GPA dilemma

To be more precise...

Old text:

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  To be eligible for the provisional certificate in instructional fields ... the candidate shall:
  
  1. Hold a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university maintaining an overall cumulative grade point average of at least 2.75 when a grade point of 4.0 equals an A grade. Effective September 2000, candidates entering their junior year in traditional teacher preparation programs must achieve a cumulative grade point average of at least 2.75. All other teacher candidates must also achieve a cumulative grade point average of at least 2.75 effective September 2000.
  
  ...

New text:

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  To be eligible for the provisional certificate in instructional fields ... the candidate shall:
  
  1. Hold a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university;
  
  2. Achieve a cumulative grade point average of at least 2.75 when a grade point average of 4.0 equals an A grade in a baccalaureate degree program, higher degree program; or in a state approved post-baccalaureate certification program with a minimum of 13 semester-hour credits;
  
  ...

 

Hello Gert and thank you, We do live in New Jersey. The principle in my husbands current posting mentioned credits for life experience. That is why I'm on a current mission to find a college or credit bank that will cooperate with the GPA evidence. There is a shortage of teachers in his district. Hille

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The last time I checked the Excelsior website, it would grant letter grades for most of its credit examinations. What I would look at is a 2nd BS/BA from Excelsior. Look at transfering 90 credits, and taking 30 credits through graded examination at Excelsior. I think TESC might also allow this arrangement. The 2nd BS/BA should be in a different subject field than the first one. Check out the Excelsior website, check out the TESC website and then call the colleges information officers with specific questions. I would also pose the specific questions to the NJ dept. of ed. Even local colleges cannot know all the loopholes in the education law/policy.
I checked with two local bricks and mortor colleges. Both would grant a second BS/BA to someone in a new field for 30 semester credits. This could be a great opportunity for your husband to get some new skills, have an alternative degree field, and more flexibility in the future. 30 semester credits would be 10 classes. The excelsior route could be 10 exams. The bricks and mortor campus would be 10 classes, but some might be on-line.
Why not look at the 2nd BS/BA option and get back to the forum.
The other options sounds like a post-grad. degree with 2.75 or better would meet the licensing needs. Maybe a Masters from TESC, COSC or Excelsior? Again it would be around 30 credits. But I'd rather have a BA with a 2.75 gpa plus a masters with a 3.3 gpa than a BA with a 2.75 gpa and a BS with a 3.3 gpa.
Finally, most of the teachers contracts that I have seen have extra pay for a teacher with a masters. I myself am placed at the maximum education on the teachers salary grid contract (M+45). They do have a BA+45 on the grid, but it is lower than a simple "M". So the masters ought to pay off more in the long run. What does the master agreement between the school district and the teachers union look like in your husbands district? Would he move even further on the salary grid with a masters?
All the best!

 

Better yet, transfer 90 hours of credit at 2.75 or above to Excelsior, and take one of the GRE Subject exams to complete the degree concentration. I was able to earn 30 hours for a 580 on the History subject exam, and Excelsior does not assign letter grades to the GRE Subject Exams.

The GRE Subject exams are not easy, but an intensive review should only take two or three months, and most of the Subject exams are offered again in April (I'm taking the Literature in English).

Good post, Irat!


Tony

 

Why go for a second Bachelor's when the new guidelines suggest that one could meet the GPA requirement with a 2.75 in "a state approved post-baccalaureate certification program with a minimum of 13 semester-hour credits"? I think such a certificate might be more useful (in a broader sense than just meeting the GPA requirement) than the second Bachelor's.

 

Hello, The snow and holiday has given me plenty of time to scan different sites. Bob is attempting to combine FEMA credits and life experience credits if he can get a graded life experience. Information and transcripts were faxed today. Suggestions have been great but we are working on a tight timeframe for a potential contract. Any additional ideas on colleges that grade life experience credits on presentation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Hille

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I'm not sure that I would want someone to grade my life...

 

Dear Gert, We need some direction. My husband met with the superintendent who stated the post graduate certificate had to be 15 hours in the area of your degree focus.Please direct us to the document that stated 13 hours. He admitted there is much conflicting information coming from the state. We live in Burlington County, NJ Thanks Hille

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My apologies for breaking my own rule of always citing my sources.

Go to the web site for the NJ Department of Education Administrative Code, and scroll down (nearly to the end) to Title 6 (not Title 6A), Chapter 11, GPA Amendments.

 

Dear Gert, Thanks for the quick reply. I printed the material for Bob but there are allegedly new state mandates requireing more credits (15) in specific areas. I thought I had this figured out today. It would take him very little time to get an associates from TESC in Applied Science. I'll keep researching until I get the final decree. Since this district let someone go for a 2.65 we have to be very careful. I will be e-mailing people in the state tomorrow. If you have any suggestions on people to e-mail it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. PS The state may be lowering GPA standards to 2.5 next year. Hille

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Gert, you did a great job tracking down the NJ teacher licensing information.
Hillie, have you found any more on the proposed regulations? When they might go into effect?
I am not familiar with the regulation proposal process in NJ. In VT many proposed regulations are never adopted. The proposed regulation goes through public hearings and just disappears. Other times the proposed regulations are swept in quite quickly.
It sounds like the 3 options under the new proposed regulations would be to 1) earn a post grad cert. with a gpa higher than 2.75, 2) earn a second ba/bs with a gpa higher than 2.75 or 3) earn an advanced degree with a gpa higher than 2.75. Some certificate programs can be earned in just a few months, five 3 credit classes.
If the proposed regulation does not go into effect, or not into effect in time, it sounds like the only option is to earn a 2nd bs/ba? I am reading the rules correctly?
All the best!

 

Hello, Thanks for the continued suggestions and ideas that are coming our way. Unless a brainstorm occurs this weekend Bob will enroll in TESC for his second BA. I'm coming up with some ideas for a major in liberal studies that will be speedy and get the GPA up. We have hopes there will be great flexibility in this degree. After much consideration he will go for the full tuition that will allow him to portfolio his substitute teaching. He has had two long term postings, algebra and physical education. Have a great weekend. Hille

 

I have nothing against TESC (I'm almost finished with my own BA), but wouldn't Excelsior suit your needs better? Excelsior assigns letter grades for the various exams, while TESC just gives credit without a grade, so it seems that Excelsior would provide the quickest route to a 2nd degree with a higher GPA. If he goes with TESC then he'll have to complete some courses in order to bring his GPA up, and that will almost definitely take more time than just taking exams. I guess it just depends on how quickly it needs to be done.

 

Dear Gary, Thanks for the suggestion. I just figured out the cost and Excelsior seems cheaper and quicker. If there are any Dantes exams that are less of a challange please alert us. My daughter and I both are graduates of TESC and its proven to be a plus. She works for a Fortune 500 Company and is on the same entry level path as her contempories from the "BIG" schools. I can't wait for this GPA dilemma to be resolved. I'm sure the rest of the forum feels that way to. thanks Hille

 

Hille, you might want to check Lawrie's exam difficulty ratings on her {url=http://www.geocities.com/BA_in_4_Weeks/mainmenu.html]BA in 4 Weeks[/url] site.

On the subject of GPA repair, I have a dilemna of my own. My last semester at Purdue (in 1994) I left during the semester without submitting the proper withdrawal paperwork, so now I have 7 courses on my transcript listed with "F" as the grade. I've contacted Purdue about it, but of course they aren't willing to go back and changed the grades to "W".

Now I'm finishing up at TESC, and I'd like to start graduate school (probably in the Fall), but because of those "F" grades my GPA will only be 2.77. These courses fall into my last 60 s.h., so using the option (offered by most grad schools) of calculating the GPA using only my last 60 s.h. only makes things worse. If I could cancel out some of those "F" grades, or replace them with letter grades, my GPA would easily jump up to over a 3.0, which I think would help a lot with admission to grad school.

Has anyone had experience using CLEP, DANTES, or TECEP exams to cancel out "F" grades from another school, for the purpose of GPA calculation for grad school admission? I plan to write to 5 or 6 of the grad programs that I'm interested in, to find out specifically how they would handle this scenario, but I'd like to see if anyone else has done something like this in the past or has any relevant insight. I'm hoping that gaining credit by exam for a course would basically be the same as retaking the course and having the most recent grade override the earlier one. I wouldn't be able to do this for all of the courses (for instance, one was a specific research course that really couldn't be replaced), but if I could just get rid of 3 or 4 of them then it should make the difference.

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

Good Morning Gary, It's a shame the GPA can't be a quick fix. My daughter who is a poster on this forum,did not have the GPA to get into Fort Hayes. She took forum advice and submitted transcripts of college credit work she did post graduation TESC 2001. She has 9 credit graduate level "B" and 12 undergraduate B-. She is taking a graduate course "on probation status at Fort Hayes". If you read quickly and have good comprehension take all the FEMA courses as evidence of focus and commitment. They vary in difficulty. If you need suggestions on what to take first let me know. I hear the complaining so I have a fair idea. Hille

 

On the subject of GPA repair, I have a dilemna of my own. My last semester at Purdue (in 1994) I left during the semester without submitting the proper withdrawal paperwork, so now I have 7 courses on my transcript listed with "F" as the grade. I've contacted Purdue about it, but of course they aren't willing to go back and changed the grades to "W".

Gary.

It would be helpful if you could clarify how many credits you did complete at Purdue! Also what was your GPA excluding these 7 Fs?

 

Hi Hille

Your posts and the responses from from others have been very interesting. I am sure they have been very helpful to many who don't post. Thanks for adding to the discussions!

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Best Regards,
Dave Hayden

 

I'm not quite sure how it's relevant to the question of whether exam credit or correspondence courses from a different school will override a previous grade of F, but I'll provide my history in case it's helpful:

DeVry Institute of Technology (1986): 17 s.h. credits, 3.15 GPA

University of Alaska (1987-88): 35 s.h. credits, 3.18 GPA

Purdue University (1988-94): 62 s.h. credits, 2.60 GPA, 3.28 GPA not counting those 7 Fs

Texas State Technical College (2001): 12 s.h. credits, 4.0 GPA

My overall GPA with the Fs is 2.77; without the last 7 Fs at Purdue it is 3.19. My 2nd year at Purdue (1989) I was ill and ended up with 2 Fs (7 credits; aside from the 7 Fs at the end) which I didn't repeat and would be difficult to replace since they were EET courses with lab components. I'm resigned to just factoring them into my GPA, though it would be nice to cancel those out too if at all possible. I also had a few other F grades at Purdue which were repeated and replaced with an A or a B. At that time I had the attitude that it was easier to let a course default to F and then retake it for a grade than it was to process the withdrawal forms. My overall GPA of courses posted to my TESC transcript (not including any Fs) will be 3.32, but that doesn't seem to make much difference since I'll need to provide transcripts from all schools attended when I apply to grad programs.

I realize that I can provide an explanation when I apply, and have a chance of being admitted on a provisional basis, but I'd really like to get my actual calculated GPA back up over 3.0. I think that it would especially help with a program that has competitive admission. It would also provide me with some peace of mind, knowing that I'd finally established credit for those courses that I never finished.

An idea that just occurred to me is that I could contact Purdue about possibly having exam and/or transfer credit posted to my Purdue transcript for those courses. That might help with cancelling out the Fs since they would be posted on the same transcript and with the same course numbers. I'm not sure that they would do it, but it can't hurt to ask.

Thanks for any advice.

 

Hello, I justed check the TESC website under prospective students (under-graduate ways to earn credit)-transfer credits. Since they do NOT transfer any F grades why would it be factored into your GPA. Hope this helps. Have a great week. Hille