BSBA Plan help

[Ins0mnia]

Hi all,

I need some guidance in planning how to get a Associate or Bachelor degree in Businsess as soon as possible.
To give a little context, I was recently selected for an important job opportunity that requieres me to have a degree (no mather how much experience I have). I've been working in IT during the last 14 years so my goal as some others state is to mark the chekbox of the degree.

Following some of the topics I've read, here is some information:

Your Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Your Age: 32
What kind of degree do you want?: Associate/Bachelor

I did some studies in an Argentina university and I requested the transcripts so I can order a ece.org course by course analysis to see which of those credits could be transferred to ECE or any similar. Based on the names/topics of each course and some research I did, I might be able to get the following credits recognized:  

BUS312 - Managing Human Resources
BUS554- Change Management
BUS501-Business Communications
BUS435-International Business
BUS225 - Consumer Behaviors 
BUS311 - Organizational Behavior 
ACC211- Financial Accounting 
ACC314- Intermediate Accounting I
ACC360-Cost Accounting
BUS425-Operations Management
BUS452-Business Leadership
BUS375-Marketing Management
BUS570-Information Technology
Total: 39 Credits

My plan is to complete the rest of the credits for an associate degree ASAP by doing Sophia.org/Study.com/Other platforms and testings out anything else thats pending.
Considering this plan, which program would you advise? Should I go with excelsior or any other suggestions?

Any input will be greatly appreciated!

[rachel83az]

Skip the Associate degree, head right for the Bachelor'a degree. You'll save money and it won't cost you that much more time, if at all, depending on what you choose.

How do you feel about writing papers in English? UMPI has a number of Bachelor's degrees available for as little as $1400 + the cost of credits from Sophia/Study.com. https://online.umpi.edu/programs/ But you'd need to be okay with writing papers in English, as opposed to taking exams.

[Ins0mnia]

Thanks for the advise.
I wouldn't mind writing papers in English eventhough it is not my first languange
Let me research into UMPI, wondering if they have any limit in the amount of credits you can transfer in.

[dfrecore]

Thanks for the advise.
I wouldn't mind writing papers in English eventhough it is not my first languange
Let me research into UMPI, wondering if they have any limit in the amount of credits you can transfer in.

You can transfer in 90cr.  So in addition to the courses you already have, you'd want to do the General Education.

I'm going to suggest that you look at Excelsior as well.  They take 113cr of transfer.  The reason is, I think a lot of your credits might be UL and count in their degree plan, in which case their GE is much easier to fulfill than UMPI's (like, no need to take a science with lab).  They will also take a lot of ACTFL exams, so you could do the OPIc, WPT, LPT and WPT and get a ton of GE Humanities credit.

Do you know more languages than Spanish (which I'm guessing is what you speak)?

[rachel83az]

UMPI limits you to 90 transfer credits. For this board, that's usually their general education requirements (GEC) plus a few electives. You must complete more than half of your UL credits at UMPI. So, even if your Argentinian credits are exactly how you think they might be, you could have to redo some of them. But you could have a degree in as few as 3-4 months from now, which would be way faster than any school. Faster, even, than most Associate degrees.

[Ins0mnia]

Thanks for this information, I will look into these exams and the GE requierements from UMPI.
Unfortunatelly my only languages are Spanish and English.

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Skip the Associate degree, head right for the Bachelor'a degree. You'll save money and it won't cost you that much more time, if at all, depending on what you choose.

How do you feel about writing papers in English? UMPI has a number of Bachelor's degrees available for as little as $1400 + the cost of credits from Sophia/Study.com. https://online.umpi.edu/programs/ But you'd need to be okay with writing papers in English, as opposed to taking exams.

UMPI limits you to 90 transfer credits. For this board, that's usually their general education requirements (GEC) plus a few electives. You must complete more than half of your UL credits at UMPI. So, even if your Argentinian credits are exactly how you think they might be, you could have to redo some of them. But you could have a degree in as few as 3-4 months from now, which would be way faster than any school. Faster, even, than most Associate degrees.

That would be amazing if I can complete in 3-4 months. 
I've seen in the forum a few plans, will try to come up with something based on that and compare it also with Excelsior.

[rachel83az]

Spanish is good because you can take an ACTFL exam for the foreign language requirement at UMPI instead of taking the class. Or, with Excelsior, you can use it to take 4 exams and get up to 36 credits (12 UL, 24 LL). See: https://www.actfl.org/assessment-researc...ssessments (the OPI and OPIc are the same exam and you can't get credit for both).

Excelsior wouldn't be anywhere near as fast as UMPI, though. Excelsior does not allow you to take the required cornerstone and capstone courses at the same time, as far as I'm aware. It'd be 4 months for just those two courses and that doesn't count the additional time you'd need to complete the credits from Sophia, Study.com, etc.

[dfrecore]

Excelsior wouldn't be anywhere near as fast as UMPI, though. Excelsior does not allow you to take the required cornerstone and capstone courses at the same time, as far as I'm aware. It'd be 4 months for just those two courses and that doesn't count the additional time you'd need to complete the credits from Sophia, Study.com, etc.

The time needed to get courses at Sophia/SDC for UMPI will be similar if not longer.

Your timeline also assumes that someone who has English as their second language will be able to hammer out papers as fast as someone who doesn't have that barrier.  Not saying that the OP can't do it, but just saying that you're assuming he's going to get done in 1 8-week term, which I doubt will happen.

Also, for the BABA at UMPI, he has a lot of courses done - but many that won't come in as anything but electives.  Since UMPI requires that you take a certain number of credits through them in the major, the OP may have to redo courses or not count those possibly UL courses where he'd get the most bang for his buck like at other schools.

My advice for the OP - apply to EC to see if any of your courses are considered UL at EC.  If so, I think you will have a very easy time getting a degree there.

We can help you create degree plans for both schools, and then you can see which is faster/easier/cheaper.

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As a start, for EC's BSB degree, you need the following:
ACTFL OPIc and WPT exams, which will count as 24cr in Humanities.
English Comp I & II (Sophia or Study.com or ONU)
Business Ethics (Study.com or Davar)
Macroeconomics (Sophia or SDC)
Microeconomics (Sophia or SDC)
3 Social Science/History courses (Sophia or SDC)
Any Natural Science (Sophia or SDC)
College Algebra (Sophia or SDC)
Business Statistics (ALEKS or SDC's BUS 212: Business Statistics)
Managerial Accounting (SDC)
Business Law (Sophia or SDC)
Principles of Management (Sophia or SDC)
Principles of Finance (SDC's Financial Management)
2cr of Free Electives (2 of these 3: Sophia's Developing Effective Teams, The Essentials of Managing Conflict, IT Career Exploration; or Foundations of Stats)

You could conceivably apply to EC, and get these courses done in a couple of months while you're waiting for your foreign eval to go through.  As you get credit, you sent it off to EC for evaluation.  Once the foreign eval from ECE comes in, you send it to EC to see where everything falls. At that point, you can decide.  I'd say if your credits from Argentian are all UL, then you can safely register for the cornerstone and Info Lit for the summer, and then the capstone for the Fall.  As soon as it was completed, you'd get your degree the very next month.

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Another EC option, which would be very easy: the BPS degree. Same assumptions as above in the number of UL credits that come in. The difference is that the math is a bit easier.

ACTFL OPIc and WPT exams, which will count as 24cr in Humanities.
English Comp I & II (Sophia or Study.com or ONU)
Business Ethics (Study.com or Davar)
2 Social Science/History courses (Sophia or SDC)
Any Natural Science (Sophia or SDC)
3 Arts & Sciences courses (science, social science, humanities)
College Algebra (Sophia or SDC or ALEKS)
Statistics (Sophia or SDC or ALEKS)
Principles of Management (Sophia or SDC)
Project Management (Sophia or SDC)
Principles of Finance (SDC's Financial Management)
7cr of Free Electives (2 of these 3: Sophia's Developing Effective Teams, The Essentials of Managing Conflict, IT Career Exploration; or Foundations of Stats)

[ss20ts]

I wouldn't assume these classes will transfer to UMPI unless they've been evaluated by WES which is the agency UMPI requests international transcripts be processed through. There are many foreign courses that do not transfer to the US or transfer in as different courses. Many of these are courses which would be UL at UMPI so they would have to be repeated if WES approves them as UL courses as you have to complete the majority of the UL courses at UMPI.

Excelsior is probably a better option especially if these courses have been reviewed for the US. The ability to get a lot of credit via exam in a foreign language is also pretty sweet. The only problem I can see with the BS in Business at Excelsior is the age of the courses. They have a time limit of 15 years so depending on when they were completed that could be an issue. In that case you just complete the BPS in Business and Management instead. That doesn't have a time limit on the courses.

[Ins0mnia]

Thanks to all for the valuable advise, with your comments it has made it easier for me to outline a general plan.
I will share it with you and please feel free to share your thoughts on how it can be improved.

1) I've requested by foreign transcripts. Unfortunatelly they will take arround 40 days to get prepared + additional translation time.
My plan is that once I have them ready to them to ECE and WES. This way I can see how to maximize those credits either through EC or UMPI. The only downside with this will be the double expense of the foreign transcript evaluation but I am willing to do it.

2) I've signed up for Sophia and SDC. My idea is to progress as much as possible with the following classes before the transcripts arrive:
-College Algebra
-Microeconomics
-Macroeconomics
-Statistics
-Business Ethics
+ other classes that would for the BSB, BPS, BLS, degrees.

3) Plan for the ACTFL, OPIC and WPT Exams for the Humanities credits. This option is great.

I believe that with this approach I will be able to reach the 90 CR for UMPI and/or 90+ credits with EC but unfortunatelly I have no way of knowing how much credits I can reuse until the evaluations come through.