Trying to make the most out of my situation

[RyuHoshi]

Hi. I was wondering what would be the best school to choose if I want to take as many clep courses as possible in order to get a degree. I am on active duty in the army and my goal is to get a bachelor degree from whatever college that will allow me to do so through clep exams. I’m trying to not use any of my GI bills until I have a bachelor’s. Anyone have any advice?

[bjcheung77]

Advice is just that, you take it with a grain of salt and decide for yourself. There are a few colleges/universities that will appeal to individuals that are actively serving. Your best bets are the ones listed in the forum, COSC, Excelsior, TESU, and UMPI/WGU, that is because all of them are pretty friendly to active service people. However, having said that, if I had to pick, TESU wins for a few reasons - Cheap, easy, fast - and they're a University that allows you to use TECEPS for residency.

[allvia]

TESU is very 'active military' friendly as bjcheung77 mentioned. What type of bachelor degree are you interested in?  What is your long term goal? Do you have any CLEP credits already. or any other type of existing college credits? Here is the Forum Wiki link for TESU specifically - https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/Th...University

[RyuHoshi]

Are there any colleges that will accept all clep courses? My main focus is to get a bachelor’s degree through clep exams. I want to save my GI bills for a master's degree. Do you know any colleges that will allow me to get a bachelor’s degree with only clep courses? I also have no college credits now and just want to take the clep courses because they are free for active duty members and veterans.

[bjcheung77]

Most people on here provide you the cheap, easy, fast (pick 2). But for me - You're getting an answer from the most frugal person who doesn't like spending on anything unless it provides extra ROI/Value in addition to all 3. You're in for a "rude" awakening as there is absolutely no school in this world that will provide you a degree using all CLEPS. Having said that, the ones I mentioned above provide you up to 75% using CLEPS and for the Big 3, up to 113/114 credits transferred in cheaply using alternative credits.

What you don't know already is, I also recommend to keep the GI for your Masters or two. You should see how much Pell Grant and other financial aid you get, you can probably finish your public/state university Bachelors for cheaper than a semester at your local college. There are ways to get "closer/closest" to free, if you work for a company that has a union, etc, there are companies that provide tuition assistance/reimbursement... sometimes it's better to use the GI Bill when you have access to it, you never know what happens later...

This is what I recommend, again, COSC/Excelsior/TESU to take CLEPS for Lower Level, you only have a few DSST's that are also FREE for upper level. You need to take either TECEPS/UEXCELS for Upper Level and for the 24 RA credits required at COSC/TESU. Now get this, you can take more DAU Upper Level courses as well, since they're FREE for active service people. That's as close as you can get with the Big 3... UMPI/WGU will be inexpensive as well if you can complete your courses in a couple of terms, but for active people - you'll drag on to more terms, it'll cost more in the end.

[LevelUP]

UMPI and TESU are good choices.

Forget CLEPS, I know they are free for the military but using Sophia.org is far quicker and easier.  You end up going 2-3 times faster using Sophia.org versus CLEPS and there is no set book or study plan for each CLEP so you are on your own.

UMPI is pretty straightforward, you get 90 credits using Sophia, Instantcert & a few Study.com courses, then you enroll in UMPI and get your degree likely in 2-3 terms.  (4-6 months).

Considering you work on your degree for around 20hrs a week, you can have a college degree likely in 6-12 months.

[rachel83az]

If you're active duty military, you can do TESU pretty cheaply. You would want to take 8 LL TECEP exams (similar in concept to CLEP) for a total of 24 credits. This fulfills residency requirements (only applies to active duty military and not to everyone) for a cost of $3600. It also fulfills TESU's RA credit requirements. The capstone & cornerstone would be another $1500 ($250 x 6 credits). https://www.tesu.edu/military/tuition-fees You'd fill out the remainder of your degree with approximately 6 UL courses at Study.com (and/or Davar, if you want a business degree) for about $600. Maybe Coopersmith (depends on the degree). Then 2-3 months of Sophia for a cost of about $250 for ~3 months. Total cost for a TESU degree for active duty military? About $6000.

UMPI would be a bit cheaper at around $4000 total. However, UMPI has a competency-based model that includes a larger proportion of papers (instead of mostly exams). You'd also need a science-with-a-lab - Study.com has one. And foreign language. InstantCert is a quick and easy way to get credit for Spanish. If you know German or Italian, you could do the CLEP.

If you prefer papers, UMPI is definitely the way to go. If you want to deal with mostly exams, TESU.

As others have said already, you cannot get a degree using just CLEP exams. CLEP exams are entirely lower-level credit (first and second year of university-equivalent). You need a number of upper-level courses (3rd/4th year, usually signified by course numbers starting with 300 or 400) in order to get a degree. UMPI requires that you take at least 30 credits with them, including most of your UL courses. TESU only requires you to take 6 credits with them and they don't care where your UL credits come from. But they also have a residency requirement and military personnel can meet this with the TECEP exams.

[thecontrarian]

I live near Fort Dix and everyone around here loves TESU. They have a dedicated coordinator for military and accept military training for credit.

[dfrecore]

TESU will cost $2698 for military (this includes the cornerstone, capstone, grad fee, and 6 LL TECEP exams). The only other cost would be your 114cr you bring in. I think you can get them all for free through CLEP/DSST, except that you will have to bring in UL credits from somewhere, and the best option there will be Study.com or Coopersmith (the only UL options for DSST that will work in a BALS degree are Money and Banking, Principles of Public Speaking, and Fundamentals of Cybersecurity - none of which are supposed to be the easiest tests to pass).

COSC will cost $1753 for military (this includes the cornerstone, capstone, and grad fee) - but you're going to have to find 27cr of RA from somewhere to bring in - so this is not a great option for someone who has no credits.

I think your best bet will be either TESU or UMPI.

[RyuHoshi]

The thing is that my unit that I am stationed at in Fort Stewart tend do go to the field a lot and I don't think that they will allow me some leeway when have to go to the field and I am needing to take a test at a certain time. That is one of the main reasons that i don't want to use any of my GI bill at this point. I just rather take as much CLEP/DSST as I can. I just want to save my benefits for a master's degree program in the future. It's not because I am trying to be frugal in anyway. I just know that there is a big possibility that I will miss out on important dates and tests if I were to use my benefits and go to a school that wasn't accepting as many CLEP exams as I can take. What would be my best option.