How/When To Start? Start Now For Cheap

First Steps
People are worried about starting and getting accepted at the Big 3. Don't, sit back and relax. If you don't know where to begin, get a spreadsheet going and enter in the required courses. Find all required courses from what's available and plug in that info. Work on those courses.


 * 1) Your first step should be to find the degree and requirements for that degree and create a spreadsheet. The "same" degree can have different requirements depending on the school.
 * 2) Second step is to work on most of those requirements. It's currently recommended to get about halfway, such as getting all your Gen Ed + Free Electives done using mostly Sophia.org
 * 3) Third, apply to ACE Credit Registry and have your courses sent to them if they are ACE recommended.
 * 4) Four, apply to Big 3 and send them your transcripts from ACE and whatever else you have.
 * 5) Five, speak with an adviser on completing your AOS (Area of Study) courses and match it with your spreadsheet.

Application/Enrollment
Basically, you might want to plan and map out your degree, fill all those credits up, and apply at the latest point. The reason is you will have all your stuff together for them to process and graduate before they charge you another annual enrollment fee. Please take a bit of time and read through the DegreeForum wiki here as well as the Degreeforum.net forum.

If you're still confused, the Big 3 allows you to transfer pretty much everything but their capstone and cornerstone courses. This means that you don't need to apply right away. You can spend 6-10 months, get 90+ credits or more, and then apply to one of them. However, it is also recommended that you apply by May or December in order to lock in your catalog.

Note: You don't have to actually send them anything until you are ready; you can keep your transcripts until you're ready to send them. Don't rush yourself and work your courses according to your own plan and pace.

When to create an ACE Credit Registry account?
It's a good idea to create an ACE transcript system account as soon as possible in order to keep track of all of the credits you'll be accumulating. As soon as you finish a course, add it to your transcript. If you wait, you run the risk of forgetting to add a course or forgetting when you finished a course (and thus being unable to add it to your transcript) so that you are unable to get credit for completing the course(s) that you finished.

Course Progression
It's often a good idea to start with the FREE courses first as it will give you an idea of online learning. Although there are fewer free sources available than there used to be, this is still a good place to begin.

What's the easiest method to go through the FREE credits quickly? It's not proctored! It's an open book exam. So, open multiple browsers/tabs (or a second monitor) and go through them. Especially when you have the free The Institutes/TEEX courses, you can have the answers at your fingertips. Have the questions on one screen/window and have the course materials open on another tab/window.

Once you've taken all of the free credits, head over to Sophia.org and sign up. Most of these classes will transfer to any of the big 3 with no problem. If you work quickly, you can have all of the necessary Sophia classes completed in 2 or 3 months. Completing everything possible at Sophia will give you somewhere between 50 and 85 credits depending on the school and the degree you've chosen. Combined with the free credits, you should be more than halfway to a degree for only a few hundred dollars! Stop and marvel at your achievement; this is much less than it would cost to take classes even at a local community college. When you are done all of these, continue updating your spreadsheet and you can then start your Study.com, Saylor or Straighterline courses.