Critique my TESU CS Plan

[TryhardTim]

Hello, I've been accepted to TESU, and am preparing to submit my degree plan to them for approval. I'd love any critique or suggestions anyone may have. Particularly, I'm curious if there are any extremely easy credits that I'm missing that I could replace some of the CLEPs with.

I'm prioritizing my degree planning like this: Cheap > Fast > Easy. That means I'll do more studying, or taking harder courses, if it means I can get the degree for less money, and in less time.


I'm counting on getting a full Pell grant, due to low income. Therefore, in order to take full advantage of the grant, while still obtaining the degree at an accelerated pace, I plan to use Study.com to get the in-state pricing for one year of comprehensive tuition at TESU. During that year, I'll be taking two classes (6 credits) every quarter, which will get me the full Pell grant, which basically covers the TESU tuition. For the rest of the degree, I'm trying to do as much as possible through CLEPs, only because Modern States is currently offering free vouchers, making those credits completely free.

For the course timeline, I'll be taking 24 credits from TESU over the course of the year. During that same year, I aim to complete another 6 credits per month (about one CLEP every two weeks). That will bring me up to 96 credits in 12 months. I'm giving myself another 3 months, prior to starting at TESU, to knock out the remaining 24 credits, plus probably more, to give myself some room for error on the 6 credits/month idea during the following year. That will take my whole degree time out to 15 months total, which I think is doable, considering that I already have experience with computer programming, and mostly need this degree more for the math side, as well as to look good on the resume.

Does all this sound reasonable to the more experienced people here? Thanks in advance for any and all feedback!

[MNomadic]

First things first: you can save $25 on the saylor ethics course by taking the free institutes ethics course instead: https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/Fr..._of_Credit

While you're on the free sources of credit page, check out the 2 free Sophia courses which can contribute 2 credits to your free electives. Also, IF the TEEX cyber security courses renew,that's another 6 LL credits for free.

I see you're planning on taking analyzing and interpreting literature clep. That will satisfy your info literacy requirement at tesu with an extra 3 credits still going to free electives (or wherever)

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Also, if you only plan to take 6 credits per quarter ×4 quarters at tesu, then you're missing out on 12 credits at tesu which would be included in your comprehensive tuition. I'm not suggesting, you take extra courses, since that might be a pretty heavy workload, but you can use that TECEPs if you wanted to see which ones fit into your plan.

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Additionally, for more super cheap options, you can look into onlinedegree.com
The transfer equivalencies to TESU aren't quite finalized yet but courses from that provider are only $9 each(proctor fee).
https://www.onlinedegree.com/

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Btw, can I ask why you decided to go with TESU instead of something like WGU? WGU may be comparable in price or better, depending on how you plan your courses. Also, I believe wgu is considered "better" when it comes to IT/computer degrees.

[dfrecore]

1) I'm thinking that you'd better get going with the Modern States courses, as the vouchers may go away at some point. So I would do those first.

2) You missed all of the free credit options: OnlineDegree.com, Sophia, The Institutes, etc.

3) I'm not certain any of the Saylor courses are considered UL any longer. So I would check before taking those, if you need the UL credit for them.

4) Things are always changing, so new courses may come along, or old ones go away. Just be ready to shift when that happens, but not be derailed.

I would do the CLEP exams first, because that's in the most danger of going away. I'd even put off taking courses at TESU if you need to, to try to get those courses before the vouchers disappear.

Also, I am not certain TESU will "approve" your entire degree plan as you have it. They are notoriously bad about consistency, and answering more than 1 question at a time - so to submit an entire degree plan to them, thinking they are going to give you good information about ALL of the courses you list here is almost a joke. Not your fault, but please don't get discouraged when this doesn't happen as you think it will. Instead, I would do a few courses at a time and see what they say. Save the big-picture thing for this forum.

Last - you may want to take the A&I Lit course and transfer it, rather than take the TESU course for Info Lit. Just a thought. I'd probably save my TESU courses for the really important stuff.

[TryhardTim]

Thanks guys for the feedback so far!

The reasoning behind the TESU course for Info Literacy is that that's the course that TESU is replacing the cornerstone with. I could complete the cornerstone by July 1, 2019, but it leaves me with an extra useless credit. Would that extra credit count as the final gen-ed gap filler if I did the 2 credit Institutes ethics course?

Similarly, the Sophia free credits would leave me with an odd two credits that wouldn't fit anywhere, since there's no way to get a third credit. Maybe I'm missing something?

For the Info Literacy requirement, I had seen people previously post about using the A&I Lit CLEP for that, but it is listed as transferring into TESU as LIT-291/292 (https://www.tesu.edu/academics/catalog/c...am-program). LIT-291/292 are not listed as allowed courses for the Info Literacy requirement (https://www.tesu.edu/academics/courses/2016-and-after2). Is that just an oversight on their website, or this is a legit new change?

Will definitely look into OnlineDegree.com, was not aware of that resource.
For WGU, I looked at it and it seemed like it was going to be more difficult, and time consuming, for about the same price, aka, no real benefit. I'm really just interested in the fastest, cheapest way to get that "piece of paper". However, I just checked again, and noticed WGU applications are free this week. So I applied just now, and will talk to their advisor to see if they can beat my TESU timeline and price.

Will definitely start knocking those CLEPs out first thing over the next 2-3 months, and will prioritize them over everything else as long as they stay free. I saw a post from a few months ago with someone saying their voucher number was in the 6,000's. At that rate, I figured they wouldn't hit 10,0000 for at least several more months yet.

[dfrecore]

They've hit over 10,000 already at MS, so you probably don't have a ton of time.

Having extra credits here and there is a good thing, as well as filling holes that may come up. Plus, those 1cr courses are usually fast and free - so they're worth doing.

TESU only lists their own courses on the website, they don't list other courses that they'll take. Here's the list of CLEP's they'll take, and they show A&I Lit fulfilling the Info Lit area: https://www.tesu.edu/academics/catalog/c...am-program

[MNomadic]

"I could complete the cornerstone by July 1, 2019, but it leaves me with an extra useless credit. "

"Sophia free credits would leave me with an odd two credits that wouldn't fit anywhere, since there's no way to get a third credit."

It seems like that would solve itself. Or by combining it with the free ethics course.

A lot of people are able to complete the free ethics course and Sophia courses within a few hours total, so it doesn't hurt to just get those. I wouldn't worry about having too many extra odd credits, since even making a plan like that doesn't mean it will work as perfectly as you planned it. Just be flexible.


You mentioned before that you already have some programming experience so I figured a wgu competency based program may be more preferable to you.

[dfrecore]

You may want to check out the WGU CS degree, it certainly can't hurt. There is VERY little in the way of GE courses, which if you're starting from scratch can be a good thing or a bad thing (less opportunity to bring in GE courses, but not a lot of required non-major coursework to bother with).

It can't hurt to look at it, and talk to them about the Pell grant - I have no idea how that would work there, but I think it's possible.

[TryhardTim]

I just spoke with someone from WGU. He said that they won't work with me to plan out what CLEPs I can transfer in ahead of time. They do initially accept CLEP and other ACE transfers before I start their program, but once I start the degree program, no more credits can be transferred in for that degree. Therefore, while WGU may be an option down the path, I can't start with them yet, as I definitely want to test out of as much stuff as possible first. So I'm going to just work on CLEPs for now, and will postpone making the final decision between TESU and WGU until I know what will transfer in to each, and which one will get me to graduation faster and cheaper.

Thanks again for all the suggestions, especially the tips about being more flexible with TESU!

[davewill]

The TESU plan looks pretty good to me. I used the comprehensive plan as well. It's important to plan out your schedule so that you get all of your actual online courses inside the comprehensive year. I failed to do so and had to pay extra for my capstone (I didn't realize the capstone didn't have to be the absolute last class, so did my ethics TECEP when I should have started the capstone). There is also a weird quirk that requires you to take (and pay for) one course AFTER the comprehensive year in order to continue enrollment as per credit. You might need that if you don't actually graduate inside the comprehensive year, which is hard to do. Plan on a last TECEP to fill that role. Also know that you can register for classes in the last month and finish them after the comprehensive year ends, so you actually have 14 months to do all the work.

[dfrecore]

I just spoke with someone from WGU. He said that they won't work with me to plan out what CLEPs I can transfer in ahead of time. They do initially accept CLEP and other ACE transfers before I start their program, but once I start the degree program, no more credits can be transferred in for that degree. Therefore, while WGU may be an option down the path, I can't start with them yet, as I definitely want to test out of as much stuff as possible first. So I'm going to just work on CLEPs for now, and will postpone making the final decision between TESU and WGU until I know what will transfer in to each, and which one will get me to graduation faster and cheaper.

Thanks again for all the suggestions, especially the tips about being more flexible with TESU!

Really, this isn't the best way to go about it.  You would actually need to plan out your entire WGU degree first, and then see what CLEP's will satisfy the requirements (there won't be a ton, as WGU doesn't have a lot of GE's in this program, which is where the CLEP's would work).  Taking a bunch of CLEP's and then seeing where your chips fall is kind of random.  It's not even a great plan for the Big 3.

If I were you, I would actually look at the degrees themselves - TESU vs. WGU - and see which degree you like best.  Then, start planning on how you can get THAT degree.

Also, you can call WGU back and see how financial aid works there if you want.  That part will probably be helpful.