Hi, When is the best time to enroll in TESC.? I am considering going the TESC route and I am not sure if I want to enroll yet. I have gained 18 clep credits to date. I am wondering if I should keep earning credits and enroll later. The requirements for a Liberal Arts degree from TESC seem pretty straight forward. Also, has anyone transferred to Rowan(NJ) with an AA from Tesc? Thanks in advance ML
I best thing to do is to wait as long as you possibly can before enrolling. The hard part is that you won't get any advising until you enroll, which means that you won't be able to get transfer courses approved in advance. This is no big deal if the course names and descriptions obviously match up the the TESC requirements, but otherwise it might be an issue. If at all possible you should try to complete all transfer credit (transfer courses, CLEP, DANTES, etc.) before paying for your enrollment at TESC. The goal is to maximize your chances of completing all your requirements within the first enrollment period (one year), so that your cost is minimized. Right now I'm stuck with a delayed graduation and having to pay for an enrollment extension because TESC says that they haven't received a transcript for one of my courses. If I hadn't needed advisement about how the courses I'd already taken would be applied, then I would have waited to enroll and wouldn't be stuck dealing with extension fees while this gets sorted out. Also bear in mind that the value of advisement may be suspect, since it can depend upon who advises you. I ended up enrolling for a course based on an advisor telling me that an old course wouldn't satisfy a certain requirement, but then 2 months later I withdrew from it (and lost $450) when another advisor was able to get my old course approved for satisfying that requirement. It was a time consuming course, and I didn't need any "extra" credits, so I figured that I'd just cut my losses. The moral of the story is to be very persistent from the get-go if you believe that a course you've already taken should satisfy a particular requirement.
Since your end goal is a masters use the options available to you to get an inexpensive RA undergraduate degree -- Excelsior/TESC/COSC. This will allow you to put together a degree program within your budget by utilizing testing, online courses, independent study, and all of the other credit earning resources out there in the world of DL. John
