Excelsior or TESC

[momtomany5]

Alissa,

Excellent write-up on the comparisons of the three.

Thanks!

They are about the same as far as difficulty. All three have the typical sort of general education requirements along with requirements within the major and upper level credit. You will be taking a lot of the same exams as the students from the other schools no matter which one you choose. All three schools will take a lot, if not all, of your prior credits.

Some people would prefer COSC because they only require 15 upper level credits, but have stricter general ed. requirements, while others would prefer EC because they only require 3 credits in math and English for general ed., but require 30 upper level credits. It depends on what you perceive to be difficult.

The very best way to decide which one is best for you is to sit down and draw up a degree plan fitting in the credits you already have as best you can for all three schools. Plan out which exams or courses you will use to fulfill requirements.Throw in a cost comparison while you are doing that. Then you will see which school offers you the path of least resistance to getting a degree (fewest courses or exams), as well as which one is within your budget. All three schools have the degree requirements on their websites. (You may have to start a free MyEC account to access the single-subject major requirements on EC's site.)This will help you avoid surprises later. It won't be exact, but it will give you the best idea of which school is for you. I have done this for other people, and I usually found that TESC would require fewer exams/courses, but EC would be cheaper.

However, now that TESC requires 300-level or above courses for upper-level, I think the number and difficulty of exams/courses will be about the same, but TESC will be more expensive for their general degrees. I believe TESC still accepts 200-level as upper level for a single-subject major? If you have a community college near you offering the courses you need then that may be the degree plan that will require the least amount of credit at the 300-level or above, but busy work there will be. History or psychology as a major might work well with this for TESC, since there are so many exams in those two fields. Your best bet for avoiding busy work is to come up with the degree plan that requires mostly exams, not courses. The cost comparison thread NAP posted the link to has several examples of degree plans that are almost all testing-out road maps.

Other comparisons that are often mentioned:

COSC and EC require a pesky Info Lit credit, but TESC doesn't.

COSC and EC graduate students every 3 months, TESC graduates students every four months. [Edit] Excelsior and COSC graduate students every other month, TESC is every three or four months. Oops![End Edit]

COSC and TESC accept CLEP English Comp. w/essay, EC does not. You can still test out of the English requirement with either the ECE or the Uexcel exam.

COSC and EC allow monthly payment plans, TESC does not.

People generally like the names of TESC or COSC better than EC.

TESC accepts raw fema credits (25? 27?), but EC and COSC require that they be transcribed through another school, costing $$. However, COSC and EC both accept more fema credits than TESC once they've been transcribed.

COSC has a capstone course requirement. EC and TESC don't.

TESC accepts some "D" grades, P.E., and those one-credit introduction to college courses, EC doesn't.

EC and COSC award letter grades and give GPAs for prior credit that has been letter-graded, as well as for many exams. TESC only letter grades and awards GPAs for courses taken from TESC.

Customer service comparisons usually favor either COSC or EC, but this is subjective and many posters here have had no trouble with TESC service.