My opinion only:
Excelsior is cheaper if you are not planning on taking a lot of classes and are transferring in everything- they're $1100 or so less. If you are going to take a lot of physical classes, TESC's credit hour charges are less and they take FEMA for free (it's $60/credit with Excelsior since you have to actually go through Frederick Community College). Excelsior has the Writing 1 credit and Info Lit 1 credit that are $290/credit (you can actually take the Info Lit through another school, I believe Penn Foster, for cheaper but I digress), so that is extra cost. Adding that up, they're about the same.

If both are the same you may want to go with Excelsior (even though I didn't lol). They are MUCH more user-friendly, easier to understand, people here on the boards have posted a ton of Excelsior degree plans to help with what you should take/test out of. They also (if it matters) let you divide your enrollment fee into payments and pay it monthly for a bit, whereas TESC requires the $2300 all at once.

Reasons I went with Edison: I like their diploma much more, my degree (English) was easier for me to complete and I liked it more than Excelsior's Literature in English major, I wanted to have what amounted to a minor in Emergency Mgmt so I have a lot of FEMA classes, the grad schools I want to go to (I'm torn between 3) all said they preferred Edison degrees (no, they didn't really give me a reason). I'm not scared by bad customer service and I just liked the school better itself. But I definitely understand why people say Edison is not for everyone- you'll do fine if you already know what you want to study, want to pay your money and just finish. There's not a lot of handholding at TESC or guidance and they're extremely direct. Oh, and it took 7 weeks to get my evaluation until I complained to the Dean.

__________________
To complete degree:
October 2008 at TESC- Nutrition, American Cinema, Geology, and Children's Lit- 3.5 weeks to go!!!


108 credits, B.A. English, TESC

Tests passed: A/I Lit-73, Mgmt-71, Amer Lit-73, Tech Writing-64, Criminal Justice-56, Here's to Your Health-65, Law Enforcement-60

She's here! Violet Lenore July 15, 2008 @ 12:10 am
#2 due July 4, 2009 (uh oh!)