TESU BA History

[thegracefullady]

Hi guys,
I’ve been immersing myself in the forum and wiki for a few days and have started making a degree plan. I’ve got a hodgepodge of classes from 4 different schools listed below. They are all RA and “C” grades or above. I think I’d like to get a TESU BA in History. Right now, my end goal is to get a BA so that I can enter a Masters program. I’m not sure if I would graduate with a Master's degree, but I would just like to take graduate level classes in areas I’m interested in.
 
I’ve used the Sample BA History Degree plan on the wiki (and made sure it was one current with TESU’s plan) and bjcheung77’s spreadsheet. Everything that is orange, I haven’t done and I’m pretty certain where I’ll get that credit. Everything that is green is a class I’ve already done that I’m pretty certain I’ve put in the right place. Everything that is white I’m not sure about. I haven’t inserted all of my earned credits, and I would appreciate some help there.  
 
Here are my questions:
1)      Where else can my previous courses go?
2)      What is the difference between General Education Electives and Electives?
3)      I’ve read some recommendations to register with the ACE registry, is this still recommended or necessary?
4)      If you have another degree suggestion, I’m all ears. My main goal is to get an accredited degree quickly. Although, my main job is homeschooling my four children, so “quickly” may be relative. ?
 5) The only UL requirement I can find is that in the AOS (history), 9 have to be UL. Am I missing anywhere else, like the degree program as a whole?

Navarro Jr College (2 year)
HIST 2301 History of Texas
MATH 1314 College Algebra
 
Criswell College (4 year)
PSY 101 Intro to Psychology
PSY 102 Dynamics of Marriage and Family
THS 101 Spiritual Foundations
LIT 101 Hermeneutics
THS 201 Church History
NTS 310 New Testament Intensive: Romans
NTS 102 New Testament Survey 2
 
Tarrant County College (2 year)
DANC 2303 Dance Appreciation
HIST 1301 US History to 1876
ECON 2301 Principles of Macroeconomics
GEOG 1301 Elements of Physical Geography
HIST 2322 World Civilization II
 
Boyce College (4 year)
BS 152 New Testament Survey 1
HS 105 Ancient Near East History
 
Thank you for any help you can give me!

[rachel83az]

I'm not seeing any colors? If you meant to attach a spreadsheet of your own or a PDF, it didn't come through for some reason. That happens sometimes.

[thegracefullady]

Thank you for letting me know, I edited the post and added the spreadsheet but it's still not showing up. Is there a minimum number of posts before I can attach things?
Edit:
Nevermind, it was totally user error! Fixed now.

[dfrecore]

GE Electives are from certain areas: HUmanities, Social Sciences, Math, Natural Science & Computer Science. Then your degree has History electives. The electives in area III of the degree are what we call Free Electives - any college-level course. You may have overflow from the GE area, or you may just want to take non-GE courses like Business or IT or nursing or whatever.

Here's some things I see with your plan:

AOS
1) You already took US History I, so you just need 2 from Sophia
2) Western Civ I & II need to be taken, I don't think World History and World Civ are the same (but I could be wrong there)
3) History of TX will count in the History Electives area
4) HS105 Ancient Near East History counts for the Non-Western history area
This leaves you with your 2 LL history electives being bumped down to Free Electives, which is fine. You just need 4 UL history electives, 3 of which can be gotten through Study.com. The cheapest UL option after that is Coopersmith (all Jewish-related).

Non-AOS
1) Physical Geography is a NatSci course, so you only need to take 1 more (Human Bio or EnvironSci).

I personally would probably take the rest of the Study.com history courses and throw them in the Free Electives area - this is the type of degree where I'd not suggest the minimum number of courses, but instead max out on. A history degree just kind of implies that you know a LOT about history.

[rachel83az]

History of Texas - this should be the lower-level AOS elective in part E.

Religious courses may fall under under Diversity & Intercultural Literacy, Knowledge of Human Cultures, or just (General) Electives. Criswell doesn't currently have any known transfers to TESU so it's hard to say what those will be brought in as. It doesn't mean they won't transfer, it just means we don't know how they will transfer.

Tarrant:

• HIST 1301 comes in as American History I. This would overlap with Sophia's US History I so you can skip that Sophia course. You'll still need Sophia US History II.
  
• Dance Appreciation - Probably a regular elective
  
• GEOG 1301 Elements of Physical Geography comes in as GOG-110. This would be Knowledge of Human Cultures or (General) Elective.
  
• HIST 2322 World Civilization II is HIS 112 World History II. I think you will still need to take both Western Civilization I & II but you could ask if StraighterLine's "Survey of World History - CIV 103" would count as World History I instead. I'm not sure that it does. Otherwise, this would be an elective.
  

There are also no transfer equivalents for Boyce yet. These will most likely be electives of some kind.

I would definitely suggest that you apply to TESU ASAP. You'll also want to pay for (but not take) the Medical Terminology TECEP. Send in your transcripts to see where TESU actually puts everything. 

To answer your other questions:
2.) General Education Electives are electives that could fit in the 1st half of your degree, from Written Communication down to Understanding the Physical & Natural World. Regular electives are classes that don't fit into one of these categories. For instance, most business courses would be a regular elective but not a general elective. GE Elective examples can be found here: https://www.tesu.edu/academics/courses/2019-and-after

3.) The old ACE transcription service is no more. Now you use Credly/Acclaim. You can read more about the process and instructions for different providers here: https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/Am..._Education 

4.) A history degree has a lot of papers and may not be the fastest option. A BALS would probably be faster if speed is your only concern. But you'll have to decide if a BALS degree is going to be relevant to your future needs/interests. 

5.) For a History degree, you technically need a total of 18 UL credits. 3 of those are the capstone. 3 of those are fulfilled with Historical Methods. 3 of those can be the non-Western history course (there is a lower-level non-Western history option at TESU, but all the BYU options should be UL). That leaves 9 further UL credits that can be obtained from SDC. That's it as far as requirements go. As long as you're more or less following the sample plan on the wiki, you should be good to go.

[dfrecore]

A question: would you also consider COSC or EC for a History degree? They're both cheaper than TESU.

[thegracefullady]

Thank you so much, dfrecore and Rachel83az! This is so helpful, I'll be updating my plan with your suggestions and I'm sure I'll have more questions tomorrow.

Dfrecore, I'm definitely willing to consider other schools. I found all three websites hard to digest, but tesu's plan was the easiest to understand. Are the other schools cheaper because of TECU's residency requirement or fee? I'll look at the wiki for those, I don't want to cut myself off from saving money.

[rachel83az]

Excelsior is probably the hardest to plan for due to a lack of transparency. They are slightly cheaper than TESU and this is mostly due to the residency fee that TESU charges. It also helps that, if you take 12 or more credits (instead of the bare minimum of 7), they have a discount available for students who have completed Sophia courses: https://www.excelsior.edu/partner/sophia/ If you have a hard time finding a particular course to fulfill Excelsior requirements, it only costs slightly more to take a couple of courses with them rather than just taking the 7 credits. If you're even half-considering Excelsior, I would definitely complete a few Sophia credits before applying to Excelsior.

Charter Oak is the cheapest, in theory, since you already have all the necessary RA credits. Requirements for their History degree can be found here: https://www.charteroak.edu/catalog/curre...istory.php Unfortunately, they don't accept sources like Coopersmith for their degree. They do accept Study.com and Sophia, at least, so you should be able to complete your degree with these sources. However, these degrees can also take longer than TESU because they don't permit you to take the capstone and the cornerstone at the same time as TESU does.

[dfrecore]

Not counting courses to bring in, here are the costs (including tuition & fees):

COSC - $3181
EC $5300
EC2 (taking 13r at EC) $5850
TESU - $6654

I think EC is pretty easy to plan for, at least as easy as COSC. TESU is really only easy because we have to much info here. When I started on this forum in 2011-ish, EC was definitely more popular and we had more info about them. TESU was cheaper, and so became more popular for a long time.

Not sure on the specific degrees, but the BALA/BSLA at EC is a much better deal than TESU (you can get an Area of Focus or two of them, and with the BSLA, one can be something non GE like Business or IT).