My Journey: BA in Psychology in 12 months, for under $8000

[BigBird]

Hello, everyone!

In short: Three days ago, I completed a BA in Psychology at TESU. It took me exactly 12 months to earn the 120 credit hours required, and I was able to do so by spending only $7650.

How did I do this?

Like many of you, I have been a “lurker” for quite some time. This forum and its members proved to be invaluable to the planning of my (expedited) degree path. At this point I would like to just say: Thank you! I did decide to create an account in the end to share my story, in hopes that someone else out there, who is at an earlier stage of their degree journey, may find some value or motivation in my experience.

The full story: I spent the first two decades of my life in Germany, however after graduating the equivalent to high school, rather than taking advantage of free tuition, I decided to move to the U.S. School had been torture for me, and the idea of committing another four years of my life to college did not seem enticing at the time. Instead, I wanted to work full-time and make some money! After several years of living in the States, I ended up moving to Canada, where I started my career in the corporate world. It was 2013, after having been promoted several times, that I realized that in order to climb up the career latter past middle management, I would need at least a bachelor’s degree. Not wanting to commit to going back to school full-time, I stumbled upon an online forum (it may have been this one), while looking for a creative solution on how to earn college credit while continuing to work. That was the first time I was introduced to CLEP testing. While it caught my attention (I even contacted a local testing center), I never really did anything with it.

Fast forward to 2020, I had returned to the U.S. from Canada and decided to launch my own consulting business, wanting to utilize the experience I had gained in corporate Canada. The timing could not have been any worse, with the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown coming in (to borrow from Miley Cyrus) “like a wrecking ball” in March/April. It wasn’t, however, until December that I toyed again with the idea of finally pursuing a degree. I remembered CLEP and so I began my online search, quickly finding myself in the depths of this forum. A member had shared a post about an expiring promotion for Sophia.org ($149 for 12 months instead of $79/month), and on December 31st, 2020 - I didn’t want to miss out on a good deal - I decided to sign-up. The worst case, I thought, was that I would be taking a couple of interesting courses for cheap. At that point, I had no idea what it would take to get a degree, from what school, and how transfer credits work. Compared to now, I knew absolutely nothing that day!

It only took me two or three hours of reading through wikis and discussion posts on this forum to get a rough idea of what credit hours are, how many I needed for a BA, what alternative credits are and how they can be transferred to certain schools, etc. Over the years I had developed a keen interest in the field of psychology, which also happens to overlap with my professional experience and what I want to do going forward, so it did not take me long to decide on my major. So on New Year’s Eve, just hours before the ball drop, I applied for admission at TESU. Once accepted, a week later, I familiarized myself with the academic evaluation tool and started planning my path.

Around the same time, another member of this forum had shared a post about how to use LTI (Language Testing International) to get credits for knowledge of a foreign language. This advice was gold! For $320 I was able to obtain 45 credits by taking all four tests with them (writing, speaking, reading, and listening). While they were not easy, it was certainly a great way to get a head start. German being my first language, I was able to achieve the highest score in all four of them. Another 3 credits came from the German language CLEP test.

For the remaining 72 credits required to graduate, I worked my way backwards: I knew I did not want to waste ~$3200 on paying the TESU residency waiver, especially given that the two mandatory classes would cost me over $3000 additionally, when the flat-rate tuition plan allowed me to earn 16 RA credits in one semester for ~$4600. In addition to SOS-110 and LIB-495, I chose PLA-100, PSY-322, and PSY-379 (6 credit course). Initially, I had planned on getting those out of the way early on, however then I realized that TESU requires students to have a minimum of 100 credits applied to their academic evaluation before permitting the registration of the capstone course (later in the year, I was at 99, and even the dean wouldn’t approve it, causing me to delay my journey by one month).

Once I knew I was going to eventually obtain 16 RA credits from TESU, I looked at options on how to satisfy the remaining RA credit requirement, and I ended up deciding on ASU for ENG-101, ENG-102, and SOC-101 (sociology), at $425/class, as well as two TECEPs ($150 each): CIS-107 (based on a suggestion by a member of this forum), and MAT-105 (initially I was going through ASU’s college algebra course, but given that math has always been my weakest subject, I eventually decided on the TECEP instead).

Now that I had all of my RA credits planned out, it was time to complete my general education requirements: I took one more CLEP test (American Government via ModernStates; I like what they’ve set out to do, but I honestly can’t say I really enjoyed the course), and two on onlinedegree.com: Microeconomics (I would not recommend), and Environmental Science, which I thoroughly enjoyed (again based on a post in this forum, I knew that it would transfer to TESU separately from Sophia’s ES course, which I also took). The remainder of the credits required I took through Sophia, until it was time to start taking Psychology-specific courses (including upper level), which I decided to use Study.com for. I ended up paying for five months, plus one extra exam.

Given the written-in-stone requirement of 100 credits before a student is allowed to enroll in LIB-495, I ended up taking my final semester at the end of my degree journey, starting with the October term. To save money, I purchased one of the textbooks I needed used from B&N, and rented the other from Amazon. Cramming 16 credits into 12 weeks seemed like a lot, but it’s certainly doable. While the first two weeks were probably the most stressful (besides racing to finish the capstone in the end, between Christmas and New Year’s), the workload ended up becoming more manageable once the semester was underway. I finished the term with a 4.0 GPA. Submitting my final project after more or less exactly one year was a strange, surreal experience. Now I look forward to graduating in March, and you will see me in Trenton, New Jersey for the commencement ceremony in September!

To anyone out there who is thinking about getting their degree, and to those who are already working towards this important milestone, my advice would be this: Take the time to plan and understand your entire journey ahead of time; everything you need to know can be found by digging through this forum. I never once chatted with anybody at TESU. Once you have a solid plan, work your way backwards and fill in the blanks, think about how and where you will be fulfilling each requirement. Once you’ve got a plan of attack, it all comes down to relentless execution. Some courses will be more challenging than others, some you will want to soak up all the knowledge from, and others will require all of your energy to get through. Whenever I felt stuck, rather than crawling under a blanket and not doing anything at all, I always thought about the next smallest, possible step toward my degree I could take. Sometimes that was opening up a new word document and writing down the title of the paper I had to write, other times it came down to watching a short video clip. However small of a step it may be, just putting one foot in front of the other can help you build momentum and get unstuck. Once the task is completed, pat yourself on the back and relish in the fact that you will never have to do it again ;-)

Please feel free to ask any questions below!

Wishing all of you a very happy 2022,

Danny

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zu deinem Abschluss! Always fun to meet fellow Germans "abroad."