BA Literature in English of Excelsior

My friend would like to take an English degree and complete it asap.

She was graduated from Shue Yan College (a tertiary institution in Hong kong)

She had completed Honours Diploma of English language and Literature, courses included:

FIRST YEAR
First Year Chinese
English Usage I and II
English Writing I and II
Introduction to English Literature I and II
Oral English I and II
Introduction to Cultural Studies
Feminist Readings and Women's Writings
Elementary Translation

Second Year
Effective Communication
Persuasive Writing
English Fiction I and II
English Poetry
English Drama
Intermediate Translation
Introduction to Linguistics I and II
Technoscience Culture
French I

Third Year
Effective Communication
Persuasive Writing
Renaissance Literature
Neoclassical Literature
Romantic Literature
Victorian Literature
Sociolinguistics
Psycholinguistics
Advanced Translation
Literature, Culture and Ecological Ethics

Fourth Year
Studies in Shakespeare
Interpretation
Literary Criticism
American Literature
Contemporary Literature
Travel & Culture
Comparative Literature

And she has received the letter from The Credentials Evaluation Service of the International Education Research Foundation Inc. in the USA stating that the above diploma is equivalent to USA RA 4-year degree.

I would like to know whether she can obtain the degree within 1 year and how much she has to pay? Money really matters.

She really need a bachelor degree, and need help from experts like you, thanks.

 

Likely her quickest options would be Charter Oak State College www.cosc.edu , Excelsior College www.excelsiorcollege.edu , and Thomas Edison State College www.tesc.edu , all three of which would allow her to earn the degree by "testing out" procedures using AP, CLEP, DANTES, ECE, PEP, TECEP, etc.

 

Re: Re: BA Literature in English of Excelsior

Yes, I must concur with Ted!


Abner

 

Following up Ted's post, this comes from page 33 of the Charter Oak State College catalog:

On this webpage,
https://www.excelsior.edu/portal/page?_pageid=57,45987&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
Excelsior College says,

 

BA

But I really want to know whether she can complete the degree within 1 year.

 

I would think that the ability to complete the degree in one year depends upon various factors.

Does the university (Charter Oak, Excelsior, TESC) accept all of her transfering credits and do they match the degree requirements? What is still missing from these requirements after tranfer credits are evaluated?

Does your friend have access to CLEP, DANTES, GRE, etc? That could speed things up quite a bit.

There is not doubt that it is entirely possible to complete the whole degree in much less than one year starting from scratch. But possible and likely are often two different things.

So to give a waffling answer - yes, it is possible to complete the process in one year, if you friend is willing to do what is necessary to complete the degree requirements.

clint

 

Re: BA

Depends on how much your friend can transfer in and how quickly she can test out of the rest, but I'd bet it could be done.

 

Consult the schools themselves next

Shirley,

Others on this forum know much more than I about the schools' policies, so they may offer you better advice.

However, this is a question only the schools themselves can answer with certainty, because they will study her transcript and determine which courses to accept and which ones will meet their various requirements. Once your friend has some idea of how she stands now, she can realistically estimate the time and cost.

From my experience and by reputation on this forum, Charter Oak State College (COSC) is very responsive and helpful to potential degree candidates, so it might be a good idea to contact them first.

On the other hand, COSC does require 30 credits within the US, so your friend might have to duplicate some of her credit through CLEP, DANTES, or other tests. (By the way, a Graduate Record Subject Examination in English Literature could be a good start.) Moreover, COSC will grant a degree in individual studies with a concentration in English, rather than an English major, if this distinction is important to her.

Then, too, COSC recommends Educational Credit Evaluators (ECE) as an evaluator, while Excelsior specifies ECE, so the possible acceptance of her evaluation by the International Education Research Foundation is another cost issue that can only be resolved by the schools themselves.

So once your friend gets a well-founded estimate of the feasibility of her plan, she may decide to do further research into Excelsior's or Thomas Edison's offerings. Overall, the three schools offer the same approach, but the differences in the details may be significant in her case.

At any rate, as others have said, given your friend's list of courses, it certainly seems worth her while to start inquiring at the schools themselves, find out as much as she can for free, then decide whether to spend some money on her next step, whether that be a formal evaluation by the schools, re-evaluation of her transcript by ECE, or taking some standardized tests for credit.

In general, once she knows what her school of choice requires of her, it's economical to fulfill as many of those requirements as possible before enrolling.

Good luck to her.

 

CLEP

THANKS A LOT!!

But she is in Hong Kong, not in US, do you mean that she cannot take the CLEP, etc for credits?

CSOS AND EXCELSIOR, which one is cheaper?

 

Re: CLEP

When $3bill says that your friend needs to complete 30 hours in the US, it doesn't mean that your friend needs to be in the US, just that those 30 hours need to be from colleges/testing programs in the US. Your friend can take AP, CLEP, DANTES, ECE, PEP, TECEP, etc., if she can find the testing centers to do it at.

 

The Whole Ed Catalog http://home.earthlink.net/~hwatts/edu/cbe.html has links for: ACT-PEP (ECE) (Exelsior College Examinations), CLEP (College Level Examination Program), DANTES (Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Educational Support), and TECEP (Thomas Edison College Examination Program).

The AP (Advanced Placement) exams are here: www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/about.html .

The GREs (Graduate Record Examinations) are here: www.gre.org .

 

Re: CLEP

Tuition pages are here.
Charter Oak State College www.charteroak.edu/About/tuition.cfm
Excelsior College www.excelsior.edu/portal/page?_pageid=57,115504&dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
Thomas Edison State College www.tesc.edu/prospective/undergraduate/tuition.php

 

Re: Re: CLEP

 

If her credentials have been evaluated as equal to a US RA 4-year degree; then why wouldn't she seek a master's degree instead of a bachelor's degree?

It seems to me that one of the several Master of Liberal Arts programs (such as the one at Excelsior) might better meet her needs.

Just a thought...

 

The only problem I see with her course list is that it is not diverse enough. It has TOO MUCH English.

American degrees require you to know a little of everything. She needs at least one math course, at least one science course, maybe a history course (but she does have Introduction to Cultural Studies, so maybe that will count).

No matter what American college she get her degree from, she's going to have to take a few courses to widen her knowledge.

Excelsior college is pretty good. Here is some info on how to do it with them.

Look at the GENERAL requirements for an Excelsior degree.

It is a HORRIBLY written catalog, but try to understand what's on pages 14 - 23.

http://www.james-lankford.com/Liberal_Arts_Catalog_and_Addendum.pdf

And these are the SPECIFIC requirements http://www.james-lankford.com/Guidelines_for_the_Major_in_Literature_in_English.pdf

Now:
Is Shue Yan College an officially approved university in Hong Kong?

If it is not. Then getting an American degree could take a while.

An approved university is one that is officially recognized as degree- or diploma-granting by the regulatory agency for higher education in the country in which the institution is located. This agency is usually the national ministry or national department of education.

Answer:
It seems that the university may be approved. This is from the university's web page http://www.hksyc.edu/about_shue_yan.html

The College has begun its quest for academic accreditation as a degree granting institution in 1995. Starting from September 2001, seven degree programmes have been validated by the HKCAA and three more programmes will be validated in 2005. The College is working towards being the first private university in the not too distant future.

Second:
Her degree needs to be evaluated by Educational Credential Evaluators, Inc. This process will take about 15 days once they receive all her information. She needs a Subject Analysis evaluation report.

A Subject Analysis evaluation tells you if her degree is equivalent to an American degree, and it also tells you the American equivalent award/grade/credit she would have been given for each course. It also gives you description for each course.

Make sure it is a Subject Analysis evaluation. Expensive, but it is the required one.

This is Educational Credential Evaluators, Inc. (ECE) web site.
http://www.ece.org/main/content=EvaluationServices&SubSite=1&LeftNav=2#CBC

When you complete the application, you need to request a Subject Analysis evaluation report and request that your evaluation report be sent to Excelsior College.

Questions and answers about this service are here.

http://www.ece.org/main/content=IndividualFAQ&SubSite=1&LeftNav=4

This next part I'm a little confused about.
She has to get English translations of her course descriptions/syllabi. I think she makes these up herself, but maybe she uses the course descriptions prepared by Educational Credential Evaluators. That's what I'm confused about.

She doesn't need translations of all course descriptions. Just the ones that relate to her major, English Literature (these are listed in the specific catalog), and the courses relating to her 'minor' (an additional set of 4 related courses - related to each other, but not to English Literature).

Then she sends this all this stuff to Excelsior and they will use her notes and the evaluation report to tell her what courses she is missing. Maybe a math, maybe a science, maybe an english.

If she is missing any English courses, she should take the GRE subject exam for English Literature.
Excelsior will give her credits depending on how well she does with this exam. If she scores high enough, she could get enough to fulfill ALL her english requirements. But she may not need any English courses anyway. that depends on what the evaluation says.

Description of Exam
http://www.gre.org/subdesc.html#litinenglish

Practice Exam
http://ftp.ets.org/pub/gre/007626.pdf

It looks to me like this whole thing could be done in 6 months easily.


Charter Oak State College's process will be different, but probably not much.

 

I just read on
Charter Oak State College's site
http://www.cosc.edu/Visitors/faq.cfm#AcceptInternationalCredit

that they accept evaluations from WES

http://www.wes.org/ca/required/

The only thing about COSC is that you don't get a degree in English Literatrue. You get a degree in General Studies with a concentration in English Literature.

But COSC might be easier and cheaper. you'll just have to look into it.