120credits required
120 credits, and the tab closes.
You look up a degree, see three digits, and decide it’s a next-year problem. Nobody on that page tells you a third of it is already behind you.
How much of that degree have you already done?
NextWorth takes your branch, your job code, and the training you’ve already completed, then returns an honest degree plan — after elective caps, after CLEP, after everything a transfer estimator quietly leaves out.
- Free for service members and veterans
- No transcript upload needed
- Every branch eligible
Your path
Product previewWhat you told us
- Branch
- Air Force
- Job code
- 2A5X1
- Time in service
- 6 years
- PME complete
- ALS
Why you’re going
FastestCareer pivotBest aligned
Change any answer and everything on the right re-ranks — the plan is a query, not a report.
Realistic time to finish
20months
Two classes per 8-week term. Face value without our adjustments: 37 months
Degree, all 120 credits
50% already covered
- 42Military credit that lands
- 18Free to CLEP out of
- 60Coursework left
Top match
B.S. Aviation Maintenance Management
All 42 military credits land inside the plan — none wasted on a capped elective block.
3 more accredited programs matched your inputs.
Every branch, every job code — enlisted and officer
We don’t invent the data. NextWorth reads what already exists — and puts it in one place, in plain English.
- ACE credit recommendations
- JST & CCAF transcripts
- CLEP / DSST catalogs
- Published degree requirements
The gap
Nobody is lying to you.
They’re just not telling you everything.
The information exists. It’s spread across a transcript nobody taught you to read, a catalog written for registrars, and a counsellor with two hundred other people in line.
What transfers
What actually counts
The elective cap nobody mentions.
Thirty-eight credits transfer. The degree has room for thirty. Eight of them evaporate — and the estimator still shows you thirty-eight.
- TA spent on English 101$750Same credit, CLEP exam$0
Benefits burned on the easy part.
Tuition assistance goes to gen eds you could have tested out of for free — so it runs out right when you hit the classes that actually need an instructor.
The decision engine
Same service record.
Three different right answers.
Every other tool asks what you have. None of them ask what you want. The reason you are going to school changes which degree is actually correct — so we ask first, then rank.
“I just need the degree.”
Ranked purely on months remaining.
Shortest path
18months
- B.A.S. Applied Management42 of 42 credits land18 mo
- B.S. General Studies, aviation focus42 of 42 credits land19 mo
- B.S. Technical Management40 of 42 credits land19 mo
What the trade-off means: Applied and general-studies degrees absorb military credit best, because their elective blocks are wide. If the credential is the goal — a commissioning package, promotion points, a box to check — this is the shortest honest route.
Illustrative results for an Air Force 2A5X1 with six years in and ALS complete.
Under the hood
Four questions the answer
has to survive.
A timeline is only worth having if it holds up to the fine print. This is the fine print, in the order we work through it.
01
The credits that actually land
Every degree has a fixed elective block. Once it fills, the rest of your military credit stays on the transcript and does nothing for your graduation date.
What a transfer estimator reports
38 credits
What the degree can actually use
30 credits
Eight credits is most of a term you would pay for anyway — roughly $2,000 against the tuition-assistance cap.
02
The requirements you can test out of
General education you can clear through CLEP and DSST at no cost. We mark which requirements need an instructor and which genuinely do not.
- 3 cr$0
English Composition I
CLEP · College Composition
- 3 cr$0
College Algebra
CLEP · College Algebra
- 3 cr$0
U.S. Government
CLEP · American Government
Three more exams after these
18 credits
Not every school accepts every exam, and some cap how many you can bring in. We check that per school before recommending it.
03
What is left of the benefit
Tuition assistance is capped per year and does not roll over. Spend it in the wrong order and you lose the ceiling, not just the money.
Spent on gen eds you could test out of
$4,500
Left for coursework that needs an instructor
$0
With a plan
Spent on gen eds
$0
Left for the classes that need one
$4,500
Based on the DoD tuition-assistance cap of $250 per semester hour. Rates and eligibility vary by branch and fiscal year.
04
The month count you can plan around
Everything above resolves into one number — the one you actually needed when you closed the tab on a 120-credit degree page.
Taken at face value
37 months
After everything above
20 months
17months you were told to spend that you do not have to.
Two classes per eight-week term, for an Air Force 2A5X1 with six years in and ALS complete.
Under the hood
Four questions the answer
has to survive.
A timeline is only worth having if it holds up to the fine print. This is the fine print, in the order we work through it.
- 01
The credits that actually land
Every degree has a fixed elective block. Once it fills, the rest of your military credit stays on the transcript and does nothing for your graduation date.
- 02
The requirements you can test out of
General education you can clear through CLEP and DSST at no cost. We mark which requirements need an instructor and which genuinely do not.
- 03
What is left of the benefit
Tuition assistance is capped per year and does not roll over. Spend it in the wrong order and you lose the ceiling, not just the money.
- 04
The month count you can plan around
Everything above resolves into one number — the one you actually needed when you closed the tab on a 120-credit degree page.
What a transfer estimator reports
38 credits
What the degree can actually use
30 credits
Eight credits is most of a term you would pay for anyway — roughly $2,000 against the tuition-assistance cap.
How it works
Two weeks of runaround,
compressed into four questions.
The education office is not the problem — the queue is. Everything below already exists in public data. We just put it in one place and asked it the right question.
- 1
Tell us who you are.
About 60 secondsBranch, job code, time in service. Four fields, pulled from lists — no transcript upload, no account, no document with your SSN on it sitting in someone else’s cloud.
- 2
Add what you have already finished.
About 90 secondsPME, tech school, certifications, any college credit you have picked up along the way. You pick them off a list; we already know what each one is worth in credit hours.
- 3
Say why you are going.
One tapFastest degree, best aligned to your job, or a clean pivot into something else. This is the question no other tool asks, and it changes every answer underneath it.
- 4
Get the honest plan.
Yours to keepRanked degrees with the credits that actually land, the requirements you can test out of for free, what the remaining coursework costs against your benefit, and a month count you can plan a life around.
Where this fits
The other three options are fine.
They just answer a different question.
Nothing here is a competitor so much as a partial view. A school tells you about that school. A counsellor knows the process but has a queue. The gap is a single, neutral answer built out of all of it.
| Capability | NextWorth | A school’s transfer estimator | The education office | A spreadsheet and six tabs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Counts only the credits that actually apply after elective caps | Yes | NoReports gross transfer | PartlyIf you ask the right way | PartlyIf you build it yourself |
| Ranks degrees by why you are going | YesFast · aligned · pivot | No | Partly | No |
| Compares more than one school side by side | Yes | NoTheir school only | Partly | PartlyManually |
| Flags requirements you can CLEP or DSST for free | Yes | No | Partly | No |
| Works for tuition assistance and the GI Bill | Yes | PartlyVaries | Yes | No |
| Neutral about where you end up enrolling | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Time to a usable answer | YesUnder 3 minutes | Partly10 minutes, one school | NoTwo to three weeks | NoSeveral evenings |
| Free for service members and veterans | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Two benefits, two problems
The maths changes the day
you take the uniform off.
Active duty is optimising a yearly ceiling. Veterans are optimising a fixed, finite balance. Those are different problems, and a single generic credit calculator solves neither.
Tuition assistance
TA is capped per fiscal year and it does not roll over. Spend it in the wrong order and you lose the ceiling, not just the money.
- Plans around the per-credit and annual caps, not a generic tuition figure
- Sequences courses so the free ones come first and TA covers what it has to
- Counts what your PME, tech school, and CDCs already bought you
- Built for eight-week terms, deployments, and a schedule you do not control
The GI Bill
Thirty-six months of entitlement, and no way to earn more. Spending a month of it on credit you already hold is the most expensive mistake in the catalog.
- Shows entitlement burned per degree path before you commit to one
- Compares what the benefit covers against what a cheaper program costs outright
- Factors in housing allowance, term length, and Yellow Ribbon where it applies
- Applies every credit you already own before a single month is spent
Straight answers
The questions
people actually ask.
Something missing? Write to hello@nextworth.com and a person will answer it.
Is it actually free?
Free for service members, veterans, Guard and Reserve, and military spouses. The money comes from the other side: universities license the tool for their own sites and pay to reach people who have already decided they are ready to enrol. We do not sell your personal information, and no school hears from you unless you ask to be introduced.
Do I have to upload my transcript?
No. You pick your branch and job code off a list, tick the training you have completed, and that is enough to run the numbers. We are not asking for a JST, a DD-214, or anything carrying your SSN. If document upload ever ships it will be optional, and it will ship after the security work rather than before it.
Where does the credit data come from?
The same places your credit already comes from — ACE credit recommendations behind the Joint Services Transcript and the CCAF, published degree requirements, and the CLEP and DSST catalogs. We do not invent credit. We read what already exists, apply each degree’s own caps and blocks to it, and show you the difference.
Is this an official DoD or VA tool?
No. NextWorth is an independent company with no affiliation to the Department of Defense, the VA, or any branch. Your education office and your school’s registrar still make the final determination — the point is that you walk into that conversation already knowing what the answer should be.
Which branches and job codes are covered?
All six branches, enlisted and officer. Job codes are being built out by population, largest first, because each one is a real mapping exercise rather than a row in a table. Telling us yours on the waitlist form genuinely moves it up the queue.
When does it launch?
The first version is being built now and opens to the waitlist in waves rather than all at once. Signing up costs an email address and puts you ahead of the public release — we would rather get it right for a few hundred people first than get it wrong for everyone.
Pre-launch list
Find out what you have already earned.
Early access opens in waves, smallest first, so the numbers get checked by people before they get checked by traffic. Sign-ups go in the order they arrive.
- One email when your access opens. That is the whole plan.
- Branch, job code and status decide which job codes we build first.
- No newsletter, no drip sequence, no selling your address on.
Reserve early access
Takes about fifteen seconds.