Well, after some hoop jumping today, I decided to share what I learned with everybody, and I hope that it is useful to someone! I finally made my final decision on schools to attend, and registered last week with Excelsior. I had to fight a bit with the advisor to give me advice rather than wait the 2.5-3mo for my initial credit evaluation. (Note: Their lit. says 6-8 weeks, but the info I received had crossed that out by hand and says 10-12 weeks until my "initial status report" is complete. Of course, their lit. also says if you have any questions about the program to give them a call, so hold your ground. The advisor tried to guilt trip me about how they "get hundreds of students enrolling every day," but hey, their internal logistics aren't my problem, and the fact that I paid for a year of service is all I care about. (Note: Enrollment is for a one year term, and not being able to get advisement for 3mo is a bit excessive in my book, so this is something to keep in mind.) Don't call the Excelsior tests "ECEs!" Even though their own lit. has an acronym guide with that definition, the "advisor" bit my head off because ECE also means some foreign credit evaluation thing. Some consistency would be nice, but don't expect it. I did however finally get the answer to my question! The TECEP tests for Introduction to Social Psychology and Psychology of Personality do indeed meet the requirements for Social Psychology and Psychology of Personality on page 38 of the Excelsior Liberal Arts Catalog. (I figured they did, but hey, I paid my money and figured I would verify before dropping $600 on these tests.) I called TESC today too, and they want you to register one month in advance of your requested TECEP test date. You get a two week testing window, and they then take two-three weeks to grade the darn thing. Hopefully, getting a transcript over to Excelsior doesn't take too long... (I am spoiled by the CLEP and ECE tests as the CLEP tests take about a week to show up, and the ECE tests a day or two.) Final thoughts: Excelsior is not winning in the customer service department right now. I had a couple other minor, easy to answer, questions that I wanted to ask about tests meeting various requirements, but it wasn't worth the battle to try to get an answer to them. Oh well, I expect to finish my degree requirements in the next month. At this rate, if I am lucky, they will grant my degree sometime before mid-2003.
