Why Charter Oak State College is better than Thomas Edison State College

[sanantone]

Well, I'm sorry that you and/or some others were offended, but I've said nothing out of the ordinary. You don't see people from well established and well known programs getting so upset because they know they don't need to prove themselves. I am happy I received my degree and for myself, I know what its benefits and limitations are. I personally attended COSC, so I speak from personal experience as well about the programs, and my opinions on them. Anger can be construed also as sensitivity about one's credentials as well, and if you are confident about what you've done, then you shouldn't get so upset and then call for censorship because it offends you. The beauty of free speech is that anyone can have a voice; we don't live in China for that reason. You should be encouraging dissent and discussion rather than bulldozing your own views...

Actually, you do see people from traditional colleges getting offended online. People here aren't being insecure about their credentials because most of them have met their goals; they are offended by outright lies. We know that the Big 3 are unranked, non-traditional schools and have no problem with it.

From my experience, Charter Oak's cornerstone course, for example, was a joke and a way for the college to make some extra money - ok fine, that's how they do it no problem. Half the students in this online course couldn't properly read, write, or comprehend what was asked of them. All three programs will accept anyone and everyone - that's a fact. Now obviously how likely an individual student will succeed is another question, but you don't see more established programs just accepting anyone no questions asked (they want to see more coursework, standardized exam scores, recommendations, etc). Yes, in a sense, these three colleges are like degree mills the big benefit with them being regionally accredited which can serve the purposes for many of us. I would argue, as angry as it may make you or anyone else on this forum, that taking one exam is not enough to prove competency in that subject. That's why you see more people getting degrees in easier subjects like business administration, rather than computer science, molecular biology, or physics through "testing out."

I already said the bolded part, but even when some COSC students are able to do well on these things, you explain their acceptance to competitive programs as being luck. Top 20 schools aren't the only schools with competitive admissions into their graduate programs.

Students don't test out of those degrees because there aren't enough tests for those degrees. Overall, business administration majors are the most abundant regardless of their method of completing their degree. They even far outnumber psychology majors, which is the second most popular degree. Test companies are developing tests that people are most likely to take. Why would they develop tests for molecular biology when there are hardly any people majoring in molecular biology relative to business administration?

The problem Sanantone is that you are too pedantic about everything. For every post that you show saying that high school grades are the best predictors of success, I can find another 10 that show otherwise. Mark Twain famously stated, "There are lies, damned lies and statistics."

Find an independent study that says so. Don't use ACT or SAT's reports.

As far as the payscale study, I've provided some references as to the pitfalls in their methodologies that you can refer to from a previous post. I don't care so much how they calculated their data as far as stating that their salary reports are misleading. Here's the ranking from payscale: Best Schools for Liberal Arts Majors - College Salary Report . It shows Excelsior College with the highest starting salary and median income - and that's simply because people at Excelsior College already have a job - typically between the age of 30 - 50 or so, and also entered the economy when times were better. A liberal arts graduate even from a top tier school like Cornell may not even hit $47,000 starting right out of college in a liberal arts degree. You have to ask yourself a simple question and that is why these Excelsior College liberal arts graduates are getting the highest salary. It's certainly not because of prestige because Excelsior is low ranked/for "non-traditional" students, so I don't know why you think this statistic is so amazing.

Starting salary is starting salary. It means the person is at the beginning of his or her career regardless of age. Independent of that, one would expect liberal arts graduates from high-ranking schools to be beating out Excelsior when it comes to mid-career salaries.

You're clearly implying that standardized exams don't deserve as much merit as they do. On one hand you're saying that multiple choice tests are not good evaluators of analytical thinking, so if they're not, then logically you wouldn't want to use them. No standardized or even regular exam is without its flaws, but they do test certain concepts specifically under pressure and against a national standard where all students are compared against. When it comes to technical subjects like math, science, medicine, engineering, those tests are pretty good at establishing core proficiencies. In some cases you either know something or you don't. The major pitfall with coursework is that you may end up not really learning anything, having an instructor that may be too biased one way or another, or a million other reasons - standardized exams are imperfect (as is every other test), but they gauge everyone to the same standard. It is at least fairer and based on merit to some degree because everyone has to take the same thing. The good news also is that standardized exams are trainable (i.e. through practice tests, review materials, proper coaching/conditioning/etc), and there are test companies whose business model is based on that. In any case, the topic is entirely too complicated to just basely state that multiple choice exams are not good at testing analytical ability.

I think you're confusing memorization and the ability to solve math problems with analytical thinking.

Well, technical graduate programs don't put too much emphasis on the GRE's written section. I know that income is not the only yardstick for success, but in some practical matters, all students do want to know what degrees/careers pay the most - so people informally put more emphasis/show more interest in the degrees/careers that pay more. So with that said, in my informal opinion, I personally care more about how these top institutions assess GRE scores and what parts of them. In particular, very prestigious technical graduate programs care more about quantitative ability perhaps to the detriment of the verbal section, which is why you'll see students with 790/800 GRE scores, but 500/800 verbal scores (I think they changed the scale a few years ago, but you get the idea...) sometimes.

Certain types of programs put more weight on the quantitative sections. The cutoff scores for the verbal sections are lower because the percentiles are lower. A score of 700 on the quantitative section is not the same as a score of 700 on the verbal section. 700 on the verbal section will put you into a higher percentile.