It’s understandable to have some hesitations about signing up for a full online distance learning course when you’re not totally familiar with the school and, perhaps even more importantly, not sure if online education fits your personality and study habits. This is often particularly true of older students going back to school to finish a degree, who may be a bit less tech-savvy than those 18 year old freshmen out there.
Many online schools have made an effort to minimize the student’s risk by allowing credits to be transferred in from previous schoolwork and by helping students to get as much financial aid as possible from both government and private sources. Possibly the most creative approach we’ve come across, however, is Kaplan University’s “Kaplan Commitment,” which allows students to effectively “try out” the school for five weeks at virtually no charge. Under it, the student can take classes for five weeks on a test basis. If things don’t go well, the student can then withdraw, paying only the application fee (currently about $45.). It’s not completely free, but the cost is minimal.
A five week test drive may not guarantee that you will make it all the way to the end of your degree program, but it seems like an interesting way to test out Kaplan’s offerings, and to find out if you are ready to go into online learning in general.