Western Governors University Questions and Answers / Threads related to WGU

Nemowolf

LordSevink wrote: »

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'm strongly leaning towards WGU, but I just want a clear understanding of what I'm getting into.

I'm quite motivated, most of what I know has been picked up by self-study, but what I lack is structure and efficiency, which sounds important in a program like this (for saving money, mostly). What I think I need is a forum or some other type of resource where I can learn about the best ways of tackling a course and "busting out" those CUs. I don't want to rush myself, but I don't want to be delayed by slow methods either.

My second question is this: I heard that someone with little college experience would have a very difficult time here. I only have six credits to my name, which were earned approx. 5 years ago. I have my A+, Network+, and I expect to get my Security+ sometime within the next few months. How do you think I'd do?

This school has nearly all good reviews, which is great (and almost unbelievable). And everyone seems to enjoy it. It seems to me that if not having teacher interaction (which seems to be lacking at most online-only schools) was that bad, students would say so.

So the admissions will cover this but your certs need to have been received within 5 years, anything older will not count for credit.

The real question about your current self-study is if you learned something to complete a task or did you become a knowledge expert. I have learned plenty in my years doing help desk but i did not ever count myself as an expert. As you will see with the material from MS, your researching a way to fix a problem or how to do something doesn't really cover the in-depth knowledge needed to really explain whats going on or to answer a vague question like they do in a cert test.

There is also no "best way to bust out CU's" it is entirely based on your ability to learn. If you REALLY understanding something, your going to learn it faster or hopefully have it be a refresher for what you already know. If you don't know anything about the course your on, then your just going to have to plug through the book and videos then maybe contact the course mentor for help with anything your still stuck or struggling with.

Only you know how well you can learn everything. For example, so far i have managed to pass all my CUs first try but i struggled with one class and had to delay it until the following term. I got the extra time with that delay to really learn the material and passed the cert exam. I am having the same problem again with JavaScript because i just don't care about web programming so its harder for me to focus and really learn. I skipped it and am working on a MS test now and its MUCH, Much easier. Half the book read in a week and I should hopefully be done reading by this weekend. Next week I plan on passing my pre-assessment and requesting access to the cert exam.

On the flip side, there are several threads here for folks who completed 40, 50, 60, 70+ CUs and graduated in a term. Individual results will vary as they say on late night TV.

eric281

I'm attempting a one term finish on a BS: IT Network Design & Management degree. I told my mentor this when I started January 1st, and I'm not sure she believed me. I was transferring in 59 CUs, and had 62 CUs left. Since then, I've completed 41 CUs, and was able to skip one of the fundamentals classes, for another 3 CUs. This leaves me with 18 CUs to finish in a little over 3 months.

My SM will only add 1 class at a time to my current term, and I feel like sometimes this slows me down when I'm ready to move on, while sometimes having to wait several days for her to approve each request.

Can anyone tell me why I shouldn't just add all of my classes to my current degree plan? I asked my mentor this a while back, and she told me something about Satisfactory Academic Progress, which really doesn't mean much to me since I am paying cash for all of my tuition. Now I'm at the point that I could add all my remaining classes and still meet the 66.67% mark for SAP if I didn't complete a single CU in the last 3 months of my term. I have my weekly call with her later, and was hoping to have some ammunition in my argument with her. Thanks!

zidian

Since you are at the point that SAP will still be met, I think she should add them. There are some rules with the school where not meeting SAP multiple terms gets you removed from the college. Also, I'm sure the mentors are judged by the overall pass percentage of their students. She was probably being cautious to ensure both of those weren't negatively impacted.

eric281

Just tried talking to her. It didn't really work as well as I hoped, but I convinced her to add the Biology and Communication classes. All I will have left after that will be Comp 2, Technical Writing, and my Capstone, which will all tie together. There are also no objective assessments left after Biology and Communication, so I hope that means I won't run into any other stopping points.

Bundiman

Technical Writing and Capstone I think my mentor told me she has to get a class mentor assigned to me. My new term doesn't start until April 1st so I don't know how long that takes.

robbcolecrabtree

I just started at the beginning of March, and I am going for the 1 term finish in Network Design and Management as well. Should be pretty simple. I transferred about 67 CUs and I have completed the Web Design and Javascript classes in 3 weeks total. I have spent the last couple days studying all the garbage in the Project+ cert. What a nightmare. After that, I have Sec+, a literature class (1 day hopefully), Organizational behavior (Another 2-3 day class), The four Windows server classes, and then the Capstone+Tech. writing. I think it is possible. I have been trying to stick to 2 weeks max for a class. That would give me plenty of time to finish up before the term ends. I am just hung up on Project+ right now. I want to test next week, but it just doesn't feel right. I feel like I am just memorizing acronyms, and there are SOOOO many of them.

stryder144

Keep your head up, robbcolecrabtree, you'll get it. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it suddenly clicked for you. I've heard that quite a bit with different tech subjects, though P+ isn't really a tech subject. I'm sure you'll do great.

markulous

So I start tomorrow but I have not been able to talk with my mentor. I switched the class around to what I wanted and then they got switched to another configuration. I am assuming that he was the one that did that, but when I emailed him he told me to just reserve a spot on his calender yet none of the times work. Do I just ignore him and take the classes I want?

maakshif

markulous wrote: »

So I start tomorrow but I have not been able to talk with my mentor. I switched the class around to what I wanted and then they got switched to another configuration. I am assuming that he was the one that did that, but when I emailed him he told me to just reserve a spot on his calender yet none of the times work. Do I just ignore him and take the classes I want?

I started March 1st and went through a similar situation. You can't actually begin the classes until you have had a couple of calls with your student mentor and they approve the classes and then you have to approve them. It ended up taking about 10 days to get all of the calls in (I had three in total) and get my schedule approved, so it was the 11th before I could actually begin doing any of the work for the classes. I was pretty upset that it went that way, but now that I've started, I'm going through things pretty quickly and really haven't thought much about losing that couple of weeks. I would also have the schedule that you want written down and then when you have your calls with him, tell him what you want to do. My mentor wasn't happy with what I had planned, but I politely told her that I had things planned out the way I did for a reason and knew my strengths and weaknesses and that either she could work with me and support my decisions since it was my schedule and I would be doing the work, or I would find someone else that would. Again, I was very polite with her about it, but keep in mind their goal is to not only see you succeed, but also to make sure you are passing your classes because that affects their "bottom line", so to speak, and reflects on evaluations of them.

As for not having times that work with your mentor's schedule, I would e-mail him some times that work for you, and he should readjust his schedule to fit yours. That is how my mentor did things with me. They pretty much work for you and should be able to adjust their schedules to meet your needs and times that fit your schedule, not the other way around.

Hope that helps you some.

EDIT - Forgot to mention too that my first student mentor call didn't actually happen until a few days after my term started too. I was kind of freaking out at the beginning about that.

markulous

maakshif wrote: »

I started March 1st and went through a similar situation. You can't actually begin the classes until you have had a couple of calls with your student mentor and they approve the classes and then you have to approve them. It ended up taking about 10 days to get all of the calls in (I had three in total) and get my schedule approved, so it was the 11th before I could actually begin doing any of the work for the classes. I was pretty upset that it went that way, but now that I've started, I'm going through things pretty quickly and really haven't thought much about losing that couple of weeks. I would also have the schedule that you want written down and then when you have your calls with him, tell him what you want to do. My mentor wasn't happy with what I had planned, but I politely told her that I had things planned out the way I did for a reason and knew my strengths and weaknesses and that either she could work with me and support my decisions since it was my schedule and I would be doing the work, or I would find someone else that would. Again, I was very polite with her about it, but keep in mind their goal is to not only see you succeed, but also to make sure you are passing your classes because that affects their "bottom line", so to speak, and reflects on evaluations of them.

As for not having times that work with your mentor's schedule, I would e-mail him some times that work for you, and he should readjust his schedule to fit yours. That is how my mentor did things with me. They pretty much work for you and should be able to adjust their schedules to meet your needs and times that fit your schedule, not the other way around.

Hope that helps you some.

EDIT - Forgot to mention too that my first student mentor call didn't actually happen until a few days after my term started too. I was kind of freaking out at the beginning about that.

Wow, thanks for the reply!

I can see this taking a while before I actually get a hold of him. I emailed him on Friday with my schedule but have not heard back. While a couple weeks is not going to make or break me, it's a little unfair that I'm paying for something and can't use it. If I don't hear back from him soon or he's for some reason unwilling to meet my schedule then I'll have to go above his head.

maakshif

markulous wrote: »

Wow, thanks for the reply!

I can see this taking a while before I actually get a hold of him. I emailed him on Friday with my schedule but have not heard back. While a couple weeks is not going to make or break me, it's a little unfair that I'm paying for something and can't use it. If I don't hear back from him soon or he's for some reason unwilling to meet my schedule then I'll have to go above his head.

I felt the exact same way when it was taking so long, especially since I had turned all my paperwork in to begin in February, but had an issue with another college that caused me to not be able to start then. It seemed to me that mentor calls and schedule approvals should have started in the middle of the month before the term started.

Good luck with everything!

Cisc0kidd

Well, I am in the same situation. I am not getting freaked, I am getting pissed. I put up with a lot of BS from the EC with idea it would change when I started. So far I am running into the exact same thing. There is nothing difficult about what we need but WGU is making it difficult. I will be calling today and if I don't get results I will be raising hell. Sorry but there is no reason for delaying students who are anxious to start.

markulous

Yeah, if the enrollment department can make a gazillion calls to us before our start date, I don't see why a mentor can't make one tiny call.

TomkoTech

Are you guys checking your WGU email for communication as well? I know there have been things sent there that haven't been sent to my main email address that I missed.

My mentor emailed me a form letter the day she was assigned and it had a link to a google doc to select a time for her to call me. I selected the 10am slot at 1015 am and she called me right up.

markulous

TomkoTech wrote: »

Are you guys checking your WGU email for communication as well? I know there have been things sent there that haven't been sent to my main email address that I missed.

My mentor emailed me a form letter the day she was assigned and it had a link to a google doc to select a time for her to call me. I selected the 10am slot at 1015 am and she called me right up.

Yes, I check that every day. He had only 3 slots open and all of them were in the middle of my work shift.

Cisc0kidd

Hi

Yes I have been checking both emails. Nothing until today. Just before I was going to call student services I got an email from my SM. It took a while to get hooked up with him but we had a great conversation! So incredibly different from the EC I had. It sounded like he was going to be very helpful in getting through classes as quickly as possible. I am so psyched!

jobes23

You guys convinced me to apply. Now to decide which IT Degree do I want.

robbcolecrabtree

When I first got started, my mentor contacted me on my first day. He emailed before to see what times worked for me and he worked into my schedule. Then he picked my first classes based on what is easiest to get a lot knocked out in the beginning to create my momentum. Now that I am finishing my third class, I have one more left in my first term, then it is onward to the extra classes. Really getting my money out of it. I only have 6 classes left after this next one. I should be able to complete in one term if I stay motivated and power through. Just sucks it is during the summer months.

Just keep working with your mentor. They are there to make sure you succeed. Mine is awesome, and after my first couple of quick passes in each class, he is confident that if I ask for a voucher for an exam, he has approved the request within hours. Even on the weekend.

jobes23, as for what degree, pick an area that truly inspires and intrigues you. I pick Network Design and Management as it was the quickest I could complete. I find I am doing some classes I really don't care for, and wish I would have some more focused classes on my interests. But I will be done really quick, so there is always a flip-side to the coin. I am a great self-study type person, and do this stuff outside of school too. I learn about new technologies for fun at work, so since I don't have all the classes I want, doesn't mean I am missing out. Pick what fits right with your interests.

markulous

My mentor got a hold of me yesterday about 5 minutes after I got off the phone with student services asking what's going on. So I'm happy now and glad I can put that part behind me.

I had another question for people enrolled or that have finished. What is the best way of taking on each class? I personally learn better studying one subject, but I'm not sure if that will hold me back at all. In theory, it seems like if I have 3 courses and do one at a time rather than altogether, I can do them 3x faster and finish them at the same time.

TomkoTech

Personally I am going to do 1 class at a time. Once I schedule the exam for that class Ill start on the next one. I don't think it will slow me down, quite the opposite I think it will allow me to focus on that one subject and complete them faster.

markulous

TomkoTech wrote: »

Personally I am going to do 1 class at a time. Once I schedule the exam for that class Ill start on the next one. I don't think it will slow me down, quite the opposite I think it will allow me to focus on that one subject and complete them faster.

That's kind of what I was thinking. My first classes are for Security+, Project+, and some Lit class. Both the certs seem to take some study time and I'm not sure if I can learn as well if I try to study both every day.

lelei

For me, I did best when I had multiple classes open at one time. If I got stuck on something, or didn't "feel" like doing a particular task when I had time to work on things, I had alternatives available and seeing other stuff come back as completed served as motivation to start the tasks I dreaded.

Danielm7

markulous wrote: »

I had another question for people enrolled or that have finished. What is the best way of taking on each class? I personally learn better studying one subject, but I'm not sure if that will hold me back at all. In theory, it seems like if I have 3 courses and do one at a time rather than altogether, I can do them 3x faster and finish them at the same time.

Everyone learns differently, for me I like focusing on one thing at a time when I'm studying. If the topics are really similar I group the classes together and do them one after another. But if my classes are like project management, linux+ and java programming, I think it would take me a lot longer if I tried to learn them all at the same time vs just buckling down and focusing on each topic separately.

jobes23

Hey guys quick question. I just finished my readiness assessments and all four have green check marks, but is there anyway to see the actual scores that I got?

ratbuddy

Nope, and it doesn't matter. You pass or fail 'em.

markulous

ratbuddy wrote: »

Nope, and it doesn't matter. You pass or fail 'em.

x2.

I even asked my enrollment adviser if I could get the scores or more info and he said no.

Clem25

I'm working on breaking into the IT field, I'm 29 and just decided to change careers. I've got a BS in Forest Resource Management, and a Minor in Business Administration. I'm about to take my A+ in a couple of weeks, and I've been looking at different programs at WGU. I have a big interest in IT Security, would you suggest I get another bachelors or look at going for the MS Sec?

Tmarsland

Hey all -

Right now I'm scheduled for a 5/1 start, but just got my transcript evaluation complete and I don't have enough relevant experience. I don't necessarily agree with that, but regardless, I'm committed to going here.

I've been told the easiest way at this point is to get a cert that transfers in and then I'll be good to go. I've also been told that CIW Web Foundations Associate is the easiest one, and I've begun studying for it.

Does anyone have any resources (study guides, practice exams, etc) OUTSIDE of WGU that I can use to study up? I've already scheduled to take the exam next week. I do have a decent amount of web design experience, so I think I can learn the rest quick and get started.

Thanks!

Tom

ratbuddy

Welcome to the forum, Tmarsland.

I just tried to google 1D0-610 study guide, and unfortunately, the top hit is a thread I made here last year when I was in the same situation as you.

Basically, it's a below-entry-level exam. Super easy for anyone with any real world webdev experience. Passing score is only 63%. Read through the published objectives on the CIW site, and brush up (in a very general fashion) on any subjects you are uneasy with. Honestly, I wouldn't even waste time with practice exams for this one, it's that easy. If you can find an old pdf or practice questions relating to 1D0-510, maybe take a look just to get an idea of what to expect. Besides that, just get it scheduled, passed, and out of the way

edit: Ugh, just went looking for study materials, and it's all garbage. For both 1D0-510 and 1D0-610, **** outnumber legit study materials 20 to 1 if not more. No wonder CIW certs are worthless, they apparently haven't updated the material or exams in years.

Tmarsland

ratbuddy,

Thanks for the reply. I looked at your old thread - you mentioned that Web Foundations doesn't transfer in? According to the site, it does. Am I missing something here?

Tom