Is excelsior still the quickest and cheapest?

[rachel83az]

Per other students in this forum, Excelsior won't advise you properly until after you enroll in your first class(es) at the school. They're even worse than TESU in that regard. If you want to stick with Excelsior, one suggestion would be to take as many credits at Sophia as possible that have 2 or fewer Touchstones. See https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/So...lency_List for assistance there.

Once you hit 60+ credits, apply to Excelsior and register for the UL cornerstone. (Or Maybe the 1-credit Info Literacy?) That should unlock full access to advising.

In regards to English Comp, I think the issue has been arising with Business degrees. They have slightly different requirements than BALS or BSLA degrees. Sophia English Comp should still work fine with Excelsior for a Liberal Studies degree. However, I believe that the Study.com courses that Excelsior accepts (English 204 & English 205 https://study.com/college/school/excelsior-college.html ) fewer/easier assignments to complete than Sophia does.

English 204 has 5 assignments listed, same as Sophia's English Comp I. English 205 has 6 assignments listed, to the 7 of Sophia's English Comp II. Fortunately, with Study.com, you don't need to complete every assignment to finish the course (with Sophia, you do). With Study.com, you get 100% on the quizzes (easy enough, once you get the hang of it), then score as high as you can on the final exam. That tells you how many points you need to get from your assignments.

A SDC course has a pool of 300 points, and you must reach at least 210 to pass. For these two courses specifically, 30 points come from the quizzes and up to 60 points can come from the exam. The remaining 210 points are from assignments. If you score 80% on the final exam, that's 48 points + 30 points from quizzes = 78. Then you'd need at least 132 points from the assignments to pass. If you look at the SDC assignments, you'll see that they give you rubrics showing you how many points each assignment is worth and what you must do to get those points. Pick out the assignments that are easiest for you to write, giving you the most points, and keep track of your final grade for each. Once you hit your point goal, you can submit blank assignments or just a couple of half-hearted paragraphs to get a grade for those assignments and to pass the class.

By doing it this way, you can potentially cut the number of assignments needed for the English Comp courses approximately in half. Instead of 5 and 7 assignments needed for each at Sophia, you might be able to get away with just doing 3 or 4 at Study.com.