GRE Subject Tests

[Kaz]

This is the first time I've looked at this thread! John Bear's books never mentioned Empire State so I went with Excelsior College when I started all of this back in 1998 (yes, I'm slow!). Now that I know Empire State exists I may be dropping EC like a hot rock...like today. I took the GRE Psychology Subject test exactly once and scored a 500 after reading 16 books and long before I discovered InstantCert. I think it's reasonable to believe that I could have scored much higher if I had kept at it! Wish me luck!

What NAP said and I'll add slow your horses. You rarely hear anyone here talking about Empire for good reason. NAP pointed out the residency requirement. It doesn't matter how many credits you already have and what they are in, you have to take another 30 at Empire if you switch to Empire (I think it might be 32 actually, they might be one of those 128 credit bachelor's programs instead of 120). Also, since you started all this back in 1998 and this thread is about GRE subject tests you need to know that any scores more than five years old are basically unusable. This isn't a rule from these schools. ETS, the company that owns the GRE, won't "maintain" scores older than that. I don't know if they actually ever delete them after five years but they won't forward old scores to any schools, no matter how much you complain.

More importantly, if you've already taken a subject GRE and EC has accepted the score and given you credits for it you are probably already in the best position you could be in to use the subject test. Those credits are locked-in at EC under the policies that were in place when you enrolled as long as you pay your annual student maintenance fee. That means the previously mentioned five year rule has no bearing and even EC changing its policy won't take those credits away from you. I'm in such a position now and it is sweet :coolgleam:.

If you haven't taken any subject test yet then also know that Empire does not publish information regarding what credits it rewards for scores on the subject GREs, but apocryphal info handed down through the forum all seems to agree that Empire is VERY stingy with how many credits it rewards. I've read that in order to get enough credits to completely fulfill a major you need essentially a perfect score, like better than the 96th percentile. It goes without saying that it isn't much of a "plan" if the plan is to get a perfect score. That's just insanely hard.

The only realistic option seems to be Charter Oak, but they have enough differences from EC that all the differences need to be weighed before switching. For instance, the don't give out normal majors, "only" concentrations. Maybe that matters to you, maybe it doesn't, but it should be considered. Also, they don't reward a sliding scale of credits for the GRE nor can you fulfill a major using a GRE, but their minimum score requirement is really low (40%) so you can get a bunch of credits cheap and easy using them.

Any way you go good luck! If you pursue the Empire option please come back and give us a detailed post about it, as you'll be one of the few with that experience.