Can I Test Out of College and Still Get a Degree in Science and Math?

[Pengwuino]

Because he wants to get a high-paying, powerful position as the CEO of a large technology company or research laboratory, but doesn't want to actually have to do anything to get it. Read his previous posts.

- Warren

Which posts? Before he posted this thread?

 

[Pengwuino]

Because he wants to get a high-paying, powerful position as the CEO of a large technology company or research laboratory, but doesn't want to actually have to do anything to get it. Read his previous posts.

- Warren

Yah... most CEO's are pretty laid back in the years they worked for their companies before becoming CEO. Shareholders love slackers!

 

[Simfish]

I highly doubt that's going to happen. If you think you're going to be able to ask every single question you can come up with when you get confused from reading a textbook... well it won't be fun You could get enough Q&A from one hour with a professor to be equivalent to a week of questions on the forum. Plus its a whole lot easier to be sitting with a professor going over things step by step so that you know what's going on.

And how much time is a professor going to devote to you? At least at the UWashington, profs only have like several hours of office hours. They really can only answer a few questions of yours, before they have to do other things. And really, you can get far more out of those via PF.

However, i have a learning disability as a part of Asperger's Syndrome, and that makes it much more difficult for me to learn from professors by visiting office hours [because it often takes a long time for me to get a concept, in which the professor will then get really frustrated, even though I ultimately am intelligent enough to understand the material].

Can anyone recommend any distance learning programs that go beyond the basics? There's Stanford EPGY, but that only covers one semester courses, not 3-quarter courses.

The problem with college learning is that it doesn't accommodate a wide variety of learning styles. And thus, I'd like to self-study and do exercises from a textbook at my own pace, rather than pay money to have a teacher talk AT me. Yes, I don't get the same college experiences anyways, but regardless, I wouldn't due to my social deficiencies.

Many scientists and mathematicians self-taught themselves college level material before they even encountered it in college. But it's easier to self-teach something if you're intelligent.

 

[Pengwuino]

And how much time is a professor going to devote to you? At least at the UWashington, profs only have like several hours of office hours. They really can only answer a few questions of yours, before they have to do other things. And really, you can get far more out of those via PF.

Thats where you separate learning schools from research schools. I don't know what that university is but around here, professors are extremely open to spending time with you to help you out. They can help you go through every step instead of here where you can only pretty much ask one small part of a question or else you'll be looked upon like you want people to explain an entire lectures worth of material to you. Plus when you get into upper-division stuff, PF becomes fairly worthless if you have any respect for the people who help out here. PF has a lot of people that can help out with lower-division stuff and its fairly easy for them because they're normally short and quick. Some of the upper-division things require a LONG time to explain and as extraordinary as some of the members are, i don't think many of them will spend the time necessary to replace the time a professor would spend with you to help you out.

Of course, this comes from someone who is in a rather small department with professors that are amazingly more dedicated to their students then what you'd expect at say, a UC campus's political science department. It's a consequence of the smaller department and my university being a teaching university as opposed to research.

 

[Simfish]

University of Washington has more physics majors than any other university - and many of these majors tend to be erm... engineering school rejects - and so many of the physics professors aren't very willing to help. =/

One very intelligent classmate of mine [and she was among the top of the class] even got frustrated because the professor just wasn't very patient with her questions - and discouraged her from going further into physics...

 

[Line]

They have those distance learning programs. I see University of Phoenix Commercials all the time.

As for Residency ,I'm amost 30. Are there really any colleges that require a 30 year old to stay on campus?

 

[SpiffyKavu]

They have those distance learning programs. I see University of Phoenix Commercials all the time.

As for Residency ,I'm amost 30. Are there really any colleges that require a 30 year old to stay on campus?

By residency, I think they mean that you have to take a certain amount of credit hours at the college in order to graduate.

 

[Pengwuino]

And isn't the university of phoenix one of those for-profit commercial "universities"?

 

[Manchot]

By residency, I think they mean that you have to take a certain amount of credit hours at the college in order to graduate.

That's exactly what I meant. I believe that my own college requires 60 hours of residency.

 

[scorpa]

d \

And how much time is a professor going to devote to you? At least at the UWashington, profs only have like several hours of office hours. They really can only answer a few questions of yours, before they have to do other things. And really, you can get far more out of those via PF.
.

I had professors that would spend as much time with you as you needed until you got the concept. My organic chem prof was one of the top professors in the chemistry department (or university for that matter) and was heavily involved in research (in fact research was what took most of his time) yet if you needed help all you had to do was go to his office hours and he would sit with you until you got the concept even if it meant going over the allotted time. If office hours didnt work you could schedule another time that he would try to accommodate. He also schedule help sessions before all major exams. This guy was amazing.

My physics prof was the same way with his office hours, plus he schedules weekly tutorial sessions on his own time that started at 5 and only ended when we ran out of things to ask him. One time it didnt end until 11 at night and he still stayed to help us out.

You will always get the odd useless professor, I definitely did, but fortunately you are more likely to get a decent one than a bad one. Act interested in the subject, and show you made an effort to understand the material beforehand and they should be very willing to help (in my experience).

 

[G01]

I think I should help sum up some of the responding posts in this thread.

"You CANNOT test out of college."

You are going to have to take a certain amount of courses no matter what you do. You can't test out of everything, nor would it be a good idea to do so.

Sorry buddy but that's the way it is. College isn't that bad. Good luck to you.

 

[oksanav]

I never would have switched to physics if I wasn't going to a small school. Having no background in it, I would have gotten discouraged pretty quickly if it wasn't for the teachers. Here, the head of the department will spend hours answering my questions, even if it's not for his class!

 

[mathwonk]

the U of W is a big research university with all that entails, top profesors but ones whose time is very limited. if you have a learning disability of any kind i do not advise going there, but rather to a small but high level teaching college. what about evergreen? do they have good science? or what is that other small northwest school that produces all those rhodes scholars?

i am just shooting in the dark here.

 

[CPL.Luke]

are you thinking of reid? their over in portland, and I think they produce a fair number of scholars

 

[daveb]

To be fair, it is possible to get a degree without ever taking a college class. Of course, this requires you to develop some incredible theory which stands up to scientific scrutiny, and maybe you get an honorary degree like this guy did.
http://bfi.org/node/587"

 

[franznietzsche]

To be fair, it is possible to get a degree without ever taking a college class. Of course, this requires you to develop some incredible theory which stands up to scientific scrutiny, and maybe you get an honorary degree like this guy did.
http://bfi.org/node/587"

Its not possible for this guy to do it, and that's about the end of it. He's just interested in not working for anything, and wants a nice lazy way out of it. I'm sure one of those fake diploma mills would suit him nicely.

 

[jimmynickel]

I find many of the comments made here insulting. I have a strong desire to "test out of college". I don't feel that it is "lazy" to do so. I am a hard working individual with very little time. I have an ability to learn much faster on my own that in a college setting. I am a drop out for that reason. I found myself frustrated with the pace and being forced to jump through hoops instead of focusing on improving myself. While college has great value for it's labs and hands on learning. I don't believe wanting to teach yourself is "lazy".In fact I think it is smart to look for ways to speed up your learning. Why are so many so willing to submit to the universities. Education should be free! We should learn as much as fast as we can! We should form communities where we learn together! They can take our land but they can't take our freedom.

>Jimmy steps of soap box.
>Exit stage right

 

[twofish-quant]

It's curious here that no one has bothered to answer the original question.

Yes it is possible to get a bachelors degree with mostly self-study. The major schools that will let you do this are

1) Thomas Edison State College
2) Charter Oak State College
3) Excelsior College
4) Western Governors University

The thing that you have to realize is that it's possible but difficult, and it's difficult because since you are working at your own pace, it requires a *LOT* of self-discipline to make it through the program. If you don't have self-discipline then flexibility can be a bad thing.

 

[twofish-quant]

I think I should help sum up some of the responding posts in this thread.

"You CANNOT test out of college."

Yes you can. There are four regionally accredited universities that are offer reputable degrees. To repeat, the four universities that I know of are

1) Thomas Edison State College
2) Charter Oak State College
3) Excelsior College
4) Western Governors University

What they'll do is to put together a degree program.

One thing that I plan to do at some point is to start using the 8.01/8.02/18.01/18.02 from open courseware and then set it up so that you can get credit for it through those four colleges.

One work of warning is that there are a lot of scams and rip-off artists in this business, so if you have a specific question about these, then feel free to ask. Also John Bear has written a huge amount on distance learning and his books are worth reading.

 

[twofish-quant]

Also Western Governors University is pretty interesting, because it was started by the Western Governors Association because they had precisely the problem in which people that were skilled at certain tasks couldn't get academic credit for those skills.

The other thing is that I'm pretty amazed at the huge amount of misinformation in this thread as well as the general unhelpful tone.

http://www.degree.net/

is also a good place to start.

 

[twofish-quant]

1) Companies know that people skills are just as important as knowledge. Otherwise they'd just use computers for everything. My teachers force us to work together on problems a lot because of this. Being book smart is NOT enough.

On the other hand, if you do manage to get a degree from TESC or WGU this shows a huge amount of initiative. Personally I'd be much more likely to hire someone that managed to get a degree on their own.

2) You'd need research experience.Why would you want to miss out on that anyways?

You can get that through REU, attending professional society meetings, or getting internships.

3) Who would write your letters of recommendation?

REU, professional society meetings, and internships.

4) Because life isn't a written test.

Yup. But life isn't a factory either.

Face it, unless you're rich, you have to suck it up and do the work to get anywhere.

But it's silly if it's busy work. The problem is that if you do what you are told and behave like a good little cog in the great corporate machine, you'll often find at the end that you *still* don't get what you want.

 

[chiro]

If the OP is interested he can take the actuarial exams although they cost a pretty penny for each attempt. After getting say two exams under the belt he could get a job and continue doing self-study and doing the exams till he/she qualifies as an actuary.

If you like statistics and the idea of working in a lot of areas in insurance then you could consider that. Also universities might (and should) recognize your qualifications as it is a professional qualification.

I must warn you that it is not trivial to pass these exams, but if your confident in your abilities then go ahead and I wish you all the best.

 

[twofish-quant]

.Plus when you get into upper-division stuff, PF becomes fairly worthless if you have any respect for the people who help out here. PF has a lot of people that can help out with lower-division stuff and its fairly easy for them because they're normally short and quick.

I've really found that the opposite is the case. If you have a question on how to calculate Ricci tensors in general relativity, just the fact that you are asking the question means that you have a lot of math background so that I can just point you to a web page or a review article, and you can figure the rest out.

The hard part is teaching someone that doesn't know algebra but wants to learn. *That* takes a huge amount of time, because they don't know what questions to ask, and you have to sit down with them, watch them struggle through the problem, and then try to figure out what they need to know.

Also it's harder to teach someone that is in lower division. If someone asks me about Ricci tensors, and I'm a total jerk about it, it's not going to make much difference, but it does make a huge difference if someone asks me a basic algebra question.

The other thing is that sometimes what you just need is moral support. I have a Ph.D. in astrophysics, I have an undergraduate degree from MIT, and I work on Wall Street as a researcher. I happen to think what the original poster is trying to do is wonderful, and I'll do what I can to help him. Now, all you need to know is that there is one person out there that believes in you, and that gives you "permission" to ignore anyone out there that doesn't.

i don't think many of them will spend the time necessary to replace the time a professor would spend with you to help you out.

For upper division stuff it's easy. I just point you to the web page where someone has worked it out. The thing that I don't have time for is lower division stuff, since to explain basic Newtonian mechanics to someone that doesn't have that background is hard.

Of course, this comes from someone who is in a rather small department with professors that are amazingly more dedicated to their students then what you'd expect at say, a UC campus's political science department. It's a consequence of the smaller department and my university being a teaching university as opposed to research.

Oh yes. The thing about professors at some of the major universities is that they get hired for research, and are just horribly bad at teaching.

 

[twofish-quant]

And isn't the university of phoenix one of those for-profit commercial "universities"?

Yes, and so is DeVry. They are kicking the traditional universities in the rear end, and I think that's a good thing. I taught algebra and astronomy at University of Phoenix for a while, and I think it's a pretty decent school because they do a lot of things better than traditional universities.

One thing that does make a difference is that as time passes, UoP is going to be able to put more of their graduates in key positions in the corporate-military-industrial complex. There are pretty *huge* numbers of people in corporate human resources that have gotten UoP degrees.

 

[twofish-quant]

I don't feel that it is "lazy" to do so. I am a hard working individual with very little time. I have an ability to learn much faster on my own that in a college setting. I am a drop out for that reason.

I think part of the reason I have so much sympathy for you is that I'm sort of the same way. I "dropped out" of the system after I got my Ph.D., but I'm still a drop out.

I found myself frustrated with the pace and being forced to jump through hoops instead of focusing on improving myself.

Same here. As I've gotten older, I've become more patient at jumping through hoops if I have to. Of course, sometimes I don't have to.

Why are so many so willing to submit to the universities.

That's a good question. It's the type of question that people should discuss in an academic environment, but somehow people don't.

Education should be free! We should learn as much as fast as we can! We should form communities where we learn together!

Yup. One thing though is that at one point it became very obvious to me is that money is important to the process. So you have to figure out a way of making the money work. So I figured that an important part of my education would be to go somewhere that I could learn about money. Which is why I ended up on Wall Street.

They can take our land but they can't take our freedom.

Actually, they can. But one thing you'll find is that it isn't "they". If everyone is against you, then you are hosed, but usually it's not everyone that is against you.

 

[twofish-quant]

I've been to both a large big-name school (MIT) and one large public university (UT Austin).

As classroom teachers, the professors aren't particularly good, but they do really want you to learn the material, so when you have a professor that just can't teach, you feel really sorry for them. Also, you really don't learn that much in the way of physics, from the professors, but you do learn things from the other students. Also, one thing about MIT is that it's run by the military-industrial-financial power elite that runs the United States if not the world, so you really do get to learn stuff by just watching things close up. Both MIT and UT Austin have big time politics.

One important thing about going to MIT that's useful is that it teaches you some "healthy arrogance". If you go to most colleges and say "I want to become the CEO of a multibillion dollar corporation" or "I want to win the Nobel prize in physics" people think you are crazy. If you go to MIT and you say "I want to win the Nobel prize in physics" the attitude is "So do I !" or "How can I help you win the Nobel prize in physics?" Or maybe after you meet a Nobel prize winner that is a complete jerk, you think to yourself, "well I'd rather be a nice guy than win the Nobel prize."

 

[Jack21222]

I happen to think what the original poster is trying to do is wonderful, and I'll do what I can to help him. Now, all you need to know is that there is one person out there that believes in you, and that gives you "permission" to ignore anyone out there that doesn't.

Original poster would be getting ready to graduate by now if he decided to go to college.

 

[forensicninja]

My, that sounds like the musings of someone who hasn't attended college...

- Warren

I must agree. Even when you don't understand your professors, you can always simply raise your hand and ask him/her to explain it another way. Guided study is essential to the learning process, especially when you're a scientist. Do you really think anyone would want to hire you if you didn't have documented proof that you attended labs with a trained professional who taught you to handle volatile chemicals correctly? You'd be a liability to every lab and science department in the country. You also need letters of recommendation to get into any graduate program, and most jobs. Who exactly would write these letters for you if you didn't know any college professors who could attest to your genius, ability to "play well with others" and motivation?
Plus, I can't think of a single situation in which a graduate school would look favorably on an application that only proved you were marginally smart and probably fairly talented but had no motivation or work ethic. My science department would think you were trying to half-arse your way through life and your file would be tossed immediately.

 

[twofish-quant]

I must agree. Even when you don't understand your professors, you can always simply raise your hand and ask him/her to explain it another way.

It's not a simple thing to raise your hand and ask him to explain it another way. This sort of thing is pretty much impossible in a lecture style class. It's possible to do this in a small group. I think that you are using an idealized vision of the university which may not be anything close to the real thing especially for lower division where in some places students are treated like cattle.

Guided study is essential to the learning process, especially when you're a scientist.

And it's possible to get that online.

Do you really think anyone would want to hire you if you didn't have documented proof that you attended labs with a trained professional who taught you to handle volatile chemicals correctly?

So go to a lab to get training. This doesn't have to happen in a classroom. Yes you do need interaction to learn science, but you can sometimes get that in places other than in a traditional university setting. Sometimes you can get *more* real human interaction outside of a traditional university.

Also, yes, employers will hire people that don't have any formal training. I am currently employed by a major financial institution as a computer programmer, and this is despite the fact that I've never taken a single formal course in business and finance in my entire life and only one formal course on computer programming. (Now it so happens that this one single formal course was a *GREAT* course.)

The other thing is that I went to a small college where the professors weren't that great at teaching so the students were very strongly encouraged to learn things by themselves.

 

[twofish-quant]

One reason that I've been thinking about how to go about this is that right now MIT has this huge problem that you have too many qualified applicants and not enough spaces, so I've been thinking a lot on how one would create the functional equivalent of the MIT undergraduate physics curriculum without sending everyone to Cambridge. The trouble is that I don't have enough time to do anything else but think about this. All of the pieces are there, it's just a matter of putting them together, and I'll get around to doing it in about five years or so, if no one else has managed to do it yet.