Here's the elevator pitch - or the Reader's Digest version, if you will:
Instead of spending four years at a traditional brick-and-mortar school, I took a combination of online and correspondence courses from my home and transferred them to Thomas Edison State College, where I am graduating from in December with my Bachelor of Arts (major: communications; minor: English).
Whew. That wasn't so bad. But you're still confused. I understand. And that's why you get the longer version as well.
I started my college degree at 16-years-old with the assistance of an organization called CollegePlus (CP) - a Christian-run company that teams up with students to help them complete their college degrees at an accelerated pace. I was matched with a coach named Sharon and our journey began.
CP helped me plan out my degree - what requirements I needed to fulfill and what courses and exams I could take to fulfill them. The end goal was always to transfer to Thomas Edison State College (TESC), because they're extremely flexible with what credits they accept. Not only that, they would let me finish my degree online - a major plus.
What's also cool about CP is that they helped me choose courses that would fulfill my high school requirements while dually fulfilling my college degree requirements. I went straight into college after Grade 10, but as I worked on my degree, I was able to use certain courses to fulfill my high school (Grade 11 and 12) requirements. I got dual credit.
Thus, I was able to finish my high school diploma while getting college credit at the same time.
So I picked my degree and major and CP basically said, "Here's what you need to take. You need to fulfill this many General Education credit hours, this many major-specific credit hours, and this many electives."
For General Ed hours, I was able to take several CLEPs (credit-equivalency exams). To read more about those, you can see my first experience here.
For my other requirements I was able to take some courses from a bunch of different places - I was able to take Saylor tests and StraighterLine courses for NCCRS credit, an ALEKS course for ACE credit, and some online courses from major universities like LSU and BYU and then transfer all of those courses to TESC.
Finally, last January I officially enrolled in TESC and transferred about 96 credit hours to them. From there it was just a matter of finishing up my last few semesters. I had five last courses with TESC, as well as a handful of other courses and exams to complete.
After a crazy summer, I registered for my last two TESC courses that began in August. And last Saturday I handed in my very last term papers. On Monday I took my last final exam.
I am done college.
This method saved me years of time and thousands of dollars - a combination almost too good to be true. It wasn't because I was super smart, though I am admittedly driven. It took a lot of work and energy and skipped holidays, but everything was worth it.
This method of earning my degree was flexible and, with the help of CP, blissfully uncomplicated. Sure, there were bumps and knots and occasional scares and random tests that didn't transfer to TESC, but everything eventually worked out.
Now I'm done. It's surreal to be sure, but I'm enjoying this time of rest before my official December graduation.
And that is what I did for school.