General UMPI Questions

[NC Coach]

UMPI has specific degree programs. Your academic advisor selects your courses for you in the order the university wants you to take them. Every course is not offered every term, but they know when they'll be offered so it makes sense that they select your courses. 

I took English Comp II on Sophia and absolutely HATED it. The grading was AWFUL. It's a lot of writing. If someone wants to go to UMPI, I HIGHLY recommend taking their English courses. Far LESS work. I took English Comp II there and saved weeks of my life and only had 1 writing assignment. 

The only science class from Sophia that transfers is Environmental Science. I do recommend that because it will fill one of the GEC (UMPI's gen ed reqs). Human Biology does not. Other than that, I don't recommend taking science elsewhere unless you already have. The UMPI science courses will be less work and the lab will be easier. 

UMPI offers French and Spanish. A foreign language is required for all students at UMPI. The courses are not difficult. I just finished Spanish I this week. You can take Spanish I at InstantCert and transfer that in. There is no escaping the language requirement. 

All courses MUST be completed during the term. If you don't complete the course, you will receive an F and have to repeat the course. You're only allowed to have 2 open courses at a time. I fought for a third because I was waiting for a Final Assessment to be reviewed. That wasn't my first term either and I had a 4.0 so they knew I could handle it. I've completed at least 4 courses each term.

Yes, you can skip a term. You need to speak to your academic advisor about it though. They like to keep tabs on their students. You're not all off on your own like you are at the Big 3. Every course has a professor from the campus who you can reach out to for help. It's not like WGU who has CI's which aren't professors.

Feel free to pm me with any questions you have about UMPI. I'm happy to help. 

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I would not spend the money or time on the StraighterLine Spanish courses. Everything you need for the class is given to you in the course content. This is how all courses are at UMPI. The professor gives you a ton of websites to learn from. You will spend far more time on StraighterLine courses. You will have far more assignments as well. 

Thanks for all the info!  Somehow my reply to you got all mixed up with another response so adding this again.  Edit to add:  I see now that if you respond to multiple posts quickly, it combines them.   You learn something every day.  

I have Environmental Science from Straighterline.   After my last post I found a Straighterline to UMPI equivalency guide.   It appears that one will transfer in, but there is no lab for it.  

There are a number of things I like about UMPI, and a number of things I do not like at all.   I do NOT like not being able to pick your class order, even though I do understand that not all courses are offered every term.   You should still be able to pick your order from those offered, the way pretty much any other college works.    It seems like micro-management to me, and I am strongly opposed to that.   LOL

I guess for now I'll keep knocking out what I can at Sophia (possibly minus the English courses based on your feedback) and re-evaluate once those are pretty well all completed.    Thank you again for taking time to respond.

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StraighterLine is expensive for the Spanish courses, that's the only set of courses I highly NOT recommend.  Your first option should be InstantCertCredit for Spanish I, at $20+$15 proctor fee.  If you can get access to a CLEP testing site, do the MS/CLEP option for FREE, at most it will net you 9 credits in Spanish, at the very least, 3 credits, so that would be the best bet.  If you really want to learn at home, test online, and have a month to do so, take all 3 Spanish courses at Study.com, this will be slightly cheaper price than just one StraighterLine Spanish course, yet you get 3 completed for a max of 9 credits to boot!

Oh, that sounds like another possible option for sure.   I like the extra credits as well.   Thanks for the info.