TESC timeline?

[lawqueen04]

Hi!,

Well I have been thinking and thinking about which school would be the best for me. Im 25 and I started out college the traditional way, went for a semester and didn’t do as well as I wanted to. So, I enrolled in my community college and took about 65 credits there. I then proceeded to unintentionally take off like 3 years. Well, after going back and forth with Excelsior College and Thomas Edison SC I have decided I am going to enroll in TESC. (YAY! Finally!!) I have already completed 9 credits worth of Aleks classes and done 15 FEMA courses!! So that leaves me with an assortment of 10 Cleps and DSSTs and I will be finished!

I do have a few questions though…..

1. How much do Clep and DSST exams run? About $100? or less?
2. I want to qualify for the January 1st deadline for graduation in March, since I am working now to accumulate the money for this, what should I do first? Take the exams or Apply for admission? I know that it is going to take me until December 1st to have all the money ready but that is because the fee for the school and graduation is ~$3,100 and the exams are ~ $1,000. Should I just take the exams first with the first $1,000 I make or should I save for the admission fee first and take the exams when I have the extra?
3. Also, although I know everything has to be in earlier, if I have all my money available for the school fees by November, can I still take an exam or 2 say December 5th (or the first week or so of December) and receive the score in time for the January 1st deadline?

Im just trying to make myself a timeline here.

Thank you so much for your help 
eeya:

[ryoder]

Apply to TESC and have the eval done if you have not already.
Get an unoffical eval from the forum members if you want so that we can tell you which classes/cleps etc to take to finish. You might find that you can do a more interesting degree than a BALS if you so choose.
Good luck and I was in your boat in October and I am graduating this Saturday. I was done with all my classes in late February but it takes time to process and graduate.

[ryoder]

Also, don't worry about paying for enrollment quite yet. I did that at the last possible moment. Just get your eval, do your tests and enroll only if you need a class or need to graduate.

[Elinor]

Hi!,

Well I have been thinking and thinking about which school would be the best for me. Im 25 and I started out college the traditional way, went for a semester and didn’t do as well as I wanted to. So, I enrolled in my community college and took about 65 credits there. I then proceeded to unintentionally take off like 3 years. Well, after going back and forth with Excelsior College and Thomas Edison SC I have decided I am going to enroll in TESC. (YAY! Finally!!) I have already completed 9 credits worth of Aleks classes and done 15 FEMA courses!! So that leaves me with an assortment of 10 Cleps and DSSTs and I will be finished!

I do have a few questions though…..

1. How much do Clep and DSST exams run? About $100? or less?
2. I want to qualify for the January 1st deadline for graduation in March, since I am working now to accumulate the money for this, what should I do first? Take the exams or Apply for admission? I know that it is going to take me until December 1st to have all the money ready but that is because the fee for the school and graduation is ~$3,100 and the exams are ~ $1,000. Should I just take the exams first with the first $1,000 I make or should I save for the admission fee first and take the exams when I have the extra?
3. Also, although I know everything has to be in earlier, if I have all my money available for the school fees by November, can I still take an exam or 2 say December 5th (or the first week or so of December) and receive the score in time for the January 1st deadline?

Im just trying to make myself a timeline here.

Thank you so much for your help 
eeya:

First of all, congratulations on having completed so much! You're already close to the finish line! Next, Ryoder answered your TESC questions, which is great, because he knows a LOT more about it than I do (though I think our methods might be slightly different occasionally, but probably not in your case.).

I can answer 1, and give a warning-from-experience on 3:

- Your DSSTs and CLEPs will probably run around $100, but that includes the sitting fee which goes to the institution where you are taking the test.

- I think waiting that late to take a last test or two would be dangerous. It took TESC about 3 weeks to even show that they'd received my DSST transcript, and, if I hadn't bugged them about it a couple weeks later, it would have been that long or longer before they'd done the "unofficial evaluation." When I finally pestered them enough to get it done, I found out that DSST had messed up my transcript, so I spent a couple MORE weeks dealing with that. Thankfully, TESC has every transcript and has evaluated all my tests "correctly," so I'm now just waiting on them to receive and grade my final. If I did well enough on the final, I hope to make the September graduation! This is just a warning to let you know that TESC is going to be slow about getting your things done, and... it's okay to prod them along to get things done faster. You're paying them a bunch of money to do things; they might as well do things your way.

- One last thing, which CLEPs and DSSTs do you lack? Depending on which tests, you could probably finish them a lot sooner than the first week of Dec.

Good luck on your TESC journey! I found the testing to be fun; the dealing with bureaucracy ... not so much, but it's all worth it in the end (I hope)!

[lawqueen04]

Thank you so much for all your help.

I didnt realize you could just pay the $75 and have everything evaluated and then officially apply and pay the $3,000. Thank you so much for that.

English 6 credits
English 101
English 102

Humanities 12 credits
Art History
Intro to Philosophy
CLEP Analyzing and Interpreting Literature

Math/Science 13 credits
Physics
Statistics
CLEP COLLEGE MATH

Social Science 12 credits
Intro to Sociology
Intro to psychology
Abnormal psychology
Social psychology

General Arts and Science 19 credits
Biology
Aleks credits 9
CLEP ENGLISH LITERATURE

Liberal Arts Major 33 *18 UpperLevel
CLEP SPANISH 12credits
DSST ANTHROPOLOGY
SDSST WORLD RELIGIONS UL
SDSST SUBSTANCE ABUSE UL
SDSST RISE AND FALL OF SOVIET UNION
SDSST MODERN MIDDLE EAST UL
SDSST ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR UL
SDSST MONEY AND BANKING UL

Free Electives 27 credits
Community Health
Intro to Criminal Justice
Criminal Law
Constitutional Law
FEMA 16 credits


So, The exams I am taking are:
CLEP SPANISH
CLEP ENGLISH LIT
CLEP ANALYZING AND INTERPRETING LIT
DSST ANTHROPOLOGY
DSST ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
DSST MONEY AND BANKING
DSST WORLD RELIGIONS
DSST RISE AND FALL
DSST MODERN MIDDLE EAST
DSST SUBSTANCE ABUSE


Any comments?