Speed-Running a Bachelor’s at 18 to Prep for a MS in PAs

[Jonathan Whatley]

Do not worry about a five-year or any recency limitation to undergraduate transfer credit at the schools widely used here, in your case. Recency is almost exclusively an issue with credit and degrees related to information technology (e.g., degrees from the School of IT at WGU), or in graduate degrees.

Recency may be important with PA schools for their specific prerequisite classes especially the sciences.

Excellent call to take prerequisite classes locally if you're at all able.

I'm going to step a little outside DegreeForum's generic advice: In your case, I'd put a real premium on graded RA credit over alt-credit. Your path to a bachelor's might not even include any alt-credit (e.g., CLEP, DSST, ACE/NCCRS providers such as Sophia and Study.com).

One reason is that you already have 40 semester hours of RA community college credit that will go towards general education and overall credit hour requirements.

Another is that PA schools will weigh heavily your overall and science GPAs which will be derived from graded RA credit. Your experience and confidence indicates you can deliver good grades. Even if alt-credit gives you a small advantage in time or money towards completion of your bachelor's degree, the work you put into alt-credit will not contribute to your GPA.

UMPI YourPace would be a good choice for you. It awards graded RA credit, with typically friendly grading if you meet the reasonable expectations, it's highly accelerable and it's affordable. Accounting is available as a major, concentration within Business Administration, or minor. Health Administration is not currently available in the competency-based online YourPace format but it's under development and might become available as a major or minor fall or next year.