Charter Oak State College

Overview
Charter Oak State College (also called COSC) is a public state school in Connecticut and is one of the "Big 3" schools that offer generous credit transfer policies. Charter Oak grants degrees at the associate and bachelor levels only. Unlike the other two schools (Thomas Edison State College and Excelsior College) Charter Oak only grants general Arts or Sciences degrees (e.g. a general Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree). However, Charter Oak offers a significant list of concentrations that can be pursued within a given BA or BS degree plan.

Excerpt from Wikipedia article on COSC:


 * Charter Oak State College is a public liberal arts college in New Britain, Connecticut and is named for Connecticut's famous Charter Oak. The college is located across Paul Manafort Drive from Central Connecticut State University. The college was founded in 1973 by the Connecticut Legislature to provide an alternative way for working students to earn associate and baccalaureate degrees.

This wiki also contains a list of degree plans successfully completed at Charter Oak through heavy use of tests and transfer credits. However, be sure to read the following guidance on structuring a degree plan for COSC.

How to Structure a Degree at Charter Oak
Charter Oak has a slightly different degree structure than Excelsior and TESC. This results in more flexibility in many cases but requires more work when constructing the degree plan. The following info on COSC degrees is provided by DegreeForum.net user burbuja0512:


 * An associates degree at COSC = General Ed requirements + Cornerstone + any additional remaining credits.


 * A bachelors degree at COSC = General Ed requirements + Cornerstone + Concentration Plan of Study (other schools would call this a major) +any additional remaining credits. + Capstone.


 * Now for more detail...ALL COSC degrees (AA,AS/BA,BS) require that their general ed requirements be fulfilled. The general ed requirements can be found here: General Education Requirements. The tricky part is that this link just gives you a description of the general ed requirement and a letter code. Here is a key to how the letter codes can be interpreted from a testing perspective, or which test will give me credit for what, otherwise known as the "Master list".


 * SO, once you have the Master List in hand, you can view your general ed requirements and match each to a test that best suits you. You can see that for most requirements, you have quite a few options.


 * Once you have completed all of your General Ed courses, you're probably very close to the 60 credits needed for your associates degree. You can go for the AA or AS or keep going. If you get an associates, it's pretty much just the general ed + cornerstone course + whatever you want to use up any additional credits. There are a minimum number of Liberal Arts credits that you need depending on your degree. The Master list will show you whether a test is considered liberal arts or not. How many liberal arts credits for each degree you need can be found here: Credit Requirements. Strangely enough, it's actually simpler to get an AS or BS than an AA or BA. With the AS/BS choice, there are fewer minimum liberal arts required. If you have extra, it doesn't count against you. I don't understand why they have it set up this way, but when I walked in the graduation, there were just a small handful of AA or BA graduates. The overwhelming majority were either AS or BS.


 * NOW... after all of that, if you're going for your BS or BA, you still need to worry about your CPS, or Concentration Plan of Study. It's a minimum of 36 credits with at least 15 UL credits. Since you need a total of 30 UL credits to graduate, that means that you'll need to plan your testing wisely overall to make sure you find good UL credits during your CLEP/DSST testing. The CPS form is intended to highlight exactly how you will meet your concentration needs. SO, every COSC student can use the same exact general ed plan, but the CPS is customized to the area of study. See more info here: Concentrations (Majors) Fields of Study.


 * Keep in mind that since the concentration at COSC actually requires fewer credits than a major, it can make the concentration much easier, as was the case with my biz admin. I learned a ton, but didn't have the pre-calc or stats that most biz majors require.

Resources

 * Charter Oak official website
 * Wikipedia article on Charter Oak
 * DegreeForum.net sub-forum specializing in Big 3 discussions, including Charter Oak
 * The ultimate Charter Oak question and answer thread (DegreeForum.net)