Transferring Credit to Excelsior

[Rainydays12]

If SUNY Empire State gives 4 credits for algebra but Excelsior only gives 3 for their equivalent, would they transfer in all 4 credits or would they take one away? I don't want to think I'm done with all my credits then have Excelsior deduct credits. Most of SUNY courses are worth 4 credits and they require 128 to grad.
Hope that isn't a dumb question...

[peace123]

I think a 4 credit course from SUNY would post as 4 credits at Excelsior.

If you earn credits at a school that is on Quarter hour those are adjusted by Excelsior to reflect semester hours ( eg: 4 qtr hrs= 2.67 Semester hrs.) conversion tables

[alissaroot]

They will give you four hours for it. All my classes from Franklin College were four credit classes, and Excelsior gave me four credits for those. These were all introductory classes, like intro psychology and sociology.

However, if they have a credit policy in effect for an exam, they will go by their own credit granting policy for it. Franklin gave me 8 credits for AP English, but EC gave me six credits.

Hope that helps!

[Rainydays12]

Thanks for the reply. I guess I need to stop being a control freak and go with the flow. I'm trying to plan out every last detail before I even get started. Sounds like I will have to wait and see how I take obtain some of these credits.
Good to know about AP scores though since I recently requested my old ones from high school and wasn't sure how they were going to translate.

Thanks again for the help!

[perrik]

I took two AP exams back around the Ice Age (early 1980s). AP scores which are more than 4 years old are archived, so you can't request transcripts online. No worries, there's a form to download and mail/fax for those scores. I took AP Biology and AP English Language & Composition, for which EC gave 3 credits each. The fee for transcripts from archived scores is $25 per transcript (not per score).

The relevant link: AP Scores - AP Grades & Reporting Services
(scroll to the bottom for "Archived AP Grades")

You asked in another thread about finding an inexpensive way to take care of EC's written English requirement. Is $25 cheap enough? AP English Language & Composition and AP English Literature & Composition are both considered acceptable for fulfilling the WER.

EDIT: Rainydays12, just to be clear - which AP exams did you take back in high school? EC doesn't include AP conversion in their guide to credit-by-exam, but as far as I know all the exams are accepted for pass/fail credit. It's a question of how many credits for what minimum score. I scored 5's on AP Bio and AP English, and was granted 3 credits of bio and 3 credits of English comp.

2nd EDIT: Oh wow. I just looked at my status report and noticed that EC granted 8 natural science credits for the AP Biology exam and 6 for AP English Lang & Comp. I really need to pay attention to these things...

[Rainydays12]

I took two AP exams back around the Ice Age (early 1980s). AP scores which are more than 4 years old are archived, so you can't request transcripts online. No worries, there's a form to download and mail/fax for those scores. I took AP Biology and AP English Language & Composition, for which EC gave 3 credits each. The fee for transcripts from archived scores is $25 per transcript (not per score).

The relevant link: AP Scores - AP Grades & Reporting Services
(scroll to the bottom for "Archived AP Grades")

You asked in another thread about finding an inexpensive way to take care of EC's written English requirement. Is $25 cheap enough? AP English Language & Composition and AP English Literature & Composition are both considered acceptable for fulfilling the WER.

$25 is great. I really wanted to test out of this. Here's another dumb question.... can adults take AP tests? I took mine in the Dark Ages. I don't remember seeing any adults in the room.

[perrik]

(I'm supposed to be studying for the DSST Human Resource Management exam, but am getting so bored by it... and I'm *in* human resources!)

Technically, you can take an AP exam as an adult. You have to find a high school willing to let you take exams during student testing times, which would probably be difficult, and you'd have to wait until AP exams are scheduled by the school (generally in May).

AP exams are offered in some subjects for which there is no equivalent CLEP or DSST, like Chinese and Comparative Politics; on the other hand, there are plenty of CLEP/DSSTs for which there is no AP equivalent, like business and psychology subjects. The biggest advantage of AP over CLEP/DSST for college students is that some universities which will not accept CLEP/DSST for credit will accept some or all AP exams for credit. However, unless you were planning to transfer to Harvard's regular undergrad program, this should not be an issue!

[malcs]

Yes, they will give you four credits. I transferred in a number of Empire credits.

The only problem with Empire is that they allow you to make up your own courses. You can create courses like, "The behavior of squirrels in urban communities", with your advisor, and assign a four credits-applied science value to it. (funny example, but possible) This sounded great to me in the past, but nobody knows how to evalutate them. Empire also took many months to send my transcript, again, because they have to find out the exact content of the homemade courses and write them up in the form of a transcript. If you have just taken regular courses there it should all be smooth.

[alissaroot]

EDIT: Rainydays12, just to be clear - which AP exams did you take back in high school? EC doesn't include AP conversion in their guide to credit-by-exam, but as far as I know all the exams are accepted for pass/fail credit. It's a question of how many credits for what minimum score. I scored 5's on AP Bio and AP English, and was granted 3 credits of bio and 3 credits of English comp.

2nd EDIT: Oh wow. I just looked at my status report and noticed that EC granted 8 natural science credits for the AP Biology exam and 6 for AP English Lang & Comp. I really need to pay attention to these things...

This is a good thing to point out, actually. I don't know why I didn't say something about it before. I guess just since discussion about AP exams doesn't come up here very often. For the AP English Literature and Composition that I took back in 1998, EC split my credits, putting three credit toward the WER as English Composition, and the other three credits as English Literature toward my Humanities requirement. Both were notated with a score of (4) in parentheses and I was given a "P" for both. So it might be worth pointing out that the AP English credits will be split at EC, if anyone out there happened to be wondering about it since it could very well look like they only gave you three credits for it at first glance.

I would guess a minimum score of "3" for AP exams, also. But that is just a guess.

perrik, were your Biology credits split up like that or were they treated as one course?

[Rainydays12]

I took two AP exams back around the Ice Age (early 1980s). AP scores which are more than 4 years old are archived, so you can't request transcripts online. No worries, there's a form to download and mail/fax for those scores. I took AP Biology and AP English Language & Composition, for which EC gave 3 credits each. The fee for transcripts from archived scores is $25 per transcript (not per score).

The relevant link: AP Scores - AP Grades & Reporting Services
(scroll to the bottom for "Archived AP Grades")

You asked in another thread about finding an inexpensive way to take care of EC's written English requirement. Is $25 cheap enough? AP English Language & Composition and AP English Literature & Composition are both considered acceptable for fulfilling the WER.

EDIT: Rainydays12, just to be clear - which AP exams did you take back in high school? EC doesn't include AP conversion in their guide to credit-by-exam, but as far as I know all the exams are accepted for pass/fail credit. It's a question of how many credits for what minimum score. I scored 5's on AP Bio and AP English, and was granted 3 credits of bio and 3 credits of English comp.

2nd EDIT: Oh wow. I just looked at my status report and noticed that EC granted 8 natural science credits for the AP Biology exam and 6 for AP English Lang & Comp. I really need to pay attention to these things...

I took Spanish and European History AP exams. I don't remember my scores but I requested them from AP's archives several weeks ago.
I didn't end up taking English, Calculus or Physics even though I took the classes (regretting that decision now...)