Walden MBAs Discussion & Accountability

[SweetSecret]

> Where's everyone else at in the program? What's your plan for the next term?


Thank you for starting this thread. I'm trying to see if I can get an April 1 start date. And this thread so far has been my biggest source of information for the Tempo MBA program.

If anyone suggestions in general let me know. Otherwise, I hope in a couple weeks, I'll get my feet wet in the program 

I totally thought I responded to this, but I must have closed the window or something.

Anyhow, I took the longest academic leave I could. I literally save everything from the Marketing (IG005-IG007) with regard to assignments and assessments so that I could work on them while on leave. I am going to go ahead and finish those with the intention of going back to Walden at some point unless I transfer the credits and finish my JD & MBA at the same school. Right now though, I am just thinking about the MBA and sitting for the LSAT again (didn't get proctored correctly the first time).

I'm in the MBA Healthcare Administration track. For earning more credits on the MBA towards Walden I see three potential solutions.

First, EdX has their MicroMasters which awards graduate level credit to people who pass all the proctored exams for the certificate AND apply and are accepted to the full masters program. Note, it doesn't say "agrees to attend", leaving open a potential loophole for gaining the grad credits without actually attending. I have received a scholarship from EdX before, but apparently even with that there may be some fee the school would charge to have the credits applied to a transcript. The USM/UMUC Micromasters MBA Core Curriculum crosses over a lot, but there are some classes I wouldn't need, namely marketing (already doing through Walden) and possibly Global Business Strategy. I wrote to UMUC a few weeks ago to find out what fees they assess for gaining credit once a person passes the proctored exam, along with a number of other questions. Needless to say I did not hear back. If there is no fee assessed though, this might be worth it. On EdX scholarships a person only pays 10% of the course cost, but they only allow scholarships for 4 courses per year. To complete the entire MicroMasters (if I still took marketing) would then come to $730.6 ($85.6 [4 discounted classes] + $645 [3 full priced classes]) for 14 credits, or $52.18/credit. There are a few other potential options going this route including the Accounting & Financial Management MicroMasters (4 classes = 12 credits on scholarship = $99.60 + $50 application fee +$15 TESU transcript fee = $164.60 or $13.71/cr without bulk discount PLUS whatever the academic per credit fee is), or the DoaneX Healthcare Administration but the cost of that is higher for less credits (9cr for $586). I was also interested in the in Data, Economics, and Development Policy MicroMasters, which is worth about 15-18 grad credits, but the cost would be higher with the minimum being $500. It also looks more high stress since exams are proctored in person and failing means waiting until the end of the next term to re-take. Right now the accounting & financial management micromasters is looking good! Even before getting the MBA that would be an asset on my résumé, and I have seen a few places with other grad credits I could collect to take advantage of the full 15 credits transferred in. The biggest question is whether UMUC would assess a fee to have those accounting credit put on a transcript, and if so what the fee would be. Since I never got an answer to my e-mail regarding the MBA Core I suspect I'll have to call with questions, but that will have to wait until next week. The big bummer to EdX for me right now is I just updated my OS and apparently EdX proctoring doesn't work on 10.14. For 12 credits so cheap though I can deal. I responded to a survey Walden put out in detail and told them they really should consider either making their own MicroMasters to port into the MBA or else formally acknowledge that they'd be willing to accept these credits. So far... no response. I think the best way to find out might just be to try it. If the per credit fee from the school is $100 (with the $13.71 fee above) I would end up paying $341.13/course, which means UoP would be cheaper, but if the academic fee is $52.96 or less than it either breaks even with UoP or else saves money. I think it's worth checking out, but also more risky if it requires being accepted to the school after the fact. I still want to try to get some more concrete answers from EdX about that academic credit purchase fee.

The second solution would be to spend a 6 month term at WGU. If I wanted to finish at WGU I would lose my credits from Walden along with the concentration I really wanted. I still have some medical issues that might make completing the whole degree in 6 months near impossible. During the three month term at Walden I underwent four surgeries and didn't get done nearly as much as I had hoped to. I could go to WGU just for a term and then plan to port the credits back over to Walden, but since they max out the transfer credits at 15, that means I would end up paying $3,945 for 15 credits, which comes out to $263/cr. For about that price I could go to an in-state MBA program online.

The third potential option is to spend a term at University of the People. It's a $60 application fee, and $200 per class exam, which comes out to $66.66 per credit. From what I can tell, it's looking like Walden would accept these credits as Walden is taking NA credits or basically anything recognized by CHEA. The advantage to this is I could get to know people more. On the downside, I really like that with Walden there's not a requirement to interact with the other students. Getting a bad professor was bad enough, but sometimes discussion boards just feel like busy work. I am also concerned about keeping up my GPA for law school, and I don't know how that would come through with UoP, whereas I suspect on the MicroMasters it's just a pass/fail system that wouldn't affect the GPA. I am keeping UoP in my pocket as a thought.

Another option for some people might be to just work at Papa Johns corporate to get the free tuition from Purdue Global University, either with plans to graduate there or port back to Walden. I don't know if I could bring myself to do either though. I know Papa Johns is trying to move past the racist remarks, so that is certainly an issue, not to mention the guilt of knowing the food is going to contribute to the obesity and diabetes epidemic. I think I would feel more guilt-free going with EdX.

The major bummer part of going with EdX, for me, is I had an interested in taking the BioInformatic Micromasters as a "just for fun" thing, and going with the accounting would eat up my free scholarship opportunities. Seems worth it though since I don't really need credits in BioInformatics anyhow.

I'd probably be more comfortable just sticking with Walden outright if I had access to everything in advance and could prepare my papers without having to be enrolled, as some people are doing with WGU, but that only seems to be happening because so many people are enrolled there already and giving others a heads up about what is required. Walden certainly doesn't seem to have the same fan base or cohort feel that WGU has... another thing I mentioned to Walden that they needed to work on.