I’ve been wondering about this for a while now. Nine years ago, as an international student in the U.S., I finished 4 years of college and had only 3 more courses left to complete in order to earn an Engineering degree. I then had a serious medical condition at the time and just couldn’t work on anything anymore and had to travel back home overseas. More than a year later, I found myself getting a job and starting a career, and then eventually starting a family.
Now, after 9 years, which is indeed quite a long time, I am seriously thinking of going back to school, while still keeping my job, and pursuing a Master’s degree. But obviously, in order to do so, I need to have earned my bachelor’s first!
My question is, how should I approach this? Obviously, I will have to get in contact with my old university as a very first step, but I’d like to know what should I expect --particularly regarding the validity of all the credit hours I earned during the 4 years, given that GPA was pretty good.
It would definitely be helpful getting some feedback on this.
I was in a similar situation, but have been out of school since 2008. Be sure to check out programs for non-traditional students at Tufts and Brown. I’ve applied to Tufts and really like their REAL program.
Can you check with your old school to see if you can be readmitted to complete your degree? This is often less difficult than getting admitted as a transfer student to a different school of similar selectivity (especially if you have senior standing already).
Some things to check on as well:
- If your old school changed its curriculum for your major, you may need more than 3 courses to complete your degree.
- You may need to review the material you learned previously that is prerequisite material for the 3 (or whatever) courses.
@Jessi55 I’m in the same boat. I only had about 5 courses to get my bachelor’s degree but got a sweet job that required my full time attention so I couldn’t finish my degree. That was 21 years ago. I haven’t stopped wishing I could finish my degree since that day many years ago. When my last child goes to college I plan to finish my degree that I’ve wanted for so long.
I did a little bit of research and found the courses taken more than 10 years ago will not have any credit accepted to transfer or continue. I’d have to take them all over again. This is the case with 2 colleges that I’ve looked at so far. I know that I won’t mind taking it all over again since learning is really my motivation behind this plan in the first place.