I tried searching for info in this forum as well other sites before posting this question. Trying to find out if someone here can help. I have a 3 year bachelors in statistics from outside USA and a subsequent 2 year study in management. It about more than 20+ years since I completed them. Is there any University in USA that would award a bachelors degree by taking my previous studies into account? My education is considered 'equivalent' but not a real bachelors degree. I am willing to do a capstone or a course or two to get that degree. Please help.
You're not gonna get another degree just by submitting your previous degree coursework. Most schools (I may be wrong) will accept you as a second degree candidate and have you complete X number of in residency credit hours to earn a degree. Normally 30 hours. But I also believe this does not apply to the big 3. They can accept your first degree and whatever credits you've earn after that can be put towards a second degree without the residency hours. You might need to contact them about it.
I'm confused by the non-acceptance of your 3-year Bachelor's. The Bachelor's is routinely a 3-year degree in much of the world, and is widely accepted as a Bachelor's in US schools and by US employers. No one is going to say, "Hey, you only took three years to get your Oxford BA; we can't accept that." Depending on the reason for your need, an official statement from one of the reputable credential evaluation services, declaring that your 3-year Bachelors + 2 years of study is at least the equivalent of a 4-year US Bachelors, might be sufficient. If you explore this route, be sure to choose an evaluator that is a member of NACES, NACES Home. Best wishes in your quest. --John Bear
First, ditto to everything Dr. Bear just said. Second, why not focus your efforts on earning a US masters? PennState has an online MS in Applied Statistics, so does Columbia (and, when I checked last year, the PennState stat program is actually ranked slightly higher than Columbia's). If you has an MS or an MBA from a school like PennState you're going to earn the attention of an HR person rather easily. Third, even if you went to one of the big three, I checked Excelsior's second bachelors policy. You need to earn 24 credits post bachelors. I don't know what level your post-bacc courses in management were. If they were undergraduate courses you may have a shot at those counting. If they were graduate courses then we are back to an age old debate of "can I use graduate coursework to earn a second bachelors at one of the big three?" Along those lines, however, the only credits that seem like a shoe-in for transfer at the big three are from regionally accredited institutions. So, the question then is has anyone here transferred foreign credits to one of the big three and how did that go? Did you have to put it together in a PLA as if it were non-credit based learning? Did they accept the transfer outright? I can only imagine that it would also depend upon your country of origin. But that's a whole lot of work to have your degree essentially "reissued" by a U.S. school. That's effort you couldbe putting into a masters. Heck, even a graduate certificate would help you set the stage.
John, Thank you for taking time to help. In fact one of the well known evaluator's said "The reason your education could not be equated to a four-year bachelor is that your BA and your post graduate diploma are not in related subjects. " Even then I told them there is a 4 year degree offered by an well known University in USA which has the same "exact" subjects - Mathematics + Business Management. They declined to change it. Regards.
Thank you Neuhaus. Mine are post-bacc courses in Management. In fact I have an MBA from a US university. Educational Institutions are fine with equivalency. But as silly as it might sound, one of the well known Accounting Organizations is asking for a issued Bachelors degree and not an equivalency. I can use my MBA as a "issued" degree but there are other pain points there. Thanks again.
Excelsior College, circa 2007: it did go rather smoothly, actually. They have a designated credentials evaluator to match foreign transcripts with US credit hours (the company called Education Credentials Evaluators Inc., a NACES member). My wife earned a second Bachelors in Accounting from EC, starting from her Ukrainian degree in Management and earning further 30+ credits through online classes elsewhere. Could have gotten away with fewer credits, but she was shooting for Florida CPA requirements. PS: you do need to satisfy American distribution requirements with any of the Big 3, so may need to get additional Arts&Sciences credits in addition to the new major. In my wife's case, it boiled down to, IIRC, English Composition, Information Literacy and a phone-based OPI language test (Russian) for additional credit in Humanities. Plus a lot of Accounting.
Three year Bachelor's degrees from British universities are usually accepted on their own as the equivalent to a four year Bachelor's degree from a U.S. school. However, those from universities in South Asia and Africa often are not.
