cookderosa Wrote:bump - any ideas? I'm wondering if Law Enforcement is considered SS, I never remember on that one.

sanantone Wrote:Cooperalex......I don't know why you do this all the time. :p AOJ courses are not inherently prohibited from social sciences per TESC's webpage which lists a few AOJ courses as being acceptable as social sciences. Yes, one should confirm with advisement through email (not phone), but there are issues with the human services category. In another thread, someone just had their Fundamentals of Counseling DSST counted as a social science and PSY-331 without having to ask (this has to be the millionth person by now?). That is also listed under human services as COU-something. I didn't take the DSSTs, but I had AOJ-101 (Intro to LE) and AOJ-102 (Intro to CJ) transcribed as social sciences. TESC would not code the DSSTs as AOJ-101 and AOJ-102 if they did not have the same content as their SOCIAL SCIENCE courses. They would be given their own code. I wouldn't say it's officially not valid since TESC has had mistakes on their webpages in the past.

You can see here that TESC counts 5 of its AOJ courses as social sciences including Intro to CJ (AOJ-102).
Thomas Edison State College: General Education Electives

sanantone Wrote:Cooperalex......I don't know why you do this all the time. :p AOJ courses are not inherently prohibited from social sciences per TESC's webpage which lists a few AOJ courses as being acceptable as social sciences. Yes, one should confirm with advisement through email (not phone), but there are issues with the human services category. In another thread, someone just had their Fundamentals of Counseling DSST counted as a social science and PSY-331 without having to ask (this has to be the millionth person by now?). That is also listed under human services as COU-something. I didn't take the DSSTs, but I had AOJ-101 (Intro to LE) and AOJ-102 (Intro to CJ) transcribed as social sciences. TESC would not code the DSSTs as AOJ-101 and AOJ-102 if they did not have the same content as their SOCIAL SCIENCE courses. They would be given their own code. I wouldn't say it's officially not valid since TESC has had mistakes on their webpages in the past.

You can see here that TESC counts 5 of its AOJ courses as social sciences including Intro to CJ (AOJ-102).
Thomas Edison State College: General Education Electives

cooperalex2004 Wrote:Since the question was about one particular exam, I stand by what I said. I even wrote that there may be an exception, but that this was the published match to that exam. I realize there are many ways around what is listed as a course match, I myself made a ton of strange course changes to make my degree plan, but when people ask about a specific exam the short answer for most of the cases is that for anyone who is hoping for a perfect match, the safest bet is to follow TESC's matches and not to give them hope about how someone else did it in the past. It is sad to see people each week or two who have utilized other users degree plans only to find out that something has changed or that TESC won't code something a certain way. The recent mess with the AAS Capstone is a perfect example, users could have added the degree months earlier and not have gotten locked in to the capstone, but chose to wait for one of many reasons and now what worked for me and many other users no longer works. As you said, the only safe way to proceed is to get something in writing. I try to give good advice and not provide too much hope about changing too many course matches, in many cases is it just easier to take a different exam or course instead of going through the process of fighting a course match. For those who are still planning and not enrolled (which would lock you into a catalog year and into a planned out set of courses), the best advice I can give (in my opinion) is to follow the course matches that are given by the school. Once you enroll you can always use the information from this site to challenge the matches and you'll often win the fight, but I don't like seeing people given the advice to hope for something that is less than guaranteed in many cases. My advice is more on the safe side and is to hope for the best but plan for the worst. Until someone is locked in and has their degree planned out, nothing is truly set in stone and things can (and do) change without notice at TESC and other schools.

sanantone Wrote:The capstone issue is not even related. I actually think it is quite wrong for TESC to require this capstone in the middle of the academic year. These kinds of changes should only be done during catalog changes. It should be illegal for an institution, especially a public institution, to change degree programs in the middle of the academic year. Another issue is that TESC is now requiring this capstone before the capstone course is even available. It is beyond ridiculous. They are potentially holding people back who are ready to graduate.

The way I take it, you are discouraging people from taking the limited number of tests that are available to complete their degrees. Oftentimes, there aren't too many other options. Honestly, most people have not had to put up a huge fuss to get these tests transcribed as social sciences. Actually, it is quite common for Fundamentals of Counseling to be planned as COU and transcribed as PSY automatically when the test score comes in. I really don't see the posts you're talking about week after week. Here's to Your Health does not have the same beaten path as the social science DSSTs. I've even seen plenty of recent posts that said Here's to Your Health will not count as a natural science.

All that is required is a little disclaimer about verifying with advisement, but it should also come with a disclaimer that these tests and courses have been counted as social sciences for many. In that way, you aren't depriving people of valuable information. If you were the only person answering questions on this board, I would have not known about some of the possibilities. To say that AOJ is a human services area and not social science is inaccurate and will confuse people. You are basically giving a blanket statement that will make everyone believe that all AOJ courses are automatically counted as human services and never as social sciences. You did not say this specific exam is human services; you said AOJ is human services and not valid for social science.

sanantone Wrote:But you referred to the whole category of AOJ and not the exam. It's not a big deal. I agree that different viewpoints are good.