based model that includes a larger proportion of papers (instead of mostly exams). You'd also need a science-with-a-lab - Study.com has one. And foreign language. InstantCert is a quick and easy way to get credit for Spanish. If you know German or Italian, you could do the CLEP.

If you prefer papers, UMPI is definitely the way to go. If you want to deal with mostly exams, TESU.

As others have said already, you cannot get a degree using just CLEP exams. CLEP exams are entirely lower-level credit (first and second year of university-equivalent). You need a number of upper-level courses (3rd/4th year, usually signified by course numbers starting with 300 or 400) in order to get a degree. UMPI requires that you take at least 30 credits with them, including most of your UL courses. TESU only requires you to take 6 credits with them and they don't care where your UL credits come from. But they also have a residency requirement and military personnel can meet this with the TECEP exams.