5+ Years of College Credit in 5 Months for under $750!

[Ed Mills]

Greetings All,

In the hope of helping my son "hack" his college degree, I've been exploring alternatives to traditional college coursework.  Boy, have I learned a lot over the last two years!

Earning your core courses (the first two years of college in the U.S.) and a year's worth of electives is pretty easy to do using Sophia Learning and Modern States.  Will you become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer going this route?  Probably not, but for some people looking to earn an inexpensive undergraduate degree, this could be a useful hack.

I wrote about my credit-acqiuistion experiment here:       Back to School #3: 5 Years of College in 5 Months for $714!

Best of luck to all,
Ed...Gerry

[fuzzy math]

OMG thank you for this!!! I have a high schooler who is taking a lot of advanced classes. Going to go this route instead of paying for AP

[TomTX]

Very nice!

[Cries]

Amazing! 

Im shocked by the number & quality of the schools that are accepting these credits.  Looks like a great way to cut down the credits you are paying full-freight for and/or graduate early. 

[uniwelder]

Sounds extraordinary! Posting to follow so I read more on your page about the details.

[meadow lark]

Nice!  I sent a link to my daughter.
I don’t comment much but I have loved your blog for years. 

[Smokystache]

This is helpful to read about first-person experiences on these topics -- I've got three children who may or may not go to college, but I'm always looking at options. I'm a former college professor, if that is relevant.

I quickly read your blog posts, but didn't see an answer to a few of my questions. I think these are relevant for how your experience may or may not transfer to those who are considering these options.

Questions:
1) Have you previously taken college-level courses (whether in-person or online). Do you already have a college degree? If you have taken previous college courses, would you say that you find college relatively easier/harder than your peers?
2) At one point, did you take some of the traditional college entrance exams (ACT, SAT)? Could you give us some indication of your scores on those and/or if you are a good test-taker in general?

These questions aren't to downplay your results. I've sometimes thought about how quickly I could go back and pass certain types of online courses and how that experience would be similar or different to when I sat through semester-long classes in-person. But I also know that my previous ability to learn how to learn and college experience would make it easier than an average 18 year old. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

[Ed Mills]

Smokeystache,
I have four degrees:
BA in History from Davidson College, MBA in International Trade from TAMIU in Laredo, TX, MATL for Spanish & TESOL from USM in Hattiesburg, MS, and EdS in Administration and Supervision from Albany State University.  My graduate degrees are not from "top-tier" schools, but they helped me advance in my career as a public school teacher.  (The pay bumps weren't bad either!) 

Questions:
1) Have you previously taken college-level courses (whether in-person or online). Do you already have a college degree? If you have taken previous college courses, would you say that you find college relatively easier/harder than your peers?

As an undergraduate, I was a disastrous student who graduated with a g.p.a. of 2.1.  Somehow I managed to graduate early while playing D-1 basketball.  (I picked up 6 courses by attending summer school for three straight years.)  As a graduate student, I was a much better student for two main reasons--I applied myself and I was motivated.  My g.p.a. for my three grade degrees was about a 3.7.  (I made some B's here and there with no C's.)     

2) At one point, did you take some of the traditional college entrance exams (ACT, SAT)? Could you give us some indication of your scores on those and/or if you are a good test-taker in general?

Let's see, my SAT score was around 950 if I recall, my MAT (Miller's Analogy Test) was 79th percentile, and don't remember my GRE score (obviously not great or I'd probably remember it).  Along the way, I've taken many teacher certification tests and passed over 10 Praxis exams (without ever failing one).  That said, I don't consider myself some kind of test-taking genius.  There were many CLEP exams I avoided because I didn't think I would pass them:  Chemistry, Biology, and all the math courses.  . 

I don't think the 18-year-old version of me could have passed all of those CLEP tests.  However, I could have taken some CLEP tests as I took the same course in high school:  American Government, U.S. History I & II, Western Civilization I & II, Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, Natural Sciences, Psychology, and College Math (maybe?).  Those courses right there represent 30 credit hours at Excelsior University!  Also keep in mind, that the younger me would not have taken all those exams in a month but over the course of 2-3 years. 

For high school students, I think Sophia Learning is a better option since the grading is based on homework and multiple exams, not one all-or-nothing exam. 

[Smokystache]

I have four degrees:
BA in History from Davidson College, MBA in International Trade from TAMIU in Laredo, TX, MATL for Spanish & TESOL from USM in Hattiesburg, MS, and EdS in Administration and Supervision from Albany State University.  My graduate degrees are not from "top-tier" schools, but they helped me advance in my career as a public school teacher.  (The pay bumps weren't bad either!) 

Questions:
1) Have you previously taken college-level courses (whether in-person or online). Do you already have a college degree? If you have taken previous college courses, would you say that you find college relatively easier/harder than your peers?....

This is really helpful. Thanks for your hard work on putting all of this information out there!

[Chris Pascale]

OMG thank you for this!!! I have a high schooler who is taking a lot of advanced classes. Going to go this route instead of paying for AP

I've always been of the mind that the AP courses were good for college prep, but would never translate to real credits.

When my 2nd daughter was a junior I told her if she really wanted to get college credits we could just go to the community college and enroll in actual college classes that would count.

[Car Jack]

There are many ways to save on "junk" courses.  Sorry....I'm an engineer and we only really did these Freshman year.  My son found that he could take courses from the local state college and community college for credit at his private engineering college.  BUT (that's a big but), for his college, the exact course at the exact college needed to be approved.  For example, any online course was not approved.  For courses like Physics, it needed to be confirmed to be Calculus based Physics. 

[Turtle]

OMG thank you for this!!! I have a high schooler who is taking a lot of advanced classes. Going to go this route instead of paying for AP

I've always been of the mind that the AP courses were good for college prep, but would never translate to real credits.

When my 2nd daughter was a junior I told her if she really wanted to get college credits we could just go to the community college and enroll in actual college classes that would count.

My kids went to our state's Engineering University and the AP classes did indeed count for distribution credits - US and World History.  For math and science, they got hours but it didn't actually change the number of classes they needed to take in those fields due to what their majors were.  (Though quite a few kids coming from the less challenging high schools end up placed into an intro math or science class freshman year which doesn't count toward their major & my kids both avoided that.)

AP didn't really save them any money, other than that they got through in 4 years with no summer school. That's actually not common at that particular institution.  (They also didn't take time out to do internships in the middle, which quite a few kids do.)

[JLee]

Oh wow, this is awesome - transfers to WGU also, which is already an affordable option!

[Zamboni]

This is an awesome bunch of research, but the link appears to be broken.

Both of my nieces and one of my nephews entered college as juniors from having so many community college credits (they were 19 and home schooled due to physical disabilities in two of their cases.) One of them took a gap year during COVID instead of starting college online and worked for the family business.

I'll echo what others have said: if you want to transfer anything, then you'd definitely need to check what actually transfers to the institution you are targeting. My own institution (which is definitely not affordable) will transfer only two pre-matriculation courses for credit. This comes as a big surprise for many who enter with tons of AP tests or early college classes. Anything above 2 course credits can be used for placement in some of the departments, which might also be helpful, as pointed out above. After matriculation, each department would need to approve any course taken elsewhere for it to count unless it is at one of the big state schools that we already have an agreement with.

For most jobs, though, I don't really think it matters that much where you earned your degrees. A lot of jobs have a "must have a college degree" barrier, but it is kind of a checkbox to have your candidacy considered. So these types of hacks can really be beneficial.