Purdue University Global - BA Information Technology [Review & Advice]

[walruspanda]

PUG thoughts two weeks in:

• Finished 13 credits in the first two weeks. I'm aiming for everything but the capstone this term, which would be 44 credits, so for now I'm ahead of the pace I'd need. I do have a decade of IT experience, though, so your speed may vary.
  
• I did try to see if I could take the capstone this term as well, but I was told there's a hard rule against taking the capstone first term, at least in the IT school.
  
• Transferring in certs for credit was a pain. Over half of them didn't give credit correctly initially, even though PUG is super upfront about what credit you should be getting. But with help from my great advisor Hayley, it (almost) all eventually got resolved. I've read stories from PUG students that have mediocre advisors, so I'm grateful that I didn't.
  
• Sophia credits were fine, however -- all came in the way it should have.
  
• Vast difference in difficulty between modules, even in the same class. In IN250, I finished the first two modules in a combined 90 minutes, but the third (which has essentially four parts) will take probably five hours by the time I'm done. Not really a ramp up in difficulty, just a lot more assignments.
  
• There are some parts of some courses (e.g. IT331) that are way out of date – I assume they haven't changed the modules since the Kaplan era. Others are fine and definitely have been updated recently, making references to things within the last year or two.
  
• Also there's also been a disconnect a few times between the assignment directions and the rubric – they don't ask you to do the same thing. I could have asked for clarification, but I just submitted based on the directions and have done fine so far.
  

Overall, I'm happy with my experience so far. A few hiccups, but for those who can come in with a bunch of cert credits (and don't mind writing papers/creating PowerPoints), I think it's a nice option.