My Free Degree From Excelsior College

Hello All,

Instant Cert and Speedyprep will be my prep sources for the exams. So that is why you will encounter them next to the courses.

Bachelor of Science in Business, Concentration: General Business from Excelsior College

Arts and Science – 60 Needed

CLEP History of the United States I 3 Instant Cert
CLEP History of the United States II 3 Instant Cert
CLEP College Composition 3 Taken Class
CLEP Humanities 6 Instant Cert
CLEP Biology 6 Instant Cert
CLEP College Mathematics 6 Instant Cert
CLEP Introductory Psychology 3 SpeedyPrep
CLEP American Government 3 Instant Cert
CLEP Social Sciences and History 6 Book
CLEP Microeconomics 3 Instant Cert
CLEP Macroeconomics 3 Taken Class
CLEP Introductory Sociology 3 Instant Cert
CLEP American Literature 6 SpeedyPrep
CLEP College Algebra 3 Taken Class
DSST Principles of Statistics 3 Instant Cert or MAT-201 Statistics 3 Excelsior College

Career Component – 45 Needed (12 Upper)

CLEP Financial Accounting 3 Taken Class
CLEP Intro to Business Law 3 Taken Class
CLEP Information Systems 3 Instant Cert
CLEP Principles of Management 3 Instant Cert
CLEP Principles of Marketing 3 Instant Cert
DSST Principles of Finance 3 Instant Cert or BUS-350 Principles of Finance 3 Excelsior College
DSST Business Ethics Instant Cert or 3 BUS-323 Business Ethics 3 Excelsior College
BUS-553 Organizational Behavior 3 Excelsior College
ACC-212 Managerial Accounting 3 Excelsior College
BUS-520 Operations Management 3 Excelsior College
BUS-495 Business Strategy 3 Excelsior College
BUS-300 Introduction to Entrepreneurship 3 Excelsior College
BUS-312 Managing Human Resources 3 Excelsior College
BUS-310 Entrepreneurial Marketing 3 Excelsior College
DSST Management Information Systems 3 Instant Cert or BUS-452 Business Leadership 3 Excelsior College

Electives – 15 Needed ( May be Covered by Basic Training / AIT AARTS Transcript )

Information Literacy 1
CLEP Precalculus 3 Book
CLEP Natural Sciences 6 SpeedyPrep
CLEP Analyzing and Interpreting Literature 6 SpeedyPrep

Why will it be free?
All CLEPS and DSST are free to the Active Military aka me Active Army
Tuition Assistance will cover the rest. For free.
E-ArmyU through Excelsior will waive all enrollment, application, and administrative fees as long as I complete 18 credits with Excelsior College - some of my business classes.

The only out of pocket expenses I will be paying for, are for books and those won't even cost much on ebay.

My goal is to have all of my Excelsior classes be A's. Furthermore, every DSST or CLEP exam I have listed is either pass or fail to Excelsior which means it will not affect my GPA either way.

Tell me what you think

 

Sounds like a great plan! For a few CLEPs I used the REA books and Comex books.

 

CLEP College Mathematics 6 Instant Cert
CLEP College Algebra 3 Taken Class

I'd be surprised if they accept both of these. They seem like duplicate credit.


CLEP College Composition 3 Taken Class

They will definitely NOT accept this for the english writing requirement. Maybe they'll accept it as an elective, but I doubt it.

They will accept something called the UExcel exam. Its a relatively inexpensive multiple choice Excelsior exam, but for some reason its not part of their "regular" Excelsior exams.
They have UExcel exams for ethics, statistics, english, physics and a couple of other things.

 

Your plan looks good with the limits noted previously.

Does your tuition assistance cover books? If not a rough estimate would be $1,000 to $4,000 depending whether you buy used or new books.

For either core or elective credit I think the DSST personal finance test would not only help you on your degree path but also provide knowledge that will be useful for many years:
http://www.getcollegecredit.com/downloads/factsheets/Personal%20Finance.pdf

 

CLEP College Mathematics 6 Instant Cert
CLEP College Algebra 3 Taken Class

I'd be surprised if they accept both of these. They seem like duplicate credit. >>>




College Math and College Algebra are NOT duplicate credits.
If Comp was taken as a class, it will absolutely count, if it's the CLEP you'll need to add in the 1 credit writing that EC offers.

 

Page 18 of the biz catalog says a maximum 3 semester units of math below calculus can be applied to a biz degree. Do the other 6 planned math credits get credited as electives by EC?

Where did you find the Comp "CLEP + 1 credit" option? Page 15 of the biz catalog says EC does not accept CLEP comp (I applied CLEP English comp with essay to my EC degree but tat was some time ago).

Thanks,
Ian

 

Page 18 is for Associate Degrees. I am using the College mathematics clep in order to fill up a gen ed requirement for the B.S. In General Business. The Degree requirements state that the excess of credits left can be filled by math sciences or history blah blah.
I have "Taken Class" next to college algrebra... that means I took the class already.
Same thing with college comp.. I took the class.

 

Page 37 for that excess gen ed for the math.

 

I thought

CLEP College Composition 3 Taken Class

meant you were going to take the CLEP exam and your preparation had been already been accomplished by taking a class.

So you're not going to take that CLEP Composition ?
It's a little confusing.

 

..

I guess it does look confusing. yeah I took english comp 101 at a suny community college.

sorry about that

 

Here is another tip on cheap textbooks. If you shop ebay, Amazon and some of the other online textbook sources for the best price on a used textbook, you can often sell it again on Amazon for the same price you paid. I have even made money on a couple. I do most of my buying and all of my selling on Amazon, that way I can use the credit from one sold book to buy another.

If you do the above, you should not mark your books because it lowers the value. That's a habit I've had to break myself of.

 

re: textbooks - if you have a .edu email address, you qualify for free Amazon Prime. This means free two-day shipping on anything from Amazon. I recommend everyone sign up for it if you have a .edu address.