Hello, I just finished my degree at EC - BS in Liberal Arts. I did it all in 4 months, I had zero credits, so I completed the required 120 credits with a combination from different websites + exams. I spent less than $ 6,000 (including excelsior enrollment fee, capstone course, exams, graduation, etc) I was on a very tight deadline and limited money to finish my degree and I succeeded in doing so. I thought I can share my experience for anyone who is in the same situation, I can tell you how I did it.
Good job, Maco. If you can spare some time and share the details here, it'll be of immense value to some of us.
Hi, Here’s how it worked out for me. In my case knowing foreign languages really helped, that’s where I got most of my upper level credits from. Excelsior requieres 120 credits: 53 can be whatever you want 30 upper level 37 are required/general education: Written English requirement 6 Humanities 9 Social sciences 9 Natural sciences/Math 9 Information literacy 1 Capstone 3 What I did was the following: General Education Humanities CLEP French Language 1 and 2 - 9 credits General Education Social Sciences StraighterLine Western Civilization I - 3 credits Wester Civilization II - 3 credits American History I - 3 credits General Education Natural sciences/Math StraighterLine College Algebra - 3 credits Introduction to Biology - 3 credits Environmental Science - 3 credits Information Literacy - 1 credit Can only be taken from EC Written English Requirement ACTFL Written English exam - 6 LL/6UL So at this point I’ve completed the general education and all the requirements with 40 credits (34 lower and 6 upper level) Focus Areas and Upper Level Credits ACTFL oral Spanish test - 6LL/6UL ACTFL oral Italian test - 6LL/6UL ACTFL reading Italian test - 6LL ACTFL listening Italian test - 6LL Credits earned - 24LL/12UL Study.com Business 310 - 3UL Business 307 - 3UL History 306 - 3UL Credits earned - 9UL UExcel World conflicts since 1900 - 3UL Credits earned - 3UL Total - 24LL/24UL These gave me all the upper level credits needed. At this point I had 88 credits (58 lower and 30 upper) My depth areas are Italian (18LL-6UL) and Spanish (15LL-6UL) Completing the degree CLEP Spanish test - 9 credits Analyze and interpret literature - 3 credits StraighterLine Business Communication - 3 credits Intro to business - 3 credits Anatomy and physiology - 3 credits Intro to communication - 3 credits Intro to religion - 3 credits Principles of management - 3 credits Total - 30 credits 88 + 30 = 118 (88 lower and 30 upper) Then took the capstone course for 3 more credits and finished the degree with 121 credits.
Finances Excelsior Enrollment. $ 1,095 Information Literacy. $ 510 Capstone EC. $ 1,530 UExcel Exam. $ 150 Graduation. $ 450 StraighterLine membership. $ 198 (2 months) Study.com membership. $ 199 (1 month) Study.com extra exam. $ 80 ACTFL exams. $ 530 StraighterLine courses. $ 690 CLEP Exams. $ 255 Total - $ 5,687
A book (well self-published), and your own website is in your future. You are gold around here. Also, check out the people over at degreeforum.net.
Hi Maco, that's amazing! congratulations! I'm doing the same thing with Excelsior, but I took Information Literacy from study.com and only paid $100 and it granted me 3 credits. It only has like 6 chapters. It's a very easy and short course. For anyone reading this, just letting you know that you don't have to spend the $510 at Excelsior to fulfill your Information Literacy requirement. By the way Maco, I speak Spanish fluently too and Portuguese. I see that you got 9 credits for each language from ACFTL? I dind't even know we could do that! Do you know of any other Exams/courses that I can take that will grant me 9 credits?? that would save my life! If anyone knows please let me know! Thanks! I need to finish as soon as possible! my degree is taking me too long to complete and I nee to start working :-(
We have multiple threads on this topic. No need to reinvent the wheel . . . https://www.degreeinfo.com/index.php?threads/beginners-guide-to-getting-cheap-fast-college-credit.48039/ https://www.degreeinfo.com/index.php?forums/clep-dantes-and-other-exams-for-credit.15/
@Maco: 54 credits for your language skills, (18 CLEP, 36 ACTFL). That's impressive - shows how important they can be - and how proficient you are! ¡Muy impresionante! Eccellente! Merveilleux!
Will Excelsior accept more language credits even If I have already taken 2 Spanish courses with study.com? I see that you have taken Spanish before and then did ACTFL......anyone?
Can I get 9 credits for Pig Latin? Do they even have an EPCLay for that? Anyway ... Ausgezeichnet! Interesting article on "Pig-Latin" of languages other than English here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin Johann Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (You can look me up.)
For what it's worth, and keeping in mind that I pulled this off well over 30 years ago, I did a portfolio challenge at then-TESC for nine credits in word processing. Not CompuSci (I had credits there as well), but word processing. Recall that this was in the days of dedicated systems such as the Wang, DEC, and Qyx, and I had been trained as a Wang supervisor. I described the courses as basic, advanced, and supervisory, and the evaluator found no duplication of credits. Nine easy credits in a matter of minutes, which I applied to the free electives requirement. Ergo, both then and today, half the battle of earning credit toward a degree is learning how to work the system.
Indeed it is. Wise words. The possibilities opened by that US "system" make it one of the very few things I sometimes wish we had in Canada that we really don't. "Non-traditional" here means going to Athabasca or possibly working some of your Community College credits into University - and years ago that was only a faint hope. Back when I first went to CC (my nights of the 80s) a Canadian CC diploma was more welcome at American universities than at Canadian ones. In my working days, our office had a Wang system. I had nothing to do with it, but a friend of mine was the Supervisor. Unfortunately, he died about two years ago. Around the Wang era, in the 1980s, I did learn (and use daily) IBM's DCF (Document Composition Facility) system - my first exposure to a markup language (GML) and "tags," years before the Internet and having to learn HTML (HyperText Markup Language.) Good prep.
You must be of a certain age to remember minicomputers, a substantial industry that came and went in but a few decades. Although, IBM still has something on that order. The Soul of a New Machine is probably still a good read.
AWESOME!!! I'm in awe of your trilingual talent, but I'm also really interested that EC didn't count your CLEP and Oral Spanish as LL duplicates- that's REALLY interesting!
Another “good ol’ days” recollection: Today upper-level credits are determined by the assigned course number, whether a TESU course or one that from another school that is challenged by portfolio. When I earned my TESC degree in 1987 (having transferred in only six credits then earning 98 credits by portfolio and 16 by testing out), upper level credits were calculated differently: If you earned more than six credits in an individual subject as opposed to a broad area, anything over and above the first six credits were considered upper level. For example, if you earned three credits in each of music courses that included Piano 101, Brass 101, Woodwinds 101, Strings 101, Percussion 101, and Voice 101 – a total of 18 credits from obviously lower level courses – the first six credits were counted as lower level and the other 12 were upper level. Hey, I didn’t write the book, but based on the way they wrote it, I pulled off 24 credits in various music subjects, 18 of which were considered upper level back then but wouldn’t be U.L. today. And you wonder why I tend to be nostalgic . . .
