Oh, the joys of educational bureaucracy!
I've written here a few times about taking evening classes. Well, since these classes were prerequisites for a graduate program, they were finite in number....and I'm almost done! With one little catch...
When I started taking class at at University A, I enrolled in a specific post-baccalaureate program. This program offered many of the prerequisites for the graduate program I was interested in, but not every possible class that every program might require. The advantages to the post-baccalaureate program were that the classes were offered in the evening (thus making them about as compatible with a full-time job as you're going to get), and that I wouldn't have to compete with traditional undergraduates to enroll. The disadvantage was that I was allowed to enroll only in this particular set of classes.
This all worked quite well for a while, but I now have two science courses to take that are not included in the post-baccalaureate program. I decided to enroll in University B, an open-enrollment university with an emphasis on online course offerings. What could possibly go wrong?
Plenty, as it turns out. For reasons I don't understand, the fact that I am currently taking a class at University A may preclude me from taking classes at University B. I discovered this when--despite receiving many form emails from University B reminding me to enroll in classes--I was blocked from enrollment. I spoke to and emailed several people at University B, and was ultimately told that I needed permission to enroll from University A. The problem is that since I'm a non-degree seeking student, University A does not care where else I choose to go to school and has no mechanism to provide me with any such documentation.
With some more follow-up, University B now seems willing to accept verification of enrollment (which shows no enrollment past this spring) from University A. Naturally, University A was only able to send this by snail mail (why?!). I sent an email to University B today to see if they had received it yet. I've been working on enrolling at University B for about a month now, and I'm anxious to enroll in the classes I need before they fill up. (While I'm assigning creative pseudonyms to universities, I'll mention that this is all so I can start a master's program at University C in the fall. So, I'm on the clock at this point to finish everything up.)
Do I have any words of wisdom to impart from this experience? Not really, because I still don't understand the problem. I'm not sure why it should matter to either University A or University B where else I might be taking classes. The closest thing I have to useful knowledge about this is to start early when dealing with universities, especially if you're trying to do something even remotely unusual. I wouldn't have guessed that taking prerequisites from two different universities was all that unusual, but maybe it is.
I remain hopeful that this enrollment business will work out in the end, however, and I'm very excited to see a light at the end of the tunnel! I've been fortunate to be able to take so many classes using tuition remission, but there's no getting around the fact that taking classes while working is a tiring experience. In addition to it being tiring, the outcome was also uncertain for a long time. There was no guarantee that I would get into a graduate program, and completing these prerequisite courses on their own was unlikely to open very many career doors. I'm happy to see my free time gamble pay off, and I'm looking forward to the next set of steps.
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