Long time no see degree forum.

Has anyone managed to get into a state university master's program with a TESU degree? Asking because a big chunk of my credits came from Sophia and SDC. 

Should be graduating soon with my BA in Computer Science from them.

To be more specific, I am trying to get into Boise State Universities Cyber Security and Resilience Master's Program they offer. I am hoping someone has experience with BSU...

Thank you

Good afternoon -

I am about at the end of what I can do on Sophia. Excluding Spanish, I have about a week left.

If I do nothing else, I will (should) have 43 hours to go when I start @ UMPI in October.

Question:

For a PM degree, could someone "in the know" please advise which is better:

1) getting one or more certifications via google / Coursera 
- or -
2) taking a few classes at Study.com

Certs certainly pull some weight when looking for PM work, but I want to make sure I have time to finish them before the 'official' curriculum starts. The goal, as with all of us, is to be as close to 30 hours required as possible on my UMPI start date. Also, I have plenty of electives, so when the google PM cert says it comes in as:

"GOOG 0003: Google Project Management Professional Certificate ** transfers in as: 3 credits BUS 400, 3 credits BUS 3XX, and 3 Credits BUS 1XX (business electives)"

the only thing of value for graduation is BUS 400.

I'd like to be one of those people who finishes UMPI in 8 weeks so that I can move on to MAOL.

Thanks in advance for your wisdom.

The DEAC accredits the Elmwood Institute which currently offers one program, a Master of Leadership and Management.

Tuition is currently listed as $25 per credit x 36 credits = $900 for the entire degree ($75 per 3-credit course).

Each course is completed within a 16-week term but is described as "self-paced." The start of each calendar month is the start of a new 16-week term, so terms overlap.

In addition to the 12 courses there is a comprehensive exam or an approved project.

A bachelor's degree or international equivalent is required for admission.

Edited in July 2025: At its launch the Elmwood Institute was an division of Patten University. In its June 2025 meeting the DEAC approved Elmwood's application to launch as an independent university.

The following is background information about Elmwood's former affiliation with Patten University. The non-Elmwood Institute main body of Patten University continues to offer several programs at more normal tuition, $330 per credit graduate level. This Patten University is not regionally accredited. The name has a complicated history. A school named Patten University was once a brick-and-mortar institution in Oakland, California and once held regional accreditation from WASC, but in several asset sales it converted to for-profit online and then lost its accreditation. Later its name was acquired by American Graduate University. AGU then changed its name to Patten University while retaining AGU's own pre-existing national accreditation from the DEAC.

Your Location: Ontario, Canada (American residing abroad)
Your Age: 37
What kind of degree?: Bachelors

College Credits:  60 semester credits (quarter converted to semester) A mix of semester and quarter credits from three different U.S. schools, 15+ years ago:
Semester Credits:
EN 1101 Eng I (3 credits)
MP 0010 Basic Math (3 credits)
BY 1116 Biological Sci I (3 credits)
CH 1103 Gen Chem 1 (4 credits)
SA 1105 Intro to Small Animal Sci (3 credits)
EN 1201 Eng II (3 credits if C- is accepted)
PE 1209 Aerobics (1 credit)
ANT 1045 Intro to Anthropology (4 credits)
BIB 1001 OT History and Lit (4 credits)
SPE Foundations of Communication (3 credits)
ART 1005 Principles of Art (2 credits
BIB 1002 NT History and Lit (2 credits)
ICS 2015 World Religions (4 credits)

Quarter credits:
Color and Design Theory
Historic Textiles
Survey of Western Art I
Sketching Techniques
Drafting Techniques
Design Process
Drawing Fundamentals
Film History and Development
Survey of Western Art II
Digital Imaging
Computer Illustration
Marketing and Brand Development
Editing I
Digital Comp I
3D Modeling & Animation
Sound Design I

Sophia Learning Credits: 6 credits so far in Visual Comm and Intro to Nutrition. Will be doing more.


Any certifications or military experience?
none


Budget: Preferably less than $12k CAD
Commitments: None.
Dedicated time to study: Unlimited for the next several months-year.
Timeline: ASAP
Tuition assistance/reimbursement: OSAP (Ontario Student Assistance Program)
Goal?: Obtain a bachelor degree of any type ASAP


Hello and thank you in advance for any and all advice.

I am looking for school and program suggestions that won’t be costly for an American living abroad. I’ve looked at UMPI, WGU, and UoPeople. I am not sure about the validity of UoPeople.

I want to complete a bachelor’s degree in any major. Preferably a major that will take my random assortment of college credits spanning from science to biblical studies to design. I signed up at Sophia last week and will be completing more courses on that platform.

I would like the cost to be less than or equal to $10k- $12k. Would like to avoid paying international tuition.

Reading about the online “School of Business and Trade (SoBaT) on this forum had me curious, and over the past couple weeks I completed their MA in Social Sciences program. 

I have nothing but good things to say. While it’s possible to accelerate through the program for a seasoned learner, it’s not a quick process. The 12 exams required across different domains of human knowledge really do require substantial engagement with the texts, to the point that despite their open-book nature, they do not lend themselves to quick search engine answers.

After completing, I was invested and impressed enough to even pay the modest graduation fee for a diploma to support the institution (who issues then both a PDF diploma and transcript, with a verification code to authenticate those documents on their website). For self-directed learners, one could actually get a lot out of this program. 

YMMV on the utility of the application of the credential in the private sector in a North American context, but from an integrity standpoint, this program is every bit as legitimate as other similarly formatted accredited programs, from Ashworth to Capella. 

If these folks added proctoring to their exams, this could be a real interruption in higher ed. The exams were thought provoking and challenging, and included international relations, human geography, communications, climate change, public health ethics, writing, social work research, human psychology, political science, advanced sociology, statistics, and world history.

I need to get a 4.0 GPA and I will be taking all (60 credits worth) of my upper divison classes at Excelsior University for a BA in Liberal Arts. I have no job and no responsibilities other than school. Is it reasonable to take multiple classes per term and get A's in all of my classes? 

Also, the reason I need to get a 4.0 GPA is for applying to law school. The reason I am taking so many classes at Excelsior University is because I need 60 graded semester credits to get a GPA on my law school application which Sophia doesn't provide.

Thank you in advance

Has anyone tried to use Coursera certificates towards the upper level 18 elective course requirement?
I see on Coursera that there are some upper-level 300 & 400 courses, I wonder how flexible will they be at applying them towards the BA in computer science degree?

IBM Full Stack Software Developer Professional Certificate
https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/ibm-full-stack-cloud-developer
includes TESU equivalency Course: CLD-4200 Architecting Cloud Solutions

IBM Data Analysis and Visualization Foundations Specialization
https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/ibm-data-analyst-r-excel
includes TESU equivalency course:  DSI-399 Special Topics in Data Sci/Analyt.


IBM Data Analytics with Excel and R Professional Certificate
https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/ibm-data-analyst-r-excel
includes TESU equivalency course: DSI-322 Interactive Data Visualization 

I read that the SAS Advanced Programmer Professional Certificate will satisfy upper-level elective credit and will transfer in as STA - 399 Special Topics in Statistics 

I am getting this information from the Coursera Wiki Page : https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/Coursera

I just finished my Introduction to World Religion Test. How long should I expect to wait to receive my score? Its been 5 hours since I finished my testing and I am a little nervous since I am told an email containing my score would be sent to me (which it hasn't).

Plenty of schools in Europe have completely free tuition, including entirely online degrees, as well as have much lower student loan rates (mine from Sweden 0.5% to 1.25%) than American student loans. But a lot of these are only free for people who have European citizenship or residency and who are not on a student visa.

There are two countries that I know of where you can get citizenship by ancestry even if it is great-great grandparents or similar. Italy and Hungary. There may be more.

The key is proving your lineage (and yes, you should be able to do it if you were adopted, I assume as long as the relevant parent is on your amended birth certificate, which you can do nowadays in the US at least). 

- Get certified copies of birth, death, marriage, name change, divorce, and naturalization records for as many of your ancestors along the direct lineage as you can. These can cost up to $65 per document depending on which state you live in. Estimate to pay $200 for each generation you need (if your parents emigrated from Italy then $200, if your great-grandparents then $600...).

- Get apostilles for each of these required documents. If they originated in the US, it needs a state apostille, if in Italy or Hungary, one of their apostilles. As an example, New York state only charges $10 per document for an apostille.

- These documents may then need to get a certified translation to Italian or Hungarian. For Italy, if you're applying at an Italian consulate in the US which is not Boston or New York - and you need to be applying to the consulate nearest to where you live, not to the one where your ancestors lived - they might not require a certified translation, in that case you could even just translate them yourself. Then you would go to a physical appointment at the consulate with an interview. If you are using a service, this can cost $60 per page or it can be included as part of their citizenship help package.

- You will need to pay the actual citizenship application fee, usually in person at the consulate, which is at least until recently was 300 Euros for Italy. At some consulates, this 300 Euro fee includes translation costs so your translations are "free".

- Some states don't have real Italian consulates, so those people need to travel to another state to apply for citizenship. A video I watched said that at the time the video was made, Washington and Oregon residents would have to travel to San Francisco.

It is easiest to do this via great-grandparents and younger generations. If it was your great-great grandparents it's not impossible, but it might be worth it to ask if getting your parent or grandparent citizenship first somehow helps out your case in any way.

There are services that can help you with all of this. All in all it may cost $3,000 or more to get the citizenship. But that is a cheap price to pay for free college education, hassle-free boarder crossing and visa-free residency in pretty much anywhere in Europe, plus a backup residence if a war breaks out (although Europe might not be the best choice for that!). And it is not a scam, I have family friends in the US who did it via their great-grandparents.

After that you would want to apply for an Italian or Hungarian passport.

Also, not that I explicitly advocate this, but it might be a way to start over with a "new life" if you have a criminal past, as your criminal record is not going to transfer over to the new country. This would enable you to use your degrees for some jobs that you currently can't hold (as an example, I know someone barred from being a teacher or handling cash in the US, because they got arrested for drug use crimes, although they are no longer using drugs). Not sure if the citizenship application checks for your criminal background or not.

------------

I will be trying this with my own family with Italian ancestry and will get back to you, very eventually, on how much it cost and how it went. It will take me quite a while to gather up all the relative names, documents and then get up the money and apply. I'm hoping I can somehow reuse the same documents for multiple applications and then get citizenship for a bunch of my relatives as a big Christmas present.

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to get your thoughts on a question I'm pondering. I'm starting UMPI on September 3rd and I'm considering doing the Sophia version of English Comp II freeing up that slot for another elective. Ever since I've been on this forum, I've heard most people advising to leave this course to UMPI because it's much easier there. Another reason I'm thinking of doing the Sophia version is to go into September with a running start, as far as writing goes, as opposed to starting cold. 

What do you guys think? Is Sophia really that muh harder? I happen to write somewhat well and actually enjoy the process. 

Thx!