Can one go to a normal graduate school with a university of phoenix online degree?

Do well on the GRE’s and write an intelligent and clear application; I think that you will be fine. Think of all the kids w. GEDs who go on to college.

it would depend alot on what kind of graduate school you want to do, and what kind of work experience you have. The GRE is actually pretty easy, some say even a little easier than the SAT, but i don’t necessarily share that opinion. Basically, get a good review book (I used Kaplan, and found it to be very helpful. Pay close attention to explanations on scoring in the computer-based adaptive test) because a very strong GRE score will tell the admissions people that the reason you don’t have a degree from a traditional college/university was NOT that you weren’t smart/good/etc enough. Also, be aware that some schools rely heavily on some parts of your application, where others don’t. In the sciences for example, the big three are research record, grades, and GRE, and the schools weight them very differently, which could produce some surprises (good and bad). My last piece of advice in the interest of keeping this post under a page is if you are really serious about it, apply to alot of schools. It can get expensive, but it is going to cost you money to re-apply if for some reason you don’t get any bites, and it stinks to spend an extra year in a holding pattern.

What do you want to study? PhD in..? MBA? MA?

The higher you get in your education, the more personal contacts and politics matter. The top graduate schools have their pick of students from top undergraduate schools; unless you have a good reference from someone they’ve heard of or you’ve done impressive work on your own, you probably don’t have a shot there.

(And if you’re trying to get a graduate degree so you can teach college, you want the best school you can get into: there are probably 1/10 as many new jobs each year as there are new Ph.D.s, and so competition is fierce.)

That said, it depends on the school; as long as the University of Phoenix is accredited (and I don’t know whether it is or not, personally), it shouldn’t bar you from any graduate school, though it will probably limit your range of choices. But that’s true for any school.

there was an expose on one of the news shows (like 20/20 or something like that) about university of phoenix. something about their lax admission requirements. i would recommend you find out from them what the stats are as far as their graduates going on to get master’s degrees. i have a feeling they’re not well respected in the academic field.

Define normal graduate school….it’s entirely possible for you to do go to ‘normal’ graduate school. However, it’s not necessarily your undergraduate experience (online or traditional) that will get you in the door, it’s the quality of course work you did as well as co-curricular experiences you had (jobs, internships, etc).

Without doubt, I should hope that your degree has given you those things, but it’s easy to see spots where it could have but didn’t. Most graduate schools will want experience. While you may not have gotten it at UPhoenix, you can probably get it on the side with volunteering or other part time jobs.

The best piece of advice I have is to talk to the schools you want to apply to. They will often be brutally honest about you applying for their programs, so prepare yourself for some rejection, but if that’s the case, ask them what it takes now that you have a degree but are open to new experiences to strengthen your app.