Sophia.org Vs. Study.com
Sophia.org and Study.com are both online, third-party course providers that let you earn college credit super cheap and fast. You sign up for a monthly subscription cost and then go through courses completely online. But because either platform can save you tens of thousands on your college degree, how do you know which to use?
Let’s compare and contrast.
NUMBER OF COURSES
Currently, when you sign up for Sophia Learning, you get access to over 60 courses. But Study.com is way, way bigger. Study.com literally offers over 1,000 college courses. Now, only about 200 of those can be transferred for college credit, but still: 200 is amazing! There’s no other source of alternative college credit out there that has such a huge catalogue, and that’s probably because they started way back in 2002, while Sophia and StraighterLine are much younger platforms.
VARIETY OF COURSES
The other great thing about Study.com is they have tons of course topics to choose from. Sophia is far more focused on General Education courses, though they do have a few advanced business courses. Study.com, on the other hand, has a LOT of courses you can get college credit for. They’ve got business, computer science, psychology, criminal justice, history, literature, and more. Plus, a lot of their course offerings are upper levels (300-400 level).
COURSE LEVEL
But it’s not just the number and variety of classes that are most impressive at Study.com. What’s amazing about them is that many of their courses are accepted at the hackable colleges we focus on as upper level credits.
Here’s the thing: if you want to hack a college degree as much as possible (AKA: graduate fast and cheap, if you’re new to college hacking), at some point you’re going to need upper-level credits. These are defined as 300 and 400 level, advanced, major area courses, of which most schools require a minimum of 24-30 credits out of the 120 typically needed to complete an accredited bachelors degree.
EASE OF USE
If it seems like Study.com is winning by a long shot so far, that’s just because we haven’t gotten to the factors that make Sophia shine like the diamond it is. For instance, when it comes to going through the actual courses, there’s no contest: Sophia is easier. Their interface is more modern and easier to use (better UX/UI). Their quizzes are well integrated, and everything feels fresher and more gamified. As a result, I think it’s easier to go faster through Sophia courses.
PROCTORING
One thing you’re sure to love about Sophia is that they don’t proctor any exams. All tests and quizzes are open book at Sophia, while every Study.com course requires you to record a video of you taking the final exam. If their system detects anything weird going on, then they’ll review the video and make sure you weren’t cheating. This also means that their final exams are most definitely not open book.
ESSAYS
Sophia and Study courses often require essays, but not all of the time. If you’re someone who wants to avoid writing as many essays as possible, there’s not really a clear winner here. Sophia is in the process, it seems, of adding more essays to their courses. Just recently I posted a YouTube video covering the 5 fastest Sophia courses and right after I did that, they added essays to their US History I and II courses, which significantly slowed them down. Thankfully, those don’t have very many essays (or what Sophia terms “Touchstones”), but some courses have as many as 5, like their basic English courses.
TIME
All things considered though, Sophia courses generally are quicker to finish thanks to the open book nature of all of their exams. I ran a poll on Reddit, and the average time to finish a Sophia course is about 10 hours. I’d guess the average Study.com course takes slightly more than that. Though, they do something really cool.
Lots of Study.com courses overlap with each other. So if you were taking two courses covering similar topics, they might actually share a few modules in common. That means finishing the modules in one course applies to the other course as well! So the more Study.com courses you take that are content related, the quicker they will be. Even still, my guess is that Sophia courses, especially those without Touchstones are going to be faster than the equivalent Study course. I finished a 1-credit Sophia in 30 minutes, which is documented in this YouTube video, so sometimes they can be pretty fast!
WAIT-TIME
With all the proctoring and essay grading involved in these courses, we’re bringing in a human element that slows things down considerably. So which platform slows you down less?
Study.com can take up to two weeks to review your proctored exams, and I’ve heard of Sophia taking even longer to grade essays sometimes because they’re so swamped with students—shout out to our hundreds of clients for sharing their experiences with us so we have updated information to offer you!
Now, waiting sucks, and it’s something that makes both proctoring and essay-based alternative credit less desirable than just taking a CLEP exam or an exam-only Sophia. With either of those, you get your scores immediately or within one day instead of having to wait for longer periods of time. So for this category, I think Sophia is mildly faster than Study because some of their courses don’t have graded assignments and there’s never proctoring, vs. Study always having proctored finals.
COST
This one’s easy because Sophia is way cheaper. In fact, Study.com just raised their price to $235 a month, and Sophia still only costs $99. Now you’re getting access to a lot more information with Study.com, so it makes sense you’d pay more, but here’s the other big thing:
Sophia lets you take unlimited courses in a month.
And sure you can only take two courses at a time. But with Study.com your $235 monthly fee only covers the proctoring costs for two courses. If you want a third, fourth, or fifth, those are each going to cost $70. Now you can review the course content and take quizzes in unlimited Study.com courses, but you can basically only earn credit in 1-5 Study.com courses each month, and doing five will cost you $445.
Thankfully, if you use this link to sign up for Study.com you’ll save 30% on your first three months. That brings your base cost to $164.5 for three months, which should be as long as you’ll need Study.com if you’re serious about getting the work done.
Is that still an amazing deal? $375 for 15 college credits when they would normally cost about $5,850? You bet. But Sophia is still cheaper by a longshot.
BONUS USE
I do want to give Study.com a bonus point in this comparison with Sophia, because their huge catalogue of courses has more uses than just earning credit directly from them.
Let’s say you’re planning to take a CLEP exam or a Thomas Edison credit exam (TECEP) but you’re having a really hard time finding study resources for those tests that you can rely on. After all, you want to take the test only once and pass it the first time. Here’s the great news:
Chances are really good that Study.com has a course you can use to study for those exams.
Plus, let’s say you’re planning to go to Western Governors in a month. Why not start studying similar courses at Study.com while you wait? Then you’ll be able to fly through the WGU courses really fast and be able to cut straight to their final tests. Even if they won’t transfer in the Study.com credit, the knowledge is transferable and can help you ensure that you’re not taking a second semester when you get to WGU, which is where 3/4ths of your overall tuition cost will come from compared to the hacking credit.
IN CLOSING
My final word on this topic is that you’re probably going to want to use both of these amazing platforms. The reality is that Sophia is a really good way to hack general education classes and fill out free electives, and Study is often the ONLY consistent way to hack some hard-to-get courses in major areas. By combining these two platforms appropriately while pursuing a degree at a hacking friendly school, you can complete and transfer in 90 of the 120 credits required for a bachelors degree!
Not sure how to map it all correctly to reach your dreams? Schedule a consultation with my team today and we’ll answer every question you have about how to make this process work for you as a unique individual.
