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#1
So I've been completing my UL courses for a TESU BALS at SDC, and as of today have completed Psychology 312: History and Systems of Psychology and Psychology 310: Psychology of Personality. Overall I have enjoyed the course format of SDC, and would recommend it to others. What I wasn't prepared for was how tough the graders are for the written submissions. I haven't managed to break out of the 77%-78% range, and while I've passed both of the classes with final grades in the 80s range, I think it's honestly a little ridiculous. 

The final project for the Psychology 310: Psychology of Personality class was a diagnostic treatment plan, based on a prompt consisting of a very short "case study." I should say that I'm a strong writer, and a board-certified psychotherapist, and very familiar with current literature (and even showed how the prompt was relying on DSM-IV diagnostic criteria, and not the guidelines from the current DSM-5), and STILL scored a 78%. I have never scored so low on a paper, and finished a writing intensive regionally accredited graduate degree with a 4.0 GPA.

Luckily I only needed to "pass" these courses (70%+) as TESU doesn't transcript lettered grades for them, but I feel like I had to share my experience with others engaging these courses, to note that it's imperative to do your absolute best work when submitting the written assignments (especially if you're not a strong test taker). 

Has anyone else experienced SDC graders to be so tough, or have I just won the jackpot? :-)
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#2
I felt like their grading was fair to generous overall. I did find that the papers I put more effort and time into making them pretty good scored generally worse than the papers I didn’t think through as much and just threw together. I don’t think I ever scored lower than an 80 and had a couple in the 90’s. I didn’t do any psychology courses though so maybe those have a different grader. I did the English Comp courses and UL History and Communications courses.
BALS-Humanities from TESU - June 2019

CLEP - A&I Lit, US History 1, US History 2, West Civ 1, Intro Sociology, American Lit, Humanities, Soc. Sci & History, English Lit
Sophia - Intro to Info Tech, Art History 1, Visual Communications, Managing Conflict, Building Effective Teams
Study - Personal Finance, Comm 120, Math 97, Bus 121, Lib Sci 101, Eng 104, Nutrition 101, Eng 105, His 108, Pol. Sci 102, Earth Sci 104, His 308, Bus 313, His 102, Eng 305, His 105, His 106, His 306, Geometry 101, Bus 324, Com 102
Institutes - Insurance Ethics
TESU - Cornerstone, Music History 2 TECEP, LIB Capstone

Further Credits - Sophia - Conflict Resolution, Enviro Science, Microecon, Intro to Stats, Into to Ethics, Found. of Stats, Ancient Greek Philosophers, Macroecon, Intro to Business, Project Management, Accounting, Art History 2
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#3
I didn't do any psychology courses either, but I found the grading to be fairly easy. I skipped the 2nd assignment altogether for many of the classes after securing a pass after the first assignment/exam.

I recommend organizational communication, it was the shortest UL course on there I think. It was also fairly common sense stuff.
TESU BALS: Awarded June 2019
Credits:
TESU: LIB Capstone 3cr, Cornerstone 1cr 
Aleks: 3cr, Insurance Institute: 2cr NFA: 1cr 
Sophia: 2cr Straighterline: 48cr TEEX: 6cr 
Study.com: 18cr B&M: 77cr
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#4
I took Psychology courses, and scored well in my papers. I think SDC graders expect you to stick to the rubric very closely. Your paper should address all the major points outlined in their rubric. If you do not address the rubric, but write a very informative and thoughtful paper, they send a word of appreciation for your effort, but lower the grades. However, based on the reasons they give for their grading, you could always choose to rework on your paper, and submit it again. You are allowed to make three submissions on the same paper. So, you could rework and send it back to them, and see if your grades go up.
TESU BALS-Psych. + ASNSM(Math) 

TEEX(6): Cybersec. 101/201/301
The Institutes(2): Ethics
Sophia(2): Ess. Of Managing Conflict, Dev. Effective Teams
NFA(1): Comm. Safety Edu.
GED(10): NAS-131, SOC-273, MAT-121, HUM-101 (1)
Study.com(75): Intro to Psych., Soc. Psych.-1, Growth & Dev. Psych., Personality Psych., History & Systems of Psych., Org. Theory, Library Science, Comm. at Workplace, Intro to World Religion, I/O Psych., Ethics in Soc. Sc., Org. Comm., Eng. 104, Eng. 105, History of Vietnam war, Sp. Ed. History & Law, Diff. Ed., Classroom Mgmt., Foundations of Ed., Abnormal Psych., Rsch. methods in Psych., College Math, Intro. to Geometry., Calculus (6).
Saylor (15): Intro. to Mol. & Cellular Bio., Comp. Politics, Corporate Comm., Env. Ethics, Principles of Comm. 
TESU (1): Cornerstone, Lib. 495 Capstone.
CSM (3): Quant. reasoning. 
Aleks (6): Trigonometry, Intro to Statistics. 

MS-Psychology; Walden University 
GPA: 4/4
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#5
I thought I was following the rubric pretty closely and generally scored in the "good" category, I was just surprised by the feedback. In any case, I passed my classes just fine. I'm working through Advanced Technical Writing now. Seems pretty straightforward :-)
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#6
I felt that I had 1 tough graders, and another that seemed to demand more than the rubric and instructions.

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#7
I also felt the graders were on the ridiculous side.

I have taken 1/4 or so of my degree at B&M state schools, passed the Capstone at TESU with a 97% overall and wrote to the same degree for my 3 UL SDC classes.

My highest grade on any paper from SDC? 83%!

The other papers were all in the 70's, and I literally wrote these to the rubric, with the same level of energy and concentration I did for the state schools or TESU capstone. Because I too only needed the pass, I didn't argue, but I will say that on 2 of the papers, the critique was out of left field and I seriously think they were talking about another students paper.

Fun times.





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#8
They're never going to give you an A, has been my experience, but you don't need A's and the courses are credit/no credit so there's no reason to sweat it
Study.com - 177 CR. TESU - 39 CR. Middle Georgia State University - 15 CR. Sonoran Desert Institute - 42 CR. COSC - 6 CR. Excelsior - 6 CR. CLEP - 6 CR. Sophia - 14 CR. TEEX - 2 CR. Shmoop - 18 CR. NFA - 4 CR. The Institutes - 2 CR. FEMA - 20ish


BA in History/English from TESU. 
BA in Communications from TESU. AS in Firearms Technology from SDI.




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#9
As far as I can tell, SDC uses the same pool of graders for all their assignments (at least I got the same grader for different subjects). I get the impression that the graders are not always subject-matter experts (other than perhaps in their grasp of academic writing, grammar, mechanics, formatting, etc.), rather they rely on the rubric to determine how well you do. I assume they also have some kind of grader-specific version of the rubric which probably indicates specific things they are supposed to look for, and you'll be graded down if they are not there (or are hard to locate).

I realized this after the first couple of writing assignments and changed my approach to focus on simple language that only addressed the prompts and the rubric. I tried to avoid going to extra depth (which is a challenge for me since I tend to be overly detailed) and just turned in the minimum required. I usually scored in the 90s, so this approach pays off.

Also keep in mind that if you don't like the grade on a paper or project, you can always change it based on the feedback from your grader and keep resubmitting it until you're happy. Not that it matters since you only need 210/300 total points (70% overall) to pass any course.
Working on: Debating whether I want to pursue a doctoral program or maybe another master's degree in 2022-23

Complete:
MBA (IT Management), 2019, Western Governors University
BSBA (Computer Information Systems), 2019, Thomas Edison State University
ASNSM (Computer Science), 2019, Thomas Edison State University

ScholarMatch College & Career Coach
WGU Ambassador
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#10
Yes! I am an English major and I haven't gotten lower than an A on a paper since probably seventh grade. I took Technical Writing from SDC and got a C! I actually reevaluated my SDC plan from there and chose classes from there on out that didn't require papers.
|| TESU English: Senior
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