Is WGU hard ??

[Zee28]

Hello! So just a little back story about my schooling history. I spent my child moving back and fourth from the states to my mother's home land and I never got to attend highschool and my last middle school class was 8th grade. I was wondering if WGU is hard and if it's possible to get it within a year.  Or do you have to be really smart. I seen a few others but I can't tell which online college is the easiest for someone like me. I have a 1 year old now and I'm trying to get a degree so I can't get out of a terrible situation and have my own place and stuff.

[ss20ts]

There have been people who have complete their bachelor's from WGU in a year or less, but they have a great deal of experience in that field. No one should expect to complete a 4 year degree in 1 year unless they have a great deal of experience that can be applied to their program. It's not a smart or not smart thing. It really relates to experience. How are your college writing skills? How are your test taking skills? It sounds like you quit school in 8th grade maybe? Do you have your GED?

[bjcheung77]

@Zee28, Welcome to the board, it's really going to be hard to say as each person has their learning preferences and study habits are drastically different from person to person... You can start by taking all the alternative credit that will transfer into the degree/school of your choice by following the WIKI guides/degree plans. You really want to fill us in with more details by following the template and addendum here: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...Area-works

[Zee28]

@bjcheung77 okay will do thank you!

[LevelUP]

You can do WGU in 1 year if you can gather up max credits to transfer in 6 months, then do 1 WGU term.

Starting WGU from scratch isn't recommended.

[rachel83az]

Are you in the US now? If you're abroad, you can't attend WGU at all.

[Zee28]

@LevelUP I've been doing alot of reading so my thoughts were that I can use Sophia.com and try to get and many credits as I can and transfer than start.

@rachel83az I am currently in michigan. I actually came back in 2012 and I got my ged because I had so much missing credits they said I would need like 5 years to graduate highschool. I did also do some beginning college classes as well.

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There have been people who have complete their bachelor's from WGU in a year or less, but they have a great deal of experience in that field. No one should expect to complete a 4 year degree in 1 year unless they have a great deal of experience that can be applied to their program. It's not a smart or not smart thing. It really relates to experience. How are your college writing skills? How are your test taking skills? It sounds like you quit school in 8th grade maybe? Do you have your GED?

Ohh okay that makes sense. Also I didn't get to attend highschool. It was either 7th or 8th grade that was my last year in grade school but in 2012 I attended some GED practice and did the test. I failed the first time and passed the second time with average scores.

[MNomadic]

Your best bet is to identify what degree/s you're interested in, make a post following the template like bjcheung77 recommended and then get together a plan starting out with cheap/free alt credits and see how you're doing with those. If you're consistently passing alt credits at a good pace then you have a good chance at passing WGU courses at a good pace. WGU basically consists of objective assessments(OAs) and Performance assessments(PAs) which are proctored exams and projects(usually papers), respectively. If you can generate passable papers within a few days to a week and study for and pass proctored exams within a few weeks then you have a good chance at completing WGU in a term or 2. But going in blind without knowing how you perform at self guided online learning is never recommended and it would be impossible to estimate your time to finish. Keep in mind that while fast completions are certainly possible at WGU, those are outliers and most people take a few years to graduate(they just don't post as many attention grabbing videos/articles about graduating WGU at a normal/average pace). Depending on what degree you want, your budget, and your learning style, some of the other colleges might be a better fit for you.

[Zee28]

Your best bet is to identify what degree/s you're interested in, make a post following the template like bjcheung77 recommended and then get together a plan starting out with cheap/free alt credits and see how you're doing with those. If you're consistently passing alt credits at a good pace then you have a good chance at passing WGU courses at a good pace. WGU basically consists of objective assessments(OAs) and Performance assessments(PAs) which are proctored exams  and projects(usually papers), respectively. If you can generate passable papers within a few days to a week and study for and pass proctored exams within a few weeks then you have a good chance at completing WGU in a term or 2. But going in blind without knowing how you perform at self guided online learning is never recommended and it would be impossible to estimate your time to finish. Keep in mind that while fast completions are certainly possible at WGU, those are outliers and most people take a few years to graduate(they just don't post as many attention grabbing videos/articles about graduating WGU at a normal/average pace). Depending on what degree you want, your budget, and your learning style, some of the other colleges might be a better fit for you.

Thank you so much so I just got the template together and from my understanding I should make like a seperate post which I will do now.im looking forward to everyone's help!

[nykorn]

I know this thread is old but I figured I'd reply because it pops up on Google. I've been to around 5 regionally accredited colleges. WGU is actually easier than most. The reason is

1) All the info is condensed, you are reading in 5 pages what you may need to read in 50 pages at another school. In the few cases where the WGU info is not enough, usually a quick glance at Wikipedia or a Google image search fixes everything.

2) Almost all the info is (similar to trade school) almost 100% related to work life in your degree. They teach you, say, "so-and-so's philosophical theory on learning" which seems abstract and useless, but then they immediately follow it up with "if you see a kid do x, y, or z (extremely common activity) in the class, then that is this theory", which really hammers it into your brain easily.

3) The mere fact that you can go as fast as you can, helps your memory. It is actually easier for me to pass if I do a course from start to finish in one day, than if spread it out over several days, because I forget a little each day.

4) Far less homework. The average college class elsewhere has 12 or more assignments per class, and often extra stuff like group discussion or group project assignments. Most WGU courses have either 3 assignments or 1 test and 2 assignments, and no group discussions or group projects. The WGU tests are short, usually only 50 questions. And the actual WGU assignments are shorter than normal college assignments - there is usually no minimum page or word count, and most often you aren't required to write it in essay format or cite anything (you can just copy-paste the questions then answer the questions in a Q&A format), you just write enough to answer the questions then move on. This also means that you don't dread doing the assignments either, you can do 1-3 assignments between dinner and bed (depending on how many distractions are in your house).

5) WGU provides strategic memory refreshers within the course. You'll learn a concept, get examples, learn a new concept, get examples, then it will loop back and remind you of the previous concept in either the text or video.

6) A lot of people have gone to WGU so there are quizlet lists you can use, there is a "chatter" (chatbox) section for each course where previous students wrote questions about confusing stuff in the assignments or info and got responses from the instructor. I hear the Facebook and Discord groups are really active too.

7) If you need extra help you can book sessions with a mentor who will explain everything to you. This is far more help than I have ever gotten at any other university. I did have to Email a course instructor once to ask for clarification on an assignment and I got an answer within just a few minutes.

8) Their classes are catering to people who have a low vocabulary or who haven't been in school for a while. They teach you what words like "cognitive" mean instead of assuming you know it or are going to look it up in a dictionary.

As for finish speed, with everything averaged out, so far I'm finishing the equivalent of 1 CPU a day. So a 2 CPU course is finished in 2 days. My Education Master's degree is around 50 CPU. I was assigned to do a minimum of 8 CPU in my first 6 months - this means after my first week I will have pretty much already completed my minimum quota. However I don't have kids.

Depending on your state, you can just study for the GED for free online and then take a GED test, no need to actually take any courses to get credit. My coworker is doing that. Also depending on the college, you do not need a GED to get admitted - you just need to take a knowledge test on English and Math. I have a friend who got in to University of the People that way, they dropped out of jr. high and didn't have a GED, but I don't know if WGU allows that route. I would agree that you should do as much as you can on Sophia before switching to WGU, the financial risk is lower, but I personally haven't used Sophia so I don't know if their courses are more difficult or more effort than WGU's.