Quickest path to a BS

[bkahuna]

Speaking from recent experience, and also being an IT professional I can tell you what I did in your shoes.

I had MCP certifications also similar to your CCNA and ITIL. The CCNA may count for between 1-3 credits, likely as free electives, same thing for ITIL, just depends on the college.

I chose to go to Excelsior but I didnt research the other schools. Buburja had a great experience at COSC. The capstone at excelsior can be 8 weeks, just depends on what the schedule is there.

Now all that being said, you have strong science and math, along with computer stuff in there, and written english and history...

If I were you I'd go for a Bachelors in Business Admin. You're nearly there on all of the foundational stuff. Plus I find that increasingly employers are looking for that rather than IT degrees, its really the best option in my case and probably yours as well. The IT degrees usually have some requirements that cant be completed quickly by exam, and transferring in microsoft exams will depend on your advisor at the college where you enroll.

Right off the top you'll need to take these FOR SURE:
CLEP Microeconomics -3.00
CLEP Macroeconomics - 3.00
CLEP Principles of Management - 3.00
CLEP Business Law - 3.00
DSST Principles of Statistics - 3.00
DSST Intro to Business - 3.00
DSST Principles of Finance - 3.00
Straighterline Accounting I & II (online courses) - 6.00
CSU Operations Management (correspondence course done through email) - 3.00
Excelsior Information Literacy (quick online class) - 1.00
(31 lower level)

DSST Mgmt Info Systems - 3.00 UL
DSST Business Ethics and Society - 3.00 UL
DSST Business Law II - 3.00 UL
DSST Money and Banking - 3.00 UL
Excelsior Business Strategy 495 - 3.00 UL (capstone course)
(15 upper level)


That puts you at 108. So you'd have 12 more credits you'd need.
Id suggest
CLEP Natural Science - 6.00 (mostly biology)
CLEP Analyzing & Interpreting Literature - 6.00

That gets you to 120 not including credit for your certification exams. You might find that some courses are duplicated, so you might have to add a few electives like:
DSST Here's to your Health
CLEP Intro to Sociology

You can get a concentration in MIS, but it requires specific things like a programming language (C#, C++ etc) and you'd have to take either a Microsoft Certification Exam or an online class.


Depending on what your work experience is will depend on how quick you can knock these out. You already have Calculus so I dont think you'd have a hard time with the accounting, finance or statistics, but you would need to study.

If you were motivated and could find the time to study, and find a testing center with a good schedule, I'd say 90-120 days to finish the exams and then the 8 weeks for the capstone course. However thats only an estimate based on my experience. I only had 21 credits to start out and you have 62 plus the certs. I'd imagine you could do the capstone course in conjunction with a few of the exams just judging on the class requirements I just went through.


If you decide to go this route I can help you with what materials you need to study, and I could offer to just pack up what I have and sell it to you, so all of the books you'd need (except for the capstone, its gone already), the business calculator for the finance exams, and you'd need to pay for instantcert and noodletools' noodlebib for the capstone. (thanks to burbuja, that was a LIFE SAVER for the written portions on the capstone!!)

First things first, choose a college. Then figure out your best guess as to what will or wont transfer, anything you know you dont have like Economics, Statistics, etc get cracking on that while the college does the eval which can take a month. Anything in the 'gray' area as far as transfers, wait until you get the eval. You'll need to get your official transcripts sent to the college directly, not through you unless you just take the envelope you are sent and put it in another envelope and send it over there (i.e. ITIL and CCNA transcripts)

When you take the CLEP / DSST exams you can send the scores to that college, or you can just bank them and when you're enrolled you can send them a transcript from CLEP and DSST (they cost like $20).