Sophia

www.sophia.org

This Post: Sophia

Officially, ACE advertises that there are almost 1,500 colleges that “may consider” ACE credit. Unofficially, this credit should only be used when you plan to use one of Sophia’s ~75 partner colleges. Inside a partnership, credit transfer is guaranteed.

List of Sophia’s Partner Colleges

PRO TIP: Why use a partner college? Because it allows you to cut the cost of a degree in half. Inside a partnership, you’ll find a list of equivalency tables that allows you to resourceful and perfectly plan your teen’s courses with confidence in their transferability. When done well, your teen can accumulate 60+ college credits (half a bachelor’s degree) in high school. Since the cost savings is significant when you use ACE credits, parents who use this strategy will shave 50-75% off the cost of a bachelor’s degree for their teen. Most partner colleges allow you to pre-earn up to 75% of the degree, leaving 1 year of college (or less) to complete after high school. If done online instead of on campus, a bigger savings (no dorm/meals) is possible, and a bachelor’s degree can cost as little as $10,000.

Sophia’s courses are video-lesson based, and used to be a little more expensive than some of their other ACE competitors, however, since August 2020, they changed their pricing structure to a monthly subscription. Under this new price structure, you’ll pay monthly, so you ARE under a time crunch to complete a course quickly. You can work on 2 courses at a time, but if you don’t get them finished inside of 1 month, you’ll have to keep paying until you do.

Prices as of 8/1/2022: $99/month, $299/4 months, $599/12 months

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Sophia subscription works best when you focus on 1-2 courses at a time. By freeing up your homeschool schedule and just focusing on Sophia courses, you can work quickly enough that it is very cost effective.

What you need to know about Sophia:

(1) No photo ID required.  For teens that have a driver’s license or passport, this might not be a big deal, but if your teen doesn’t have an official identification card of some kind, getting past the ID checkpoint can be a pain. Sophia doesn’t require a photo ID, so no worries.

(2) No webcam proctoring.  If you’ve taken other ACE courses, you know that webcam proctoring is an expected part of the final exam process. There are always concerns regarding privacy as well as providing a space that meets the proctor’s specifications (nothing on the walls, no one else in the room, etc.) so by using their new technology, they’ve eliminated web proctoring entirely.  They are using a product called “keyboard biometrics” that identifies a person by their typing style.  My son used it earlier this year and liked it a lot!

(3) Course platform is excellent. The appearance, style, visual attractiveness, and ease of use, intuitive style, etc. are constantly praised by our audience as being “their favorite” online course.

(4) All lower level. Their college credits will come in at 100 freshman and 200 sophomore level. To date they haven’t developed any upper level courses, but we hope they do!

(5) Responsiveness. Their customer service is excellent! In addition, they are in regular communication with HS4CC offering promotions, deals, and coupons exclusively to our audience, and we love deals!!

(6) No labs. At this time, none of their sciences offer lab credit. It wouldn’t hurt to send them an email asking for them to add a lab. A lot of colleges want lab sciences, and there are other ACE providers already serving this market, so we hope Sophia jumps into this area too.

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(7) Transcripts. You’ll need to set up an account on Credly to “house” any ACE credits (Sophia or others) as an official transcript. Partner colleges may ask for an official Sophia transcript or an ACE transcript – if they ask for an ACE transcript, they are asking for the one from Credly. EVEN IF your college does not need an ACE transcript, it is highly suggested that you go through the trouble of setting that account up. Having the ACE / Credly transcript holds your unused credits for 20 years. If a company goes out of business before you use the credit, this is your safety net.

(8) ADA Compliance. Sophia has a formal published policy.

(9) Homework. Most Sophia courses require homework. Since it must be graded by a human, this can add time to your schedule. Feedback on this process is mixed:

“Grading on E’s last two papers has been awful. The comments in her history paper were mainly rephrasing sentences. (Ex – E wrote “Farmers have had rough times before.” The grader’s correction “Farmers have had it rough before.” ?‍♀️) No helpful feedback in the paper and she got 35/50 with this final comment: “E, as you move forward. Think about how your reader can understand what you learned. Speak with a learning coach if you have doubts. This score could have been lower, but I want to give you the benefit of doubts as you move forward.” It’s not a big deal because she is still passing and we aren’t using it for high school classes since she graduated. But if the courses are going to have papers and the graders are terrible, I’m less likely to recommend it to other homeschoolers. Having someone grading other than mom is helpful to homeschoolers, but in this case Sophia’s graders are very unhelpful. In fact, it could be downright discouraging for a high schooler to receive the comment above and have no idea what you did wrong. My 8th grader had a great experience with the grader in the foundations of English class last year. So maybe it is hit or miss.” -Homeschooling for College Credit Parent Jenny B.

HS4CC TIP: How to list Sophia courses on a homeschool high school transcript

HS4CC TIP: Use our Inactive Account Strategy to work on homework before paying

Sophia Courses 2022

(3 credits each unless otherwise indicated)

• Ancient Greek Philosophers
• Approaches to Studying Religions
• Art History I
• Art History II
• Business Communication
• Business Law
• Calculus I, 4 credits
• College Algebra
• College Readiness
• Communication at Work
• Conflict Resolution
• Developing Effective Teams, 1 credit
• Discover the Writer in You
• English Composition I
• English Composition II
• Environmental Science
• Financial Accounting
• Foundations of English Composition (not for college credit)

• Foundations of Statistics, 2 credits
• Human Biology
• Introduction to Business
• Introduction to Chemistry
• Introduction to College Mathematics
• Introduction to Ethics
• Introduction to Information Technology
• Introduction to Programming with Python
• Introduction to Psychology: Smarter Decisions Through Psychology
• Introduction to Relational Databases
• Introduction to Sociology: Embracing Diversity and Collaboration
• Introduction to Statistics
• Introduction to Web Development
• IT Career Exploration, 1 credit
• Macroeconomics
• Microeconomics
• Preparing for the Future of Work
• Principles of Finance
• Principles of Management
• Project Management
• Public Speaking
• Spanish 1
• Taking Charge of your Economic Future
• The Essentials of Managing Conflict, 1 credit
• The Power of Persuasion
• Topics in U.S. History: Learn from the Past, Prepare for the Future
• U.S. History I
• U.S. History II
• Visual Communications

Partner Colleges 2022