Will Excelsior award the full 30 credits for the GRE Psychology (80th+ percentile) even if one already has psychology credits e.g. for Introductory Psychology and Abnormal Psychology from getting a business degree? Or will some be considered duplicate and not awarded?

Well, first the general case: you can consider that they award the 30 semester hour credit, then as part of a separate process they check for duplication of credit, and upon finding it, they remove the offending pre-existing credit or the offending new credit.

Say you have Psych credit letter graded "C", and you would prefer "pass" to appear on your transcript to help inflate GPA. In such circumstances the pre-existing letter graded credit should be removed and replaced by the new, non-letter-graded (pass) credit.

Put it another way - you score above the 80th percentile in the Psych GRE and, as is your right, you contact your advisor and request that existing Psych credit be removed from your transcript. Into the vacuum thus created, rushes that portion of the GRE-generated Psych credit that would otherwise be deemed duplicate.

In the special case of the second degree, remember that you must earn as new credit at least one quarter of that degree�s credit requirements. In the case of most degrees offered in the Liberal Arts program, that equates to 30 semester hours of new credit. If it is the case that the Psych GRE-generated credit is the ONLY new credit submitted in consideration of degree requirements, then they would have to discount pre-existing credit in favor of the new credit, in order to comply with the 30 credit hour rule. That is to say, you would not have the option to preserve the pre-existing credit if it duplicated some portion of the new credit.

A FLY IN THE OINTMENT

Another potential hurdle arises here with respect to the special case of credit submitted in consideration of a second degree. Excelsior might take the position that the 30 semester hour new-credit rule has not been met since you have some pre-existing psych credit used in your first degree, that has now been deemed duplicate. I�m not talking here of the standard duplicate credit rule, but the 30 hour new-credit rule, specific to the award of a second degree. In that circumstance, you could still choose which credit to keep and which to discard, but you would nevertheless be in deficit of requirements of the second degree, regardless of which credit you retain, to the tune of whatever credit hours Excelsior deems not to be �new�.

In the example you cite, the Intro to Psych and Abnormal Psych credit WOULD be judged duplicate, and although you would have earned 30 hours credit, all of which you could elect to have appear on your transcript (by abandoning the pre-existing Intro to Psych and Abnormal Psych credit), Excelsior may nevertheless require you cough-up another six semester hours in order to meet the 30-hour requirement in the second degree (actually the one-quarter-of-the-degree requirement, which, as noted, translates to 30 semester hours in most cases applicable in the liberal arts program).

In your case I suspect you would require only three semester hours of additional credit, than you would otherwise require, since you will have to meet the Psych Research Methods requirement in any and all cases. I doubt you will have earned that in the course of a Business degree. So, the requirement for the Psych major would (for you) in practice be 33 credit hours in any and all cases, with an additional 3 credit hours needed to comply with the second degree 30-credit hour rule.

I am by no means certain Excelsior will interpret the rules as strictly as I�ve described and stick you with this latter requirement, but they may. Should they do so, the real-world effect in terms of additional credit required will likely be minimal.

Lawrie

If someone has a non-US degree can they have it "converted" to a US degree at the BIG 3 - or would they have to earn a second degree?

If the Big Three recognize the degree, then I think probably not. It would be transcribed as a complete degree. If not recognized, then it is possible that the discrete components comprising the degree (course credit) may be recognized converted to the equivalent US semester hour credit. That depends upon the judgment of the foreign credential evaluators.

Lawrie

I found lot of information that valuable on this site. However I still have question, actually I got the answer from the school; but I am not sure about it.

Unlike Excelsior College and COSC; TESC requires 6 S/H for Associate and 12 S/H for bachelor through online courses from them. These semester hours cannot be taken through TECEP. Is that right? Another thing that they said they don't give a grade on the exam, but somehow they come up with a GPA. That what I was told, is that the same with your info?

1. TESC DOES NOT REQUIRE THAT DEGREE-SEEKING STUDENTS TAKE ANY TESC PROPRIETARY COURSE OR EXAM TO QUALIFY FOR A DEGREE.

2. Grade point average is calculated where there are enough tier-graded scores on a transcript to yield meaningful results. While TESC awards only �pass� scores for exams, any coursework taken or transferred-in may have banded grades attached (usually letter grades, A, B, C).

GPA is calculated and used internally by the colleges to ensure you meet minimum requirements for conferral of the degree (a GPA of at least 2.00), and to award honors. The minimum number of graded semester hours and GPA thresholds, required for the award of honors vary ( a bit) from college to college. I have provided a breakdown of these (at least with respect to Excelsior) in this Q&A and possibly in the Knowledge Base.

Where a graduate requests it, TESC may make these internal numbers available to third parties. However, graduate schools will invariably derive their own number for a candidate�s GPA as suits their needs, based on the data provided in the student transcript. The usual practice is to calculate GPA based on the last sixty semester hours of an applicant�s undergraduate degree credit.

Clearly, whatever the receiving party�s requirements in terms of graded hours, if there is insufficient banded grade credit to make such a calculation meaningful, then it does not matter what figure TESC or anyone else may offer. GPA must be referenced to that portion of the degree from which it is calculated.

For instance, my personal GPA data, detailed in Author�s Performance, are overall figures, each based on around 110 or more semester hours letter-graded credit. However, were we to take no account of the number of credit hours used to calculate GPA, my two undergraduate degrees, relative to their respective majors, have averages of 4.00 and 3.92. One of the two preceding figures is more than a little misleading if one includes only letter-graded credit and confines consideration exclusively to the major. In terms of letter graded credit AND absolute percentile scores, it�s probably accurate, though.

So, when quoting GPA it is important to detail the kind and quantity of banded credit from which it is derived.

Lawrie