Excelsior College - B.S. in Engineering Technology Degree [Complete]

[Wallerstein]

Hello all,

I wanted to post my experiences with recently completing a bachelors in electrical engineering technology at Excelsior College. I've lurked in these forums for awhile and didn't often see Excelsior-specific posts, much less those dealing with the electrical engineering technology program.

I had a previous non-engineering technology bachelors degree plus an associates in engineering technology. Combining all those credits together in my back-of-the-napkin calculation I figured I had a year (or maybe two, tops) of taking Excelsior classes ahead of me.

In fact, all my gen eds were covered and I was only missing one math course as well as the specific upper-level engineering courses required for the degree. My initial Excelsior admissions evaluation was a fair match to the official academic advising evaluation so I came in with around 80 credits. I had to argue for a few courses to transfer but for the most part my hands were tied as I didn't have enough upper-level engineering courses yet. The oddly worded Excelsior Written English requirement did cause me a lot of headache (more on that below).

I finished the entire program in about a year-and-a-half. Given a late-Fall start, a full year of courses, and then the last two courses the following Spring I managed to effectively benefit from three calendar year's worth of employee tuition reimbursement. So my total out of pocket for the bachelors degree was about $4500. That includes (roughly) 30 credits at Excelsior, 6 credits at other institutions, and 6 credits I tested out of.

Lessons learned:

• Excelsior's Written English requirement: if you review this requirement in the official school handbook it sounds like there is a lot of leeway for your academic advisor to grant you transfer credit from previous coursework. In fact, this is not their approach. I had an American Lit course which could have been a match combined with my previous English Comp classes to satisfy their requirement, but Advising wasn't having it. Several times they suggested I take the Excelsior equivalent course, which I declined due to finding a much cheaper (and perhaps easier) English course elsewhere online. And this was after months of back-and-forth with my advisor as I suggested different options, submitted course syllabi, etc. It got to the point where she wouldn't reply to my emails for two weeks or more and that was just to say "NO." If I called and happened to get her she would answer my question right way however.
  

• Academic Advising could generally be a headache: if your transfer coursework descriptions matched exactly with the courses you were arguing for equivalency, then fine. If not, it was like pulling teeth and appealing to the program's dean didn't help. I found this part of the Excelsior experience to be the worst aspect as it was like dealing with any level of bureaucracy or human resources-type department. And you would get different answers to the same question depending on who answered the phone that day. For that reason alone I did benefit in one instance as a much more knowledgeable advisor gave me a better online option for the one math class I needed compared to the options offered by my main advisor.
  

• The Capstone: this final class wasn't so bad. It really was more procedurally difficult than technically difficult. Having kept good records of previous coursework (inc. labs, papers, projects, etc.) made the job a whole lot easier. In my particular program there is a hardware project to conceptualize, build, test and demonstrate but successful completion had more to do with adherence to weekly requirements than success at answering an overly challenging engineering problem. Overall, there was a lot of redtape in terms of course objectives and many of those overlapped, didn't make sense, or were a waste of time. But everyone in my cohort left feedback to that effect so maybe Excelsior will streamline/improve the capstone for future students.
  

Hope this information helps other students out there not only in this particular Excelsior program but those who are working on any online degree. It was at times a stressful experience (combined with a full-time job and family) but I do feel a sense of accomplishment and am proud I went through with it. If there are any specific questions I haven't addressed here, post them and I'll be glad to fill in the gaps.

[Cksheridan0523]

Hello!

Thank you for sharing this information. It is rare gold. I am between the Thomas Edison and Execlsior EET programs. Did you look at both by chance? If so, what led you to go with this one? May I ask do you get to use a lot of real world components and software for the electronics courses? Multi-sim, arudino/other trainer boards, etc? Would you mind listing the ones used in this program? Also did you find the calc and physics courses challenging theory wise, or were they more technology assisted/practical application style? If I desired to do both the electronics and power systems concentrations, do you know that they would allow it? I love courses from both.

I looked at Thomas Edison and got excited when going over their course materials as it includes a lot of learning with real components as mentioned above...and then I saw their 10
Week schedule, overlapping with each next term having to skip one, aka not be able to complete as many classes per year, and also the proctor concern, and excelsior got a lot more attractive with their 7-8 week courses, no proctor, and still being ABET accredited. Time is of essence to me as I am trying to do as much as possible in the next 1.5 Years, good in with no associates but a lot of gen Ed’s from my last college experiences. (60+).

I appreciate any answers you can provide on this!

[Life Long Learning]

Congratulations!

$4500 for a B.S. in Engineering Technology Degree at Excelsior College.  Where do I write the check.

I like your report.  My program advisor and Dean were great to work with.  I was in the School of Public Service.  Excelsior College is really into nursing (50%) and military (40%)so that other 10% is a small group.  Glad you were successful.

[Ideas]

Congrats

[MNomadic]

That is very cool. Congrats!