How would you pay for BAIN4WEEKS?

Hello everybody!

I just wanted to say what an amazing web site this is and thanks in advance for any insight.

I currently have 21 credit hours from a local community college. I'm interested in taking the course exams (CLEP, DANTES, etc.) to finish my BS. I read through the BAIN4WEEKS site and it answered a lot of my questions.

I was curious what the avg. cost is the one of the "Big 3" for someone looking to test out most, if not all, of their BS? (Their web sites have a lot of listing for fees, but I didn't know which ones I would have to pay for a "testing out" plan.)

Also, for the ones that took the "test out" method of obtaining an entire degree, did you pay for everything (money to school and exam fees) out of pocket or is their financial assistance for this route??

Many Thanks
Brian

 

The possible permutations of existing credit and exam choice are too varied to be able to give a good estimate.

If you were to take 120 semester hours in 3 hour exam blocks (not a great idea) at $70 per test -- the cost would be $2800 in just exam fees.

If you used a GRE exam (one test for a potential 30 hours) you knock that number of exams down considerably.

A number of CLEP exams are worth six hours each -- that effectively reduces the number of exams by half.

What you will find is that using an assesment university such as Excelsior College to "test out" of an entire degree from start-to-finish is entirely possible...

What it is not is the easy way or the cheapest way to a college degree.

Where these programs are of greatest value is to those folks who already hold a considerable amount of knowledge from a variety of sources equal to the material being tested. And, who have some academic background already.

 

If you're in the military, you can take CLEP/DANTES tests for free, I believe. If not, they average anywhere from $60 to $80 or more each, depending on the testing center.

Each of the Big 3 schools has their own fees/tuition they charge. Excelsior seems to be increasing their rates every 4 months, from what I've read here. I have heard of people transferring in almost all of their credits from CLEP/DANTES exams, and paying a total of about $5,000 to get a BA. Not a bad price at all. Maybe somebody else can confirm this, but I believe you can get financial aid if you go to COSC or TESC, but not Excelsior.

 

I've not paid Excelsior anywhere near $5K -- I'm still under $1500 and due to complete in December...

But! I have paid tuition at other schools and exam fees and travel and etc... that has been applied to the Excelsior degree.

IF a person had 100% of his degree complete (by whatever means) and simply wanted to transfer 100% to Excelsior and have the degree issued -- the cost for a BSc would be about or less than $1500.

The problem is -- no matter how close many people think they are to having the degree finished, there always seems to be that one or two more hurdles to jump... and of course, those hurdles are the $250 - $350 variety and not the $50-75 variety...

And then, of course, there are those that will never finish their DL by testing-out degree. Those are the ones that say "I take tests good! I don't need to read no Descartes before I take that philosophy exam, I already know everything they is to know about everything..." hoping nobody reading this board wears those shoes...

 

I was also taking into account the cost of the CLEP/DANTES exams.

 

I was in the Army Reserve and took most of my exams for free. The ones I did pay for were $60. The admin fee for Charter Oak was about $1,000. I completede my bs (from AA) for abour $1,200 and a one year commitment to the US Army!!

 

I have very few (under 10, to my knowledge) credits to transfer over, so I am looking at spending somewhere under $5000 total at Excelsior. (Have not yet enrolled, since I am currently traveling and busy about 12-14 hours a day.) I'll most likely just put it on a credit card or something.

 

That matches my experience - about $5k to $6k including all exams, fees and books. That number represents no transfer of credit and quite a lot of books (used via half.com, etc.), instantcert.com and some standard deviants videos.

Cheers,
Mark