Excelsior- cheapest route?

[Jenniferinfl]

I qualify for financial aid, but, only around $2400 pell grant for the year. I don't mind doing a small loan for my undergrad because I'm going to end up with a loan for my master's program anyways. BUT, I obviously don't have a ton of extra money floating around. 
What is the cheapest way to finish up at Excelsior? It looks like there's a minimum of two classes I have to take there no matter what, 4 credit hours. Plus, if I do less than 12 credits there's that pesky $1000+ fee. So, $3135 to take those 4 credits and pay the fee and then I still have to pay $495 to actually graduate. Drawbacks to that is that I don't get to use federal loans or pell grant because I'm not full time. Right? So I just have to come up with that money. 

The other option looks like I DSST out of all but 12 credit hours. This may be a challenge too because it looks like coming up with upper level credits is a bit tough. I have no lower level credit hours remaining to get. The only credits that didn't get used out of the 90 I transferred in was one of my maths as I had math maxed out. 
This is what I've taken so far: 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...sp=sharing

Basically, it looks like I need 31 upper level credits. 4 of those have to be done at excelsior. 
If I test out of 19 credits and take 12 at Excelsior, I can use federal aid including their cheaper loans. That's $6120, after Pell Grant I would need the loan for the rest of 4847.50. I would probably about a $5500 subsidized/unsubsidized loan and use the rest to pay the graduation fee. It's $1700 more doing it that way, BUT, at least it's not on a credit card.

Thoughts? Am I doing this all wrong?

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OR, another thought, are their hidden fees at TESU that I'm not seeing? Would I be better off just going through TESU? It looks like they are about the same price, but, perhaps not as restrictive with credits?

Sorry for all of the questions! I only realized this was even something you could do about a week ago. I've been gradually limping my way through classes at the local college as I could fit them in around a full time job and kid. I'm also on a bit of a time crunch because I will only qualify for financial aid for this upcoming semester starting in January. My parents made too much for me to get financial aid as a young adult and wouldn't contribute, so I had to wait until I was 25 to even start college. Now I have a husband who makes too much and won't contribute. The only reason I qualified this year was that he took a few unpaid weeks off in 2016. It's pretty much a right now or never sort of situation.