help getting started

[Jeanna]

Hi all, I just came across this site while looking up info for CLEP exams for my son who is a freshmen currently in college. However, now that i'm here, I'm hooked on the idea of maybe advancing my own degree. I stopped a while back with only an associates. I did recently attempt to go back for bachelor's through Devry online but was learning nothing and paying a ton for that honor. So now i'm looking at Excelsior and thinking about attempting to test out of as much as I possibly can. But I'm not sure where to start. Do I pick my preferred plan of study first then try to plan which exams to take based on the required classes? Seems like a reasonable starting point to me but am looking to all of you for a more experienced point of view. I did visit the Excelsior site and am ultimately interested in their Social Media Management MBA degree but am willing to start with something a little less like a bachelor's in marketing or something. My current degree is an associates of art with multimedia focus and I have worked for the past 10 years as a web designer. Any pointers for getting this adventure off the ground would be greatly appreciated.

[sanantone]

Thank goodness you got away from Devry. I recommend that you apply to all of the Big 3 to see which will accept the most credits: Excelsior, Charter Oak, and Thomas Edison. If you can't afford to apply to all 3 schools, then I recommend TESC because their BSBA degrees don't require a capstone that has to be taken in-house, and their tuition and fees will be the cheapest under the Per Credit Tuition option. TESC doesn't normally have a residency requirement, but it does under the Per Credit Tuition option. You can complete the 24 credit residency requirement by taking TECEPs which is TESC's credit by exam. These are only $36 per credit hour making them just a little more expensive than CLEP/DSST, but you won't have to worry about paying an enrollment fee or tuition for any TESC courses.

This thread will explain the differences in cost.
http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...n-big.html

Here is a test out plan for TESC's BSBA in General Management.
Sanantone's BSBA General Management - Degree Forum Wiki

TESC has other BSBA degrees (marketing, computer information systems, accounting, etc.) in which you can mostly test out of and take the rest of the courses at some place cheap like Penn Foster.

[corpsole2]

Well, I would say that most of your credits from your Associates will probably go toward fulfilling your General Education requirements.

If I was to do it again, I would find what degree I wanted to do, and pay the application fee to have your credits evaluated. It would then disperse the credits where they fit into the degree plan, and you can see what you need to do to fill in the blanks. For that, I would talk at length with an advisor and they can tell you what you can do to finish.