Advice on Psychology degree from Excelsior/TESU

[Gymfan15]

Hello...I come bearing questions not for myself, but for a friend.

She's been enrolled in Excelsior for a few years pursuing a degree in Humanities with a Cultural Studies concentration, but progress on that has stalled due to lack of finances and planning. I shared with her my experience transferring to TESU and how the open format of their program plus the ability to transfer in a lot of credits from outside sources might help her, and she is very interested. She is thinking about switching to a Psychology major since that interests her more and aligns more with her future plans. But, she's open to any kind of BA that has a psychology component and will help her finish faster/cheaper.

This is a copy of her current transcript; she has some credits from two other colleges that she's taken besides what she's gotten from Excelsior itself. Her other college credits are over ten years old but I don't know if that will be a problem?


NORTHWESTERN COLLEGE
2004/SP HIS*3125 HIST CHR CHURCH APOS TO PRES A 4.00 S U


PHE*1016 FITNESS 2004/SP
A
1.00
E
L



2005/SP
HIS*1005 HIST OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
A
4.00
S
L

ANOKA-RAMSEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE-CAMBRIDGE
2005/FA
ART*1141 DRAWING I
A
3.00
H
L

2005/FA
ENGL*1121 COLL WRITE/READ
A
4.00
W
L

2006/SP
ART*1142 DRAWING II
A
3.00
H
L

2013/SP
BUS*1103 HUMAN RELATIONS WORKPLACE
A
3.00
S
L

EXCELSIOR COLLEGE
2014/FA
CCS*120 EC SUCCESS SEMINAR
A
3.00
S
L

2014/FA
HUM*200 INTRODUCTION TO HUMANITIES
A
3.00
H
L

2015/SP
NS*115 INTRODUCTION TO ASTRONOMY
B
3.00
N
L

2015/SU
COMM*210 INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION
A
3.00
H
L

2015/FA
ENG*360 LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS
A
3.00
H
U

Sorry if that's hard to read.

I'm not sure if it makes sense for her to stay with Excelsior but I feel like the 500 fee every year/semester she doesn't meet the quota hurts more than it helps and I don't think she can finish fast enough to offset the TESU residency fee that she would have to pay by transferring. But I'm also pretty green at this, so I'm welcome to hear any advice out there. Does Excelsior have an easy way to find Study.com/SL equivalencies?

I know that there's templates floating out there for TESU BSBA-GM plans, but is there anything that could help me easily help her figure out a good plan of attack for TESU BALS-Psych?

In the meantime, I was planning to help her get set up with an ACE account and Study.com/Straighterline and work on any/all courses that we know will be useful for either school with a Psych degree, like the rest of her Gen Eds and various Psych courses.

[dfrecore]

Old credits are still very useful, they never expire (note: this does not apply to computer-related credits, which may or may not be useable depending on your degree).

I have a degree plan for a BA in Psych from TESU. I didn't put in your friend's courses, but I can do that tomorrow if you need me to. You should also post all of her credits from previous schools to get a full idea of what she has.

[Gymfan15]

^^ The above is all the credits she has; she hasn't started Study.com/Straighterline yet. Just the two transcripts from her CC's and then Excelsior.

If you have any idea of how those might transfer in to TESU, that would be helpful! I'm not sure how her classes might transfer in so if you want to take a look at them tomorrow, that would be helpful; otherwise I could probably do it myself.

I'm guessing a lot of her classes she won't know until she actually applies to TESU and has her transcripts evaluated, but a rough estimate would be helpful.

Right now I'm wondering if there's anyone with experience with Excelsior who could tell me if it makes sense for her to stay with Excelsior or if she should just go straight to TESU. I think TESU is better, but I'm not that familiar with Excelsior.

[dfrecore]

^^ The above is all the credits she has; she hasn't started Study.com/Straighterline yet. Just the two transcripts from her CC's and then Excelsior.

If you have any idea of how those might transfer in to TESU, that would be helpful! I'm not sure how her classes might transfer in so if you want to take a look at them tomorrow, that would be helpful; otherwise I could probably do it myself.

I'm guessing a lot of her classes she won't know until she actually applies to TESU and has her transcripts evaluated, but a rough estimate would be helpful.

Right now I'm wondering if there's anyone with experience with Excelsior who could tell me if it makes sense for her to stay with Excelsior or if she should just go straight to TESU. I think TESU is better, but I'm not that familiar with Excelsior.

I think EC is too expensive to stay enrolled - you need to come in with all of your credits, ready to take the capstone. So if she wants to finish there, she could let her enrollment lapse, take all of the courses she needs through various sources, re-apply, transfer in all of her ACE credits and previous credits, and then re-enroll and take the capstone. That would mean that she would really have to understand the process, and the courses she'd need for the degree though. The eval would basically need to say that all requirements were met, and that all that was left was the capstone.

TESU has a much easier process of staying enrolled (no fees), so there's no downside to applying early. And, enough people on here know exactly what she needs to take for the degree, so that part is good as well.

[Gymfan15]

^^ That sounds like a pretty good reason...I'll pass that on to her and see what she thinks. I know strategizing and coming up with a plan is not her strong suit so I hope that's where I can come in, but I obviously can only do so much so a degree plan that I can easily access and assist with is better than one that is vague because there's no official answers.

If it helps, here's a screenshot of her Excelsior eval; I think it's a bit easier to read than the text one I posted above.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2368[/ATTACH]

[BrandeX]

"screenshot" /grin

[bjcheung77]

I agree with Excelsior being expensive, you usually want to take courses elsewhere and transfer them in.
If your friend wants to stay with Excelsior, she already has taken enough courses with them to get partnership pricing.
She should take some SL/Study.com courses and closely follow the degree plan dfrecore has in the thread.
Otherwise, she can decide on taking those exact courses and go with TESU instead... it's her choice.

Here's the links for partnership pricing for Straighterline/Study.com
Excelsior College | Study.com
PDF: https://my.excelsior.edu/documents/46041...684f3652af

Sophia: http://www.excelsior.edu/web/partners/so...d-nav=tab5
PDF: https://my.excelsior.edu/documents/46041...684f3652af
Straighterline: http://www.excelsior.edu/web/partners/st...d-nav=tab5

[Gymfan15]

Awesome, thanks. We'll look into it.