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Comment by no_wizard | Hacker News Reader

I'll take great. I'm okay with that.

even 3500 USD is a steal for something like that.

I wonder if the cost is so low because they don't get any grants/subsidies from anything other than the UK government, so this is pretty much pure profit from a administrative perspective?

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I think the cost is so low because they are providing the absolute minimum in terms of a degree - curriculum, and marking of assessments and exams. In fact, you even pay for them separately, so you can pay some amount ($800?) In September to register for the year on 4 courses (which is full time, equivalent to 30 semester units in the US), and get access to the whole curriculum. Then you can decide by Feb the following year which exams you want to do, and only pay for the ones you want to do that year, which is around $300 per exam. You are mostly self taught, though there are some online forums with teaching staff available to answer questions.

I'm kind of skeptical about the total cost, I've been looking at the fees section of the course's website (http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/g...) and it looks it's upwards to $7000 per annum for the BSc, or I'm missing something.

I believe thats total cost of degree, if I'm reading this right, when converted, is 6921 USD (or 7K). Which works out to less than 2500 a year (which is what I was working on). I figure, if you start count some additional unexpected expenses somewhere, 2500 is reasonable. Still a steal. From what it sounds like and upon doing more research, is a all around solid uni. I wonder too if its too good to be true myself. Haven't found evidence to the contrary yet. I WOULD LOVE some input from anyone who actually studied this, hopefully from the USA? though any input is good.

No, it really is around $7000 for the whole thing! It used to be more like $7500, but the british pound dropped after Brexit :) I live in the SF Bay area, and I am doing the BS in Computing and Information Systems. My daughter is doing the Creative Computing BS, while working full-time as a software engineer in SF - she actually got a transfer place at UCLA to study math a few years ago, but decided she'd rather learn while working, and this lets her do that. Happy to answer any questions, here or by PM.

Wow then it is actually extremely interesting.

My main question is about time, if you don't mind answering. The website estimates about 250 hours per course, looks like about 4 courses per year for the first two years, that would amount to about 4 hours of study per day (weekends included) per season (about 9 months), how accurate is this? In short, how much time do you devote on the program?

Also, how are exams conducted? Does one have to be physically present?

I would say that if you're doing the University of London BS full-time (4 courese), it's completely equivalent in terms of time required to full-time study in the US. So I think that's about the right order of magnitude. There are exam centers all over the place, even Wyoming has two! You only have to go there for the exams in May. There is a link below with this year's exam schedule for the CS exams, just to get an idea of the timings.

http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/sites/default/files/doc...

http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/current-students-exams-...

You can study from 3 to 8 years depending on how much free time you have. There are only three deadlines each year - two for coursework assignments and one for exams. It takes me at most 5 days of study per course before each coursework and before an exam, so 15 days of study per course. You can take up to 4 full or up to 6 half courses per year.

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