Excelsior Degree Plan

Great news! My son passed the UEXCEL Managerial Accounting exam today. He said next to the Spanish CLEP which is completely in Spanish, this exam was the hardest since that one. He probably needed to prepare more. It's only a lower level course technically.

Anyway, that brings his tally to 93 hours now. There are two more UEXCEL exams. The next one is Quantitative Analysis.

As always, we are both pretty pumped about crossing off another course off the degree map!

 

He's in the home stretch now!

 

Thank you so much

 

Thank you sir

 

Another quick question, Is the monthly fee for study.com including the exam and proctoring fee or is that paid separately? I am on the website but can't see whether the exams are a paid for separately like with Straighterline?

 

Okay Thanks

 

Just an update here on what he's been working on.

The past two weeks he took three AP exams:

1. AP English Lit
2. AP Environmental Science
3 AP Calculus AB

Don't get those scores back until July. I'm told the AP English Lit is worth 6 hours, and the other two are 4 hours each. He didn't really need the AP Calc AB but took it anyway.

He also took the SAT and got those results back. He scored a 1410 on the SAT. He was hoping to score higher and is kind of down about his score but that's still a very good score.

Anyway, he's working on the next exam which is the UEXCEL Quantitative Analysis.

After he gets those scores back he'll be at over 100 hours which is cool!

 

Incredible achievement!

He's getting ready to start his senior year of high school, correct?

 

Yes that is correct! This week is the last week of his junior year.

 

Here's a new article about a 13 year old who completed his bachelor's through Excelsior. It looks like they accepted him at his age because he had already finished high school. He plans on applying to grad school at Harvard:

http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4336190

 

That's pretty cool. Age 13!

Update on my son's progress. He did get his scores back from AP exams and passed AP English Lit and AP Calculus AB. For some reason, he didn't pass the AP Environmental Science (only exam in 30 he hasn't passed) so we have to figure out how to complete that requirement - likely another DSST maybe Astronomy.

Today, he passed the UEXCEL exam for Qualitative Analysis which brings his total to 106 credits.

In addition to the DSST for Astronomy from above, he has one UEXCEL exam left for Principles of Finance.

We have also applied to Excelsior now that he is 18. Hopefully, we will be able to FINALLY find out if the study.com courses we can take will fulfill the remaining course work he has except for the capstone and info lit which we plan to just take at Excelsior.

His goal is to go through commencement in July 2020 right after his high school commencement at the end of May.

Updated degree map we are working off of:

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

 

Wouldn't you know it, they changed the course catalog making it a little more challenging to figure out what the heck you need. And, replaced the easier to figure out degree maps with less user friendly ones.

Crazy.

 

106 credits at his age is an incredible accomplishment! Tell him to keep up the amazing work!

After he completes his degree, he'll be years ahead of his peers. This is especially true since most people actually take longer than four years to complete their bachelor's degrees.

 

We received word today that they are now in the process of evaluating his credits. This process takes about 2-3 weeks. I'm interested to see what the results are and will report back. Hopefully, the degree map we pieced together matches what they will count.

 

I'm glad to hear they finally admitted him. It'll be a huge help getting someone to actually answer questions.

 

No doubt. It's like a big secret lol!

 

I did get his unofficial review back from Excelsior today. It only took a day or two to get back. Everything except one thing mapped in perfectly to the degree map I had created.

The only problem was with the written english requirement. I had mapped in the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition to satisfy that requirement. When I saw it wasn't there, I contacted the school to ask why that was missing. While I was on the phone the counselor checked with the evaluator who indicated that it should count and it would be corrected. Then, later in the day, I got a call from admissions that it couldn't count because it was taken before 2016.

While I'm certainly happy everything else mapped in correctly, I'm a little frustrated because right in the school catalog on page 7 it says all the ways you can satisfy the written english requirement including:

Advanced Placement (AP) English
Examinations (fulfills the requirement for
the associate and bachelor’s degrees)

I had even contacted the school prior to my son's junior year and asked about it as well and the admissions department checked with an evaluator and said it would satisfy the requirement.

Since it's 6 credit hours, obviously it's disappointing. Anyway, I'll call the school tomorrow and see what can be done.

One other interesting thing about the process is that you still can't talk to an advisor after your evaluation.

You can never talk to them until you enroll.

Anyway, that's the update.

 

Hmmmm . . . I think it would be interesting to go through the same process at this point with both TESU and Charter Oak.

I know that everyone has their favorite among the Big 3 (we often tend to favor the ones from which we graduated as individuals - Steve F. favors Charter Oak for that reason, I favor TESU for that reason, etc.), but it occurs to me that Excelsior is the only one that is not a state college any longer. (Not to mention that it still sounds like a packaging material.)

For that matter, at this point we could theoretically change the nomenclature to "Big 4" by including WGU. They've become a major player in the non-traditional game.

One might wonder how the others would come out in a similar evaluation.