New here; intrigued, slightly confused and overwhelmed

[rachel83az]

Before I go off, to confirm: I would take a look at what courses on study.com, etc. are accepted for credits from TESU or WGU (I contacted them, they said it's fine as long as I can get past their admissions; for my college, I would need to get it transferred to USA equivalent and then they would take a look to see if any credits would be awarded) then I would do a count of how many courses would net me a number of credits, do all the courses and only afterwards apply for admission at TESU, WGU, etc? So I would start university with a large chunk completed? Or am I misunderstanding?

Yes, this is exactly right! Except with WGU, you must finish all available credits before you enroll. With TESU, you can enroll and keep a "running tally" of where your credits are going.

As an example for WGU, I was looking at their partners:

For Sophia courses that can be credit transferred for BS of software engineering I would start buying and doing multiple of these Sophia courses:
https://partners.wgu.edu/transfer-pathwa...instId=796

For Study.com: 
https://partners.wgu.edu/transfer-pathwa...instId=678


Some certificates:
https://partners.wgu.edu/transfer-pathwa...instId=870


So basically I would take a look at every course in the bachelor program, and then I would take a look at a 3rd party course that could be exchanged for credits later on. Then I would spend a year doing all these courses and then applying for admission for the bachelor of software engineer, etc.? Then I would just do the program mandatory courses that I cannot get from 3rd party sources?

Yep, exactly. For most WGU degrees, there are between 78-86 available credits that can be transferred from sources like SDC, Sophia, etc. It looks like the one you want has 84 credits that can be completed via alternate means. The plans on the wiki are kept up to date as much as possible, but definitely double-check with the WGU Partner site to confirm before taking anything (I see a couple of things that should probably be changed/updated; nothing major). They'll sometimes change things around without any real warning. It can be a bit frustrating for potential students. But it's still faster/cheaper to do things this way than to take 100% of your classes from WGU itself.

Start with Sophia. Then I would try the Coursera certificate that isn't covered by SDC/Sophia courses (Google UX Design Professional Certificate). Then try a month of Study.com for things not covered by certificates or Sophia (such as Computer Science 201 and Computer Science 307) This will let you decide if you want to finish with SDC courses or if you find the Coursera style to be faster/easier for you. If you like Coursera better, do those certificates instead of SDC. If you like SDC better, you can ignore Coursera.