Path Review

[LyLi]

Your Location: New Mexico
Your Age: 30ish
What kind of degree do you want?: Associates, Bachelors, then eventually Masters

Bachelors (RA preferred but will take NA). Three Year Bachelor like BYU Pathway for example or JWU (no LDS) or similar to Bachelor to Masters at TESU

I am thinking of getting an associates from Barton. I have not been in New Mexico long enough to qualify for residency. 

Majors Accepted (I am willing to do any to check a degree and expand my options from there):
Business (of any kind)
Organizational Leadership
General Management/Management (or similar)
Entrepreneurship (or similar)
Stem Sciences
Other recommendations are welcome depending on the program.

Current Regional Accredited Credits: 15
US History 1 & 2 (six hours)
English 1 & 2 (six hours)
College Algebra (3 hours)

Current ACE, CLEP, or NCCRS Credits: No
Any certifications or military experience?: No
Budget: $17,000
Commitments: Work 60 hours weekly
Dedicated time to study: 10 to 12 hours weekly. I would be taking three classes per semester. I cannot devote to full-time CBE study because I work and am also living in "hiding" with friends from a violent spouse after escaping another state. I prefer 16 week courses but I can do to one course every eight weeks. I'm scared to try a CBE program at the current time and not being able to finish at least two classes every seven or eight weeks.
Timeline: A couple of years for each degree. I know this will add A LOT of time but this just all I can do at the current time.
Tuition assistance/reimbursement: $500 each fall/spring from work. $250 for one summer class.

[bjcheung77]

Welcome to the board, hope you're doing alright and keeping safe. Great intro post with the addendum and template, it provides a bigger picture of your scenario. For your particular situation, you may want to put CBE on hold for now and decide on that later, what you should do is to get the general education and electives credit that will go towards TESU and CBE based institutions such as UMPI.

My suggestion is to take advantage of the cheapies/freebies for now, it'll allow you to gauge how well you're doing, and if the progress is sufficient for CBE, then that's when I'll recommend UMPI over TESU. For now, accumulate the general education and electives using the StraighterLine semester freebie (skip the labs)!

For institutions we recommend, you can transfer alternative credits towards multiple degrees, to a point. 45 max towards 60 credits for an Associates, 90 max towards 120 for a Bachelors. You'll have to take the residency credits for the concentration or major at the institution you intend to finish at.

You need to find your end goal, you're just taking the cheapies/freebies at the moment, you need more gen ed and electives. In addition to the Sophia.org or Study.com classes, you may want to investigate other cheapies or freebies that will max transfer credits, for example Coursera, CLEP, even TEEX, if you're missing general education and electives, StraighterLine also has a semester freebie just for Today!

Decide on the degree and institution, you will need RA credits as well, that should be completed at the institution you intend to graduate from.
https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/Fr..._of_Credit
https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...e-semester

[LyLi]

Thank you for the information. I am currently going to take advantage of the free and reduced credits! I am sort of leaning towards TESU but UMPI seems like a great school (their business degrees are also appealing). I was also thinking WGU in the future too, perhaps.

Edit: I forgot to ask this on the first post. The Straighterline courses seem great. I am leaning towards maximizing my certificates there. I am really leaning towards TESU at the moment and maximize the amount of certificates I can get. I'm going to spend this month working on those Straighterline courses and I applied for admission for probably October.

AS/AAS Choice (any are fine with me):
Mathematics
Biology
Human Services
Business Administration
General Studies

One or two of these certificates (as allowed)
Ethics
Finance
Clinical & Forensic Psychology, Psychology, or Forensic Psychology
General Management
Operations Management
Social & Organizational Behavior

Double Major Choices:
Biology or Environmental Studies
and
Finance, International Business, Marketing, Operations Management/Leadershop BSBA/BS.

I will obviously talk to an advisor. I just got off the phone with HR and any of the asocciates/bachelors in the sciences will come with a pay raise. The other majors at the bachelors level will allow for even more of a pay raise.

[bjcheung77]

At TESU, you can graduate with a combo of programs at the same time for under your budget
2 Associates - AS CS/Math, AAS Applied Computer Studies/Environmental, Safety, and Security Technologies
2 Bachelors - BSBA with an AOS of your choice, plus a BA of your choice (Biology, Comp Sci, Psychology, etc)
4 Certificates - I recommend something that is of interest to you, you don't have to do all 4, it's up to 4 certs

The kicker is where you want to use the Bachelors to Masters option to get all the graduate credits you want.
MALS, MBA, MSM would take the most graduate credits (12, each) so a max of 24 credits
You can take 12 credits from BSBA and another 12 from the BA of your choice.
Decisions, decisions, and more decisions...

[LyLi]

At TESU, you can graduate with a combo of programs at the same time for under your budget
2 Associates - AS CS/Math, AAS Applied Computer Studies/Environmental, Safety, and Security Technologies
2 Bachelors - BSBA with an AOS of your choice, plus a BA of your choice (Biology, Comp Sci, Psychology, etc)
4 Certificates - I recommend something that is of interest to you, you don't have to do all 4, it's up to 4 certs

The kicker is where you want to use the Bachelors to Masters option to get all the graduate credits you want.
MALS, MBA, MSM would take the most graduate credits (12, each) so a max of 24 credits
You can take 12 credits from BSBA and another 12 from the BA of your choice.
Decisions, decisions, and more decisions...

Awesome. Thank you for the information. I'm going to keep a spreadsheet and "map" out what will maximize.