Let me know if I’m going about this the right way, Excelsior!

Let me know if I’m going about this the right way, Excelsior!

This is my plan of attack for obtaining a BS Business from Excelsior, let me know where my strategy is flawed:

I’ve enrolled at a local community college on a part time basis. I would like to take one 3 credit hour course per term and spend the rest of my time taking cleps/dantes. I’m basically using the community college as a place to park Clep/Dante credits and take classes that I don’t think I can test out of.

In the perfect world, I would transfer in 120 credit hours ( to Excelsior) pay the fees, wait for my evaluation and get my diploma. My thought is that I should not enroll at excelsior until close to the end of acquiring the required credits. Why pay the yearly fees when I can park credits at a community college for free?

In the real world, I’m sure no matter how closely I follow their guidelines there will be some discrepancies. So at that point I will only need to take a few credits/ece that can be done within one year.

Does this make sense? Am I missing something?

How many total credit hours from cleps and community college can I transfer in to Excelsior that will apply to a degree program? The pie chart in their catalog says that you need 12 advanced level business credits, does this mean that I could take 108 credits from the community college / Cleps ?

Thanks for any input?

“Failing to plan is planning to fail”

“There are no victims, only volunteers”

 

bceagles,

You're missing out on advanced level credit. Community colleges don't (to my knowledge) yield advanced credit, nor does CLEP.

There are DANTES exams that will give you advanced business credit (Business Law II and Management Information Systems are two that come to mind), but you'll still miss out on:

Production/Operations Mgt
Business Strategy
and no doubt others.

What will make up the gap are Excelsior College Exams (ECE) and Thomas Edison State College exams (TECEP). Note that Business Strategy will not be offered after 9/30/04 by Excelsior although they may add in other courses via distance learning.

In fact, using these exams you don't even need to attend your community college - degree requirements can be fulfilled solely through examination.

A good site where you can see this laid out is http://www.bain4weeks.com .

Cheers,
Mark

 

BCEagles wrote:

> Why pay the yearly fees when I can park credits at a
> community college for free?

And people wonder why Excelsior is rude to non-students on the phone.

 

Why pay for something thats free? I don't think that unreasonable!

 

“You're missing out on advanced level credit. Community colleges don't (to my knowledge) yield advanced credit, nor does CLEP.”


Lets say for example that I take a bunch of Cleps and regular community college classes that total 108 credits (all within Excelsior’s guidelines, all lower level) and then I take 12 credits worth of classes at a 4 year college (upper level) or 12 upper level credits worth of Dantes exams. Is this inline with what they require? I want to make sure I understand this. It seems to me that only 12 upper level credits is a little light?

 

How, according to you, should Excelsior College make money -- especially in your "perfect world"?

 

Making money

A student still has to enroll to get the diploma. So Excelsior is still getting their $1000 plus no matter how he does it.

Check your upper level credits again. I think Excelsior needs at least 21 upper.

 

Through bceagle's enrollment fee, and graduation fee (what's the problem here?).

Are you suggesting, Mark, that he enrolls now (with litte or no credits)? What if he takes a hiatus (overloaded at work for example)? Should he just eat the re-enrollment/maintenance fees as time passes by?

Excelsior isn't being cheated when someone decides to take a preemptive move to lessen the cost of a degree. Granted, there is no guarantee that the transfer of prior credit will be flawless into a degree problem at Excelsior; however, this does not justify Excelsior being rude to anyone (especially students).

Best Regards,
Bill

 

Sorry Mark, I'm just looking for information. If my question offended you ( or anyone else) in any way I'm sorry, not intentional.

Thanks everyone for your input! This message board is very helpful.

Any other details I should keep in mind?

 

I don't know about the business degree but my evaluation of 89 credits showed that I needed 30 upper level credits plus their 1 required literacy class for a total of 31 credits needed and a grand total of 120 credits for the degree. I'm not sure where you are getting just 12 credits at upper level. You are going to need 30 credits at upper level I would think.

 

The way that I understand the General Business requirements, there are 12 "advanced level" business credits required that must come from non-core courses. If planning to test-out of these requirements, you'd take Labor Relations, Human Resources Management, Business Law II, and Management of Info Systems. Other than those 12 upper level credits, there's the 45 credits required for core business courses (nothing upper level here AFAIK), 60 hours in Arts and Sciences (again, no upper level requirements here AFAIK), and 15 hours of "additional credit" which appears that it can be just about anything else. The testing plan at BAin4weeks.com specifies which of the recommended tests are for advanced credit, and there are the 4 listed that I noted above. Perhaps the requirements are different for the BSLS program?

 

Thanks for the Info everyone.

Hey Rant,

I'm a big fan of your work. Thanks for the post!

 

How Excelsior makes money

When I applied to Excelsior, I estimated that I needed 27 credits based on Excelsior's credit tracker utility and discussions on the phone with Excelsior's staff. 27 credits was 3 less than the 30 credits which should have qualified for a reduced (and minimum) tuition in the program that I was applying to at the time. When I applied, Excelsior came back and said I needed more than the 30 credits so charged me the higher tuition. Rather than quibble as I wanted to finish a degree, I paid the higher tuition. More than a year later, when discussing my degree program with my advisor, I was told Excelsior had re-evaluated my transcripts and decided to award me 3 additional credits. Needless to say, this was after I had prepaid for the exam, textbooks and a review course to satisfy the 3 credits. I thought this was quite underhanded on Excelsior's part but as I had prepaid my tuition, I felt I had no choice but to complete the program. I feel that in my all my dealings with Excelsior, they never failed to disappoint me. Even so, I would say that Excelsior is a good choice for a person who has a lot of credits and it self-motivated and independent enough to follow thru on a credit by exam approach to completing a degree.