Big 3+ overall reviews

So far TESC has been terrible. I have 128 credits from other schools and applied at TESC in August of 06. They had all of my transcripts in late August and told me that I would have the evaluation in a few weeks. In October I called to ask what the hold up was. They said good news, they no longer required the $400 to review your credits. I told them that would be great had they not cashed my $2,800 dollar check a month before. It is now February 07 and I still have no credit review. I have demanded that they place in writing that my 1 year starts ticking when I receive my credit review. I am then transferred and put on hold for a while then an answering maching takes over. I have left several messages and no one has ever called back. I am now demanding my money back.

 

When I enrolled at Excelsior I had credit on an AARTS transcript from four unrelated MOS and two service schools, I had credit from three community colleges and four 4-years. I had all of the CLEP generals and a collection of CLEP and DANTES subjects. All-in-all I had well over 120 hours when I started out.

I did one Excelsior exam (written English) and one Excelsior course (Info Lit) in my BS there. I completed all of my additional degree requirements (and a bunch of not required but I took it anyway) through Coastal Carolina University (in the seat) and BYU (DL).

My final transcript at Excelsior was:

GPA - 3.51
total hours - 196.99
written English - 3
Humanities - 103.66
Nat Sci/Math - 14
Soc Sci/Hist - 24.33
upper arts/sci - 26
applied professional - 52
upper applied - 6

The degree is Bachelor of Science in Liberal Studies with an area of focus of Performing Arts. Depth areas were music and theater.

For me, the strength of Excelsior College was their ability to take all of this credit from varying sources and apply it to a unified program of study with a reasonable set of general ed requirements. I only lost about 12 hours to duplicate credit.

 

You might also post this over at onlinedegreereviews.org.

 

10-4, the truth must be told!!!!!

 

For those of you that haven't done so, you may also want to read the informative (and entertaining) articles on completing degrees at TESC by one of our long-term members who completed his undergraduate degree there.

http://www.degreeinfo.com/article2_1.html

http://www.degreeinfo.com/article4_1.html

I'm not sure that everything is completely up to date with TESC's current policies, but it does address the upper/lower division issue and also has some clever ideas for maximizing credits.

Also, for what it's worth, TESC and Excelsior have always been a bit of a mixed bag as far as student comments.

I think it varies depending on how busy they are with new students at any given time; some people say the service is excellent while others repeat stories similar to the ones described here with long delays.

COSC has historically been smaller and better with its service to students.