I need to vent! Excelsior students advice needed.

Deb wrote:

> Excelsior has to sign up students, I get that. But if you have
> horrible customer service, how do you do that?

By being a monopoly, and Excelsior is pretty close to being one. Try setting up your own "credit accumulator" college, and good luck getting Regional Accreditation.

 

Excellent point.

And since you don't know that the evaluation won't tell you anything, Excelsior gets your $60 and you end up enrolling somewhere else. Excelsior is $60 richer for very little work. Good deal for them.

 

I agree with Deb and Gunsmoke on this. Customer service ought to account for something, in business there is still something called good will. I too would have paid more money for a refined review like given by COSC and something from admissions besides what I have received. I'm back looking at taking a correspondence course for statistics so I can fulfill COSC's math requirement. Like I said before, if you are going to take my money, at least take it with a smile. I have not re-mailed the application to Excelsior. I'll wait to see how I do on the GRE. So it comes down to they got my 60.00. But they may not get my additional 975.00 plus 250.00 graduation fee. I would think that any good business would want the paying student, not the 60.00 fee.

 

Suggestion for Math course.

Try this:

http://www.is.lsu.edu/college/courses/course_list.asp?cat=Mathematics

Lots to choose from, Regionally Accredited, less than $70 per credit hour!

GOOD LUCK and best wishes for your journey!

 

No stats in that group Gunsmoke but I appreciate the nudge. I've acutally found what looks pretty good at the University of Idaho. Intro to Stats, 23 lessons, 3 proctored exams that are OPEN BOOK!!!!!!!! And only 325.00 for the class. The books are about 60.00. Looks better to me than most anything else I've found.

 

I'm not sure if this would meet your requirements but it is suppose to be a class for those who know very little math.It can also be taken as Statistical Methods in Phychology.
It is snail mail and has two exams that are proctored and open book.You can also bring one cheat sheet to the exam, asheet of notebook paper with anything you want to put on it.

http://utdirect.utexas.edu/ecweb/cenroll1.wb?dept=N__&crse=347__&unique=R09/98_

 

I forgot to say that the stats class from the U of Texas has 15 lessons and is 299.00.

 

Thanks Papa Georgia - I sent the class description to COSC to see if they would take it. Since it has "Nursing" in the title they may not like it but we'll see. Thanks very much!!!!!

 

You can take this class as PSY 317. Same class, the only thing that changes is the title of the class. It then becomes Statistical Methods in Psychology. I would also point out to COSC that the textbook used is a behavioral science book.

 

Papa, did you take this class? I couldn't find the particulars, like the notes for the tests, etc. Where did you find the syllabus and info on it?

 

I haven't taken the class. I found it when I was looking for a class for my wife.She will more than likely take it this summer.She is working on her BSN and still has the College Algebra mountain to climb.
I got the info from the school. There is not a syllabus online but they will send you one. Their number is 888-232-4723.

 

Thanks so much for the info. Good luck to your wife!

 

Perhaps, but I think a lot also has to do with the enrollment numbers. From uscollegesearch.org:

COSC's total enrollment for 2001 was 1,459.

Excelsior's total enrollment for 2001 was 18,067 (or over 12x greater)

Although I don't have any hard facts it would be reasonable to assume that they probably field 12x as many enquiries (maybe more as they are better known) as COSC prior to enrollment. If their information request/enrollment ratio is only 5:1 we're talking over 90,000 requests a year.

COSC, due to its better customer service may have a better enrollment rate - perhaps 4:1. But even at 5:1 this is still less than 7,300 or a delta of 83,000 requests!

Assuming a 260 business day year this means that Excelsior needs to handle nearly 350 requests per day compared to COSC's 28. It's possible for one person to handle 28 requests/day via phone/e-mail. You're going to need a team to handle 350 requests - and to be as effective as the single person they will need spectacular communication between the people.

Excelsior's solution may be that to contain costs they won't staff 12x as many people to handle requests and decrease the quality of responses to be able to handle the quantity within a reasonable response time. This isn't an excuse or any justification for poor service but I suspect it's how they operate. Nonetheless they should give customer service training to their staff if they come across as rude and impersonal.

The reason I communicate via e-mail and do the legwork myself is because I don't expect the advisors or any Excelsior staff to remember me - and it's more efficient for me and them. Plus, if an e-mail gets lost I can always resend it from my Sent Items folder.

Cheers,
Mark

 

Hey Papa

COSC will take the course! I was surprised. They said I could take it under the title of nursing or psychology. Thanks so much for the tip. I will call them.

 

Good deal. It will be interesting to see what their idea of "relatively little math is". I hope it is a slam dunk for you.
I am not sure what your ultimate game plan is but I would consider taking that class under the nursing title. It might be more beneficial in your nursing career.

 

I've actually applied to the University of Wyoming master's of science in nursing program by DL. We'll see. Got to get this BS out of the way first. I think I will take it under nursing rather than psychology, my credits are mostly nursing and psych so either one would work, but I think UW might like nursing better. Who knows?