COSC Biology

So I have been lurking for a while now but I am anxious to get started. I have my AS in biotechnology from a CC and I have a few credits (LL) from a local university.
I have a lot of work experience in food science and that's the main reason I want to finish my degree, to advance at work. I have worked as a lab tech for 7 years but need a bachelors to move up.
I want to do the GRE option at Charter Oak. I found a few UL labs but suggestions are welcomed. Can I get my credits evaluated without enrolling? If so what fees are needed for just that? I want to wait to enroll so I can take whichever tests I will need. I am concerned about my credit eval since the schools I went to. Had quarters and not semesters.

 

Quarter units are easily converted to semester units. One QU = 2/3 SU.
Excelsior accepted all my quarter and semester units without question.

 

Thanks for the info. I reached out to the COSC people via email. The person is out of office till the 2nd, so it will be a few days. I think just need to bite the bullet and get the eval over with, just to know what I need to do.
Have you guys heard of people trying the GRE path. I posted a bit on the other forum and the made it sound like no one does it cause it's too hard? You only need a 40, to me that seems doable. I want to take it in April and that should give me enough time to study I hope.

 

You need to apply and pay the application fee to get an evaluation. You're not going to have a clear understanding of where you're at until you get an evaluation. Unfortunately, COSC's evaluation does not give you the equivalency of individual courses until you enroll. It will only tell you which requirements you have fulfilled. In other words, you won't know how many of your current BIO credits will overlap with the GRE. COSC couldn't even tell me which courses one would get credit for with the GRE. All they could tell me is how many UL and LL credits I could get. I was told they would all be BIO electives. I emailed and called 4 or 5 different people trying to get specifics. Maybe you will have better luck getting an answer out of them.

If your quarter hour courses are 4 quarters like at most quarter hour schools, you will get 2.67 semester hours. I've only come across one school that rounds these up to 3 semester hours. Your evaluation could be somewhat of a mess if you have a lot of these credits to transfer.

 

Not 40 percent; you need to score in the 40th percentile. This means you need to score better than 40% of people who've taken that GRE Subject Test. For the Biology Subject Test, I believe this is almost entirely going to be four-year B&M majors in biology or a closely related subject who are applying to competitive-admissions B&M graduate schools in biology.

These are generally going to be rock-star students of biology – and to earn credit at Charter Oak, you'll have to place in the top 60% of this population. Expect it to be tough. But I'm not saying undoable.

 

To reach the 40th percentile level on the GRE subject test in biology, you would need to score around 620-640 (max is 990). The exact percentile levels will vary from test to test, but this table shows that a score of 620 represents (on average) the 38th percentile, and 640 represents (on average) the 44th percentile.

For comparison, Cal Poly Pomona (a respectable state university in California) requires all of its MS students in biology to score 650 on the biology subject GRE. This score lies somewhere between the 44th and 49th percentile (again, on average).

So the COSC 40th percentile requirement is only slightly lower than the level expected of master's-level students in biology at one California state university (or more, I think Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo has the same requirement). It's an achievable score, but it's not easy.