Oh no, another Newbie thread

[Getiton1]

Aha! I just came back from eating dinner and hit "send" on my post... this is the kind of thread that might be super helpful to an IT kinda person! See Thatch... this site has something for everyone! There is pretty much a person that has "been there and done that" for almost every kind of distance degree.

I love this group! I am going to have "withdraw" when I graduate! Still not sure where I am going to go for my Masters AND have to pay for the BSN a little more too!

Bye for now,
T

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[Thatch]

Thanks for all the input. This is helping a lot. I guess I need to get past my fear of stumbling and making a wrong turn or two along the way and just do it. Because of poor choices in the past I tend to try and over analyse things now and with the complexity that is college education it effectively stops me completely.

I am aware of the WGU courses and came very close to starting with them. I think for a younger man, or someone with more transfer credit they are a great option. For me being established in my career and the time required to go through all the classes I think their undergraduate option isn't for me. That's not to say I wouldn't consider them for a graduate level program though.

On the graduate level discussion, taking WGU as an example, they don't list any specific prerequisites that I can see other than (or course) an undergraduate degree from an RA school. Some of the programs I've looked at do have calls for statistics or some basic IT courses as well. My interest is mainly in data visualization and there are a few programs out for that. Interestingly enough there are starting to become available a number of certificate 'specialization courses' in MOOC form for data visualization that I am very interested in. The do nothing for my degree needs though and why I am thinking that even at the graduate level I might again go for the 'shortest route' and just get the degree level. Much of what I do is in the project and personnel management side of things now so business degrees are appropriate. If I add to that some current certificates in data visualization (the one I'm looking at is from Johns Hopkins) I think I would be in excellent shape to do anything I might want professionally.

I was wondering about the Associates issue, if it's wise to try and get an Associates along the way or if that was a distraction, a waste of time or money or in some other way negatively effected the progress towards the bachelors goal.

[LaterBloomer]

It's early Sunday morning, and I'm not the best reporter at the best of times, but here goes. Get over to your post's/base's education center, and see if you qualify to use... I'm drawing a blank. It's a web site that military folks can use to take free sample tests (may be Peterson's exams, I'm not sure). They have exams for both CLEP and DSST. It would be a great way to check and see where you stand on any of the exams. Also, if your test center does CLEPs, it might do DSSTs. CLEPs only give lower-level credit, but DSSTs have exams that will give you upper-level credit. As one of the great posters on this forum mentions, don't get analysis paralysis. Just get going, and good luck.

[clep3705]

An associate's degree shouldn't be a distraction or a delay. Properly planned, it should a stepping stone to a bachelor's degree. A bachelor's degree is basically split into two parts - the core curriculum and the courses in the major. The core curriculum, which might also be called general education courses, is comprised of English composition, math, history, and token science and social science courses. The core curriculum just happens to be most of the courses in an associate's degree.

An associate's degree might be something like the core curriculum, one or two electives, and two or three courses that would later be part of the courses in a major in the bachelor's degree. The bachelor's degree would be all of the courses from the associate's degree plus 7-10 more courses in the major and a bunch of electives (or these courses could be courses in a minor).

If you know what you will major in for your bachelor's degree, every course in your associate's degree should count toward your bachelor's degree. Paraphrasing Robert Duvall in The Killer Elite, remember the 5 P rule: Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

[Prloko]

Thanks for the input so far.

The clarification on the test taking / results banking is quite helpful. So I just need to put together a degree plan and start taking tests? If that's the case I can start right away. The test center is about 200 yards from my office. The only thing I have to figure is according to the CLEP site my test center is 'closed' indicating you have to be a member of the particular university to take tests there, but as this is a military installation there is in fact (I think) 4 universities represented here and it would be unlikely they would not allow tests to be taken for the other universities as well. I'll have to go in an talk to them about this and hope I get a clear answer. They have been more than a bit unreliable up to this point.

Good to hear about the language CLEP. I'll post a second thread on that subject as I was hoping to get some information on the parity between the European Framework levels and the CLEP scoring to get a basic idea of what it takes to get CLEP credit.

Thanks for the comment on the TESC BSBA. I'll look further into that. It's hard to figure out the general costs involved to finish out these degrees in the various colleges. I don't mind investing in this, I just don't want to invest in the wrong thing and have to turn around and spend more to effectively 'redo' the same thing elsewhere. Is there a write up that describes things like costs for one of the TESC degrees here or in the Wiki that you know about?

Thanks again. More input is always welcome

I'm also in Germany and I know that the Ramstein education center and the ROB education center are open to all ID card holders (neither one is too far from Wiesbaden). Are you sure "closed" doesn't mean that its not open to the public because of base/post access? Both my wife and I are not part of any of the schools who administer the exams and we have no problem taking exams.

[Thatch]

This ...

Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

plus this...

don't get analysis paralysis. Just get going, and good luck

is the place I've lived in for the past several years. Frustrated not to be making progress, scared of making the wrong decision and wasting money and time. This forum is ending that, especially the degree plans people post. I'm still struggling with figuring out which college and which degree but at least I know there are some rather detailed roadmaps to follow once I make that selection.

On the issue of 'which of the three'... IF the goal is an eventual masters with an associates along the way is there one of the 3 that is better suited for this? I wasn't able to find any Masters progams through Charter Oak even though they state they can now offer them. ( I did see something about an Organizational Effectiveness masters that might be offered). That being the case is it wise to consider the other 2 instead? Do all 3 have capstone requirements?

I'm going to go down to the education center today and see what they have to say. I've been unimpressed by them in the past but now that I know a bit more I should have more direct questions and therefore (hopefully) get better answers.

Thanks again all.

[corpsole2]

Thomas Edison State College does offer Master's programs. They have a new MBA program, but I think they also have a M.S. in Management or Organizational Behavior.

[hicandle]

I bet it is Peterson's exams! Free for military.

[Thatch]

I bet it is Peterson's exams! Free for military.

Yes, It is Peterson's, just found them yesterday and went through a couple tests.

So on a practice test that is scored in a percentage, how would one relay that back to the CLEP 20-80 point scale? (could they come up with a more convoluted scoring system?) I ran through one today and hit 85% without any studying, which I'm sure would be a passing grade (what level of passing I have no idea). But another one I did came in at 69% That's pretty gray and probably dependent on what school I go through. Of course, this was also done without any study so I won't be walking into a test center to tackle that one yet but it would be nice to have an idea of what I should be consistently scoring before it's 'go time'.

Thanks again all