Excelsior Degree Plan

Discussion in 'Business and MBA degrees' started by GLGAmerica, May 16, 2017.

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  1. bernieyeater

    bernieyeater Member

    Be careful ACE is has lowered several DSST to lower division.
     
  2. GLGAmerica

    GLGAmerica Member

    Another exam down. My son passed the DSST Organizational Behavior exam today. He's now at 75 credit hours.

    Even though, he is not technically able to enroll, I was able to work with the school over the past few weeks to fine tune our degree map a little more. I basically was pretty on target with everything except for the two DSST's I had chosen for Business electives. The ones I had selected would not have counted. Those were Personal Finance and Business Mathematics. They would have counted for extra elective credit but not for the business elective credit component.

    Instead, I have substituted the DSST Intro to Business and the DSST Money & Banking exams for those and I'm told those should work based on my messages with them since they don't duplicate any other course work.

    Of course, this is an unofficial review but I feel pretty good about it. I think at this point, when he's done he'll have about 5 or 6 excess credits he won't need which isn't bad especially since that comes from high school AP class work.

    I did learn that the DSST's are probably lower level all the time. Some TECEP exams are upper level if they have 300-400 course numbers. UExcel exams are upper level if indicated on their site.

    After passing today's exam, he has three more DSST's left to take and then we are down to just the UExcel exams. The next one he will take will be the DSST Principles of Statistics. To help prepare for the exam, we chose a stats class this semester in high school. So, he's probably already half way ready for that exam.

    If everything goes as planned, I can see him being done with the DSST's by the end of the year maybe sooner.

    After that, he'll start in on the UExcel exams. I'm starting to look at the actual course work he'll need to do to figure out the best way to get that taken care of.

    As usual, we are always excited after an exam!

    Here's his updated degree map in case you want to take a peak:

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CJEW10sjVQQ-VbTFfkhv_LIiicULMyJxIXm8YODpQmA/edit?usp=sharing
     
  3. GLGAmerica

    GLGAmerica Member

    Another update: He passed the DSST Principles of Statistics today! I think he took three exams this month which is pretty cool.

    Total hours completed: 78

    He has two remaining DSST exams and then he will move on to the UExcel's.

    Next up: DSST Introduction to Business which should be pretty easy I imagine.
     
  4. Marcus Aurelius

    Marcus Aurelius Active Member

    That's incredible! At the rate he's going, he's going to have all of his college requirements done BEFORE he finishes high school!
     
  5. GLGAmerica

    GLGAmerica Member

    We always talk about you after every test. It's great. He's like what's Marcus saying!

    So, he passed another DSST test today. That's like four in basically a month so he's cooking! This one was Introduction to Business. He was out of there in less than 45 minutes so it wasn't too hard of an exam.

    Basically one more DSST test unless I make a change in his degree map. Then it will be on to UExcels.

    Hours completed 81

    Next up: DSST Money and Banking
     
    Marcus Aurelius likes this.
  6. Marcus Aurelius

    Marcus Aurelius Active Member

    [QUOTE="So, he passed another DSST test today. Hours completed 81[/QUOTE]

    He's almost a senior in college now. I can't even imagine how that must feel at his age. If I could get a do-over in life (knowing what I know now), I would totally do the same thing he's doing.
     
  7. bernieyeater

    bernieyeater Member

    DSST Into to business was easy for me. However I have significant business experience.
     
    GLGAmerica likes this.
  8. GLGAmerica

    GLGAmerica Member

    I think he thou
    He's almost a senior in college now. I can't even imagine how that must feel at his age. If I could get a do-over in life (knowing what I know now), I would totally do the same thing he's doing.[/QUOTE]

    If I had known about it I would have too. I can't believe more people don't do it.

    I have yet to see any information from the high school that even mentions a CLEP test let alone a DSST. It's a shame.
     
    SteveFoerster likes this.
  9. bernieyeater

    bernieyeater Member

    If I had to do it over again I would take several years at Saylor.org
    Nice to hear he is a Senior, great progress.
     
    GLGAmerica and SteveFoerster like this.
  10. GLGAmerica

    GLGAmerica Member

    I'll pass on the kind words.

    My son passed the DSST Money and Banking exam today. He did mention it was one of the harder ones but we didn't have any practice exams he could take before the actual exam.

    Now that he has passed that exam, he's now done taking all of the DSST's. He's also finished with all of the CLEP's. Next up are the UEXCEL exams. He's got 5 of those to take and then he'll be done with the exam portion of his degree.

    As always, it's exciting every time he crosses another one off the list. Total hours now are 84 credit hours completed.

    Here's the updated degree map we've been following.

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CJEW10sjVQQ-VbTFfkhv_LIiicULMyJxIXm8YODpQmA/edit?usp=sharing
     
  11. Marcus Aurelius

    Marcus Aurelius Active Member

    You have quite a few Excelsior College business courses on your list. These courses are VERY expensive. As an alternative, have you considered online courses that have been ACE evaluated for college credit? Study.com has many upper-level business courses that are just a fraction of the cost of Excelsior's.

    https://study.com/academy/goal/transferable-credit/online-college-credit.html
     
  12. Marcus Aurelius

    Marcus Aurelius Active Member

    Keep in mind that UEXCEL exams are a little different from CLEP and DSST insofar as they are not pass or fail. Excelsior College awards letter grades for these exams.
     
  13. GLGAmerica

    GLGAmerica Member

    Yes, I was talking to my son about that and told him he'd want to over prepare for the UEXCEL exams because they will count towards his final GPA. I was wondering about that and contacted the school and they confirmed that.
     
  14. GLGAmerica

    GLGAmerica Member

    I'll look at those. Now that we are getting closer, I need to focus on how to get those credits cheaper.
     
  15. Marcus Aurelius

    Marcus Aurelius Active Member

    It may also be worth considering courses from Study.com in place of UEXCEL exams. The amount of work required of one of these courses is probably comparable to preparing to pass an exam. And since UEXCEL exams are assigned a letter grade, it's a lot to risk. Some of the UEXCEL exams on your list will be challenging (Managerial Accounting, Quantitative Analysis, Finance). If those can be taken in course format, you'll have better control over the GPA.
     
  16. Marcus Aurelius

    Marcus Aurelius Active Member

  17. Marcus Aurelius

    Marcus Aurelius Active Member

    SteveFoerster likes this.
  18. GLGAmerica

    GLGAmerica Member

    Since you posted this, I dug through study.com to see what might match up with the courses we have left. It seems like it’s a great option. I’ve been working to try and find out from Excelsior if it’ll work. While I’m fairly confident I’ve mapped the correct courses, I’m concerned about the upper level credit requirements and if it’ll count as upper level.

    But getting that answer or others from Excelsior isn’t as easy as it should be.

    They don’t want to provide advice if you aren’t enrolled and he can’t enroll because of his age. Because of cost we don’t want to enroll until we need to anyway.

    It’s really all stupid that study.com is an official partner of Excelsior yet Excelsior won’t tell you how the partnership works. In addition, Excelsior will gladly evaluate your credits after you apply but before you enroll but before you enroll won’t tell if a course matches up until after you take it.

    Kind of hilarious that it’s all some sort of big secret.

    I posted the courses in the back of the degree map I made if you want to check it out. I might also post over at InstantCert to see what experience people have with Excelsior and Study.com.

    Thanks for pointing it out. We appreciate it!
     
  19. Marcus Aurelius

    Marcus Aurelius Active Member

    That really is odd that Excelsior can't (or won't) tell you whether those courses will count as upper-level credit with them. It doesn't make any sense to me.

    I took a look at the Study.com courses you selected in your degree map. I can't see any reason why they wouldn't get the job done.

    Yeah, I do think it's a good idea to post in the other forum and ask about people's experiences using Study.com courses in Excelsior degree programs. Most people on that forum tend to go with Thomas Edison (although I'm not entirely sure why), but there are some Excelsior people there too.
     
  20. Marcus Aurelius

    Marcus Aurelius Active Member

    There is one course on your list that I'm not 100% sure about. Excelsior requires three upper-level credits in Managing Diversity in the Workplace. You have Communications 301: Diversity and Intercultural Communication selected to fill that requirement. It's possible that Excelsior may consider that as a communications course instead of a management course. It's hard to say for sure since Excelsior won't give you a straight answer on anything until you enroll.

    Those Study.com courses are so affordable you could take a bit of a gamble with it and take it anyway. Worst case scenario, they don't accept it and you have to take another course to fill that one requirement.
     
    Last edited: Dec 14, 2018

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