Suny suprise

I was searching for information about an unrelated topic when I came across the first requirement for graduate school admissions requirements for SUNY Binghamton: "A bachelor's degree or its equivalent from a NATIONALLY or regionally accredited college or university." (See Binghamton University - The Graduate School - Prospective Students - Admission Requirements)

So those with a degree from a DETC, TRACS, etc. school apparently have another possible access point to a university with RA accreditation. Why did Binghamton decide to do this? I do not know, but a quick check of the admissions requirements at a couple of other SUNY campuses indicated that only an RA diploma was acceptable at those places.

 

In practice, this may not really make much difference. The reason is that Binghamton's graduate programs are generally competitive -- for example, the MBA program rejects most applicants, and accepts students with average GMAT scores around 628 (which is about the top 30% level). It's not an "open admissions" program, and so an applicant from an NA school is going to have to beat out a lot of RA applicants to get a spot.

This isn't likely to happen, unless the NA applicant really stands out in terms of work experience or standardized graduate admissions tests (GRE/GMAT). And the latter is unlikely, because NA schools don't do anything to select students with good standardized testing abilities; they rarely (if ever) require standardized undergraduate admissions tests (SAT/ACT) at all.

So while Binghamton may consider NA applicants in theory, the NA students may not have good chances in practice. Binghamton has a lot more RA applicants than they can handle, and in that situation it may be tough for NA applicants to compete.

 

Agreed. An NA applicant will have to "show his/her stuff" and compete to get into a Binghamton program, and that applicant may, far more often than not, fail in their attempt. The point here is that SUNY Binghamton doesn't automatically slam the door shut on a applicant simply because they have an NA degree like so many other schools do. Unfortunately I also have a feelling that this type of policy is a way of kicking the can down the road to avoid problems with the Feds. At the university-wide level consider all accredited degrees, but in individual departments (where actual admissions decisions are made), NA applicants are savaged.

In my own situation, I happen to have all my degrees from B&M schools and in the past have taught at B&M graduate schools. From experience I can tell you it's fairly easy to recognize the academic quality of an applicant to a graduate program from a review of their application package, no matter what school they graduated from. If someone graduated from Ashton or Ashworth or Princeton, their capabilities for performing more advanced academic work will show in their demonstrated accomplishments and capabilities.

Of course there are many other factors in play with admissions decisions. An interesting hypothetical scenario: You have only one opening available in the Binghamton MBA class and two candidates competing for the position. One is a Western Illinois graduate and the other is an Aspen graduate. Both have roughly equal work experience and both 630 GMAT scores. Who do you admit???

 

This could be a vestigal policy that permitted graduates from the old USNY/Regent's College to be considered for admission since the NYS Board of Regents is considered a national accreditor by the Department of Education.

 

I don't think the majority of distance ed programs, be them NA or RA, require SAT/ACT as a prerequisite for admission to undergraduate work. I'm sure they're out there, but pretty much every program I've ever seen has had open admissions.

The other thing is, if two applicants are equal in all ways with the exception being that one is an RA grad and the other an NA grad (and this is likely to be a scenario enough times for it to be of note), then at that point the graduate program is going to have to make the judgement call on who gets admitted. Saying that, it's very likely that personal biases will prevail and the NA student is likely to get the short end of that, even in a situation where the NA student may actually be more accomplished. Luckily he/she will have other options.

 

Most schools have the same entrance requirements for their online and campus programs. So, just about every public or private non-profit that requires the SAT or ACT will also require them for their online programs.

 

I'm not saying you're wrong, in fact I'm sure there is a lot of truth to that. But I've honestly never seen it from any of the many, many, many schools I've been in contact with over the years, all of which had open admissions. The only thing close to it was one school in particular that had some admission requirements, but they were waived if you had enough work experience and were over 24 years old or already had a degree.

Personally, I don't see the point of the SAT requirement for an adult professional, or just an adult whose many years past high school except for in special cases, but I dunno that's just my take on it.

 

There really isn't much need for standardized tests, unless a program has more applicants than it can accept. For example, UCLA had 61,000 applicants last year, but only 5,800 places in the freshman class. So UCLA has to make lots of very tough decisions that are going to disappoint lots of people. Standardized tests are about the only way that you can make any kind of fair comparison between people who attended different schools, in different places, studied different things, and have different talents. Such tests aren't perfect by any means, but it's hard to see any practical alternative.

At this time, there may not be any online undergraduate programs (either RA or NA) that have a surplus of applicants like that. So there may be little or no need for the SAT/ACT in online education. This would likely change if there were online undergraduate programs that were both particularly desirable and limited in enrollment.

 

I almost attended University of Houston - Victoria online and went through the whole admissions process. They do not differentiate between their on campus and online students. If you don't have at least 12 college credits to transfer, then a minimum score on the SAT or ACT is required. This is generally the case for public universities in Texas.

UTOC · CCJO Program Information

If you've mostly been looking at non-traditional schools, most of those are open admission or close to it for their campus and online programs. They don't differentiate between their students either.