On campus study after distance learning

Please,after the undergraduate degree via the distance leaning,can I pursue my masters and my Phd on campus?Thanks

 

If the Masters/PhD school accepts your undergraduate degree, why not? Make sure your distance university has the necessary accreditation and you'll be fine.

 

Two masters programs excepted my Excelsior BS distance degree with no questions asked.

 

For me yes

Regents, TESC (DL)
Penn (Campus)

 

Yes

I completed my AA from TESC and my BA from COSC, as well as a Master's from an accredited institution in Asia (where I was living at the time). I am currently in an RA B & M doctoral program in the US. It can be done. It will, of course, also depend on your grades (which would be the case anywhere), but under the right circumstances, you may even get a full scholarship.

Peace,

Matt

 

My wife did her MA entirely by distance learning (Humanities/philosophy, Dominguez Hills). Several of the on-campus doctoral programs that accepted her (Harvard, Yale, Vanderbilt) were uncertain whether to give full credit for the Master's. But since they, as many PhD programs, do not require a Master's for admission, they said they would see how she did the first year . . . how well trained she was at Dominguez Hills, before deciding whether to give credit. She did well, got credit for the Master's, and saved a year of her time . . . but Vanderbilt still gave her their own MA along the path, so now she has two (M.A.M.A.) as well as the Ph.D. This is not an uncommon occurrence.

 

There's nothing about a distance-learning bachelors degree that excludes you from enrolling in an on-campus masters or doctoral program. Don't worry about that.

You will need to meet the formal requirements for admission into a graduate program. That might include certain prescribed classes, in some cases with laboratories, which is something that might be difficult to accomplish with DL. So you will need to examine some graduate catalogs in your proposed subject and see what they expect, then figure out if you can accomplish those things by distance learning.

Then there's the competitive admissions aspect. Some graduate programs are open-admissions and aren't selective at all. They admit everyone who satisfies the formal admissions requirements and might even admit people conditionally who have deficiencies. Most of the DL doctoral programs that Degreeinfo talks about are like that. Unfortunately, they are often hideously expensive and they may not have very good records placing their graduates in academic or research employment.

Other doctoral programs are much more picky about who they accept. Sometimes departments only accept 10% or 20% of their applicants. These kind of schools are often scholarly and research-intensive. In some cases they award their students free-tuition and living-expense stipends, essentially paying their graduate students to attend. This kind of school typically has a very good record of placing its graduates.

The problem is getting in. The question that you need to be asking yourself is what do you have to show them that will place you among the top 10% of their applicants?

On the face of it, a distance learning degree won't help you very much. It might be a deal-killer, since you will be competing with people who studied full-time at some of the world's most prestigious undergraduate programs.

But you can probably make a DL degree work for you if you can combine part-time remote studies with some interesting and relevant activities. For example, a DL history degree might start to look a whole lot better if you combine it with responsible job experience at an historical site or in a museum.

I've heard of graduate admissions committees that prefer that kind of thing and counsel prospective applicants to get out of their undergraduate classrooms occasionally, travel and do something interesting out in the field.

 

I was accepted into a doctoral program on the strength a distance learning LLB and LLM (I also have a residential bachelors degree) at a major Canadian university. I also received a scholarship covering tuition fees plus financial assistance in the form of a research assistantship plus additional cash (I am not 100% sure but I think this is pretty standard in many programs at Canadian universities for full time doctoral students).

 

Yes, it is done routinely.

 

Someone will always be biased against DL

AFAIK, an AACSB accredited MBA will be just fine and can get you into a B&M PhD program. I am sure though that some professors or universities will always be biased against anything DL.