Attn: Larry McQueary or anyone who knows how to test out of a bscis degree

This is a message i was going to email larry but could not find a deliverable addy for him. Anybody who knows anything about the below I would really appreciate any help. Thanks.


Hey Larry, you are pretty well known on the ed forums “as the guy that tested out of a bs in cis” to put it bluntly. I also am interested in doing this and was wondering what tests you took to achieve this? Lawrie Miller has said that he was working on a plan for such a degree, but nothing has showed up on his site. Let me give a little background on myself. I currently hold an AAS in Information Technology, however it is from an ACICS accredited school(at the time of my enrollment I knew they were accredited and didn’t know anything about regional and national accredititation, I just figured as long as it was accredited it didn’t matter. Wrong! I now come to find out that only a couple of the local schools will accept their credits and they are on the higher side of tuition. I understand this was partly my fault for not checking into this further, but the federal government should step in and have ONE accrediting body for all approved schools. If you aren’t accredited by this body then you’re not accredited, period. Then there would be no more of these “third party” type accreditors like DETC, ACICS, etc that basically have no transferability with RA schools.) But I digress, back to the original topic. I think it would just be easier and cheaper to test out of a degree. Would any of the big 3 accept my credits at all? I’ve called before and asked just about transferability (which they said no) but how about portfolio credit any chance of that at all? I currently hold my MCSE, MCDBA, A+, Net+, and may go for CCNA next. I know Excelsior and COSC give credits for these (as well as TESC, I think) who gives more credits though? I read about some guy who said COSC gave him 19 credits for his MCSE and A+ alone, which would be more than the 16 I would receive for the all of the above at Excelsior. Any truth to what he posted? I understand you need to take ICCP exams for most of the CIS core. How much do these run, and how tough are they? If I followed the plan on BA in 4 weeks for either the BA in Liberal Arts or the Business degree by taking the “first two years” would those work ok for my gen eds at excelsior? Another plan I’ve considered is getting my business degree with the plan laid out by Lawrie and then pursuing my masters in CS. Would this be easier, quicker, cheaper? Or would I be stuck taking a lot of courses/exams for the classes I didn’t get with by BS in Business? I appreciate you taking the time to read this, sorry bout the length. Thanks for any help you can give me, Robert.

 

There is truth to what I posted regarding 19 credits-
Net Ess -2 cr
TCP/IP -2cr
NT Server -2cr
Enterprise -3cr
IEAK 4.0 -2cr
IIS 4 -2 cr
NT 4 W/S -2cr
A+ -2cr
W2K Pro -1cr
W2K Server -1cr

I did not have the Net+ when I submitted this but I think they said it is worth 2 credits.
Remember the electives you choose will make a difference in the credits awarded. COSC gets the "recommended credits" for Excelsior; it will be the same.