Western Governors University Questions and Answers / Threads related to WGU

drew726

Lugz wrote: »

So essentially they just send me the text books, I read them, then take a test? Is there any outline of the class or prepared lectures by professors? In the past when I've taken online classes, there was still an agenda we had to follow, with deadlines, etc. In addition, we had a teacher just like a brick and mortar school.

Does WGU even have any professors?

The course of study will tell you exactly what to read and in what order. As far as getting help, there aren't any lectures but you can ask mentors for help. If you need someone to give you lectures though, this school probably isn't for you. You will have to be completely self-reliant to be successful in WGU. It works well with the people in these forums because most of the guys here self-study to get their certifications.

JoshD779

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

He assured me that I am ready to enroll in July, because I completed all the required steps and documents. I told him that the catch is that I do not want to enroll before I get to see my award letter, but he said I won't be able to see the award letter after all until I declare a start date and enroll officially at my Intake Interview. He also said that the financial aid will not disburse the fund until 7 to 10 days after I complete EWB. I was surprised by this.
Edit: I forgot to ask the question. Like the title said, is he for real or just trying to "scam" people into signing up impulsively?

It's true that you need a start date before you receive your finaid award letter. Funds disperse a couple of weeks after EWB, then typically within the first two weeks of each term after that. I know how you feel though. It's a major leap of faith to commit without hard confirmation of fundage. I faced it when I started too. The Finaid office confirmed that I was set to start so I just trusted in the system and went with it. Fortunately, I can assure you that there's no shady intent with WGU. I wouldn't still be a student here if WGU used scuzzy tactics. I recommend calling the financial aid office to confirm that you are on track. They have always been helpful when I've called. I'll bet you are good to go.

hiddenknight821

JoshD779 wrote: »

It's true that you need a start date before you receive your finaid award letter. Funds disperse a couple of weeks after EWB, then typically within the first two weeks of each term after that. I know how you feel though. It's a major leap of faith to commit without hard confirmation of fundage. I faced it when I started too. The Finaid office confirmed that I was set to start so I just trusted in the system and went with it. Fortunately, I can assure you that there's no shady intent with WGU. I wouldn't still be a student here if WGU used scuzzy tactics. I recommend calling the financial aid office to confirm that you are on track. They have always been helpful when I've called. I'll bet you are good to go.

Okay. I was having a hard time believing that my enrollment counselor would try to drag me into "trouble", because of how many students here have successful relationship with WGU. However, Hypntick would probably disagree with you since he said he knew how much fund he would be getting before he officially enroll. I hesitated to call WGU (didn't call FA or enrollment yet) and decide to wait until another person can verify this. If it weren't for you, then I probably wouldn't start until August, but I'm gonna stick with my original plan and take a leap in faith like you did, since I'm dying in here, and I can't wait that long. Thanks a lot for sharing, Josh. I guess I would have to go to work early tomorrow, so I can come home early to make a couple of calls before my Intake just to be sure.

CompuTron99

Has anyone from New York (state) used WGU? I'm having trouble trying to see if it's accredited with the SUNY ssytem.

hiddenknight821

Hypntick and JoshD779 - What my counselor said to me was legit as I just spoke with a Financial Aid representative about my situation. she said she can't give me the actual award letter until I officially declare a start date, but what she was able to do was to give me an estimated amount on my award letter, which was good news on my part. It looked like my FAFSA is approved. She said that the FA doesn't award students with expected disbursement amount more than a month in advance due to the fact that it doesn't make sense for them to process their paperwork when they are gonna start a few months later anyways. So the students with the approaching start date have the priority over others prospective students. I couldn't disagree with what she told me since it makes complete sense for a cheap non-profit university process paper that way. I am sure they didn't want to waste time or energy on students that just bail out on them the last minutes. They probably had several issues with students doing that in the past. I can't complain, especially when I didn't technically pay for my application fee.

JoshD779

That's great, man! The hardest part of dealing with FA is getting things all lined up at the beginning. It looks like you've got it sorted so it should be smooth sailing from here. Good luck in your program!

crypticgeek

I've scheduled my BBC1 test for Wed. I did the "enrollment" process of taking a photo and typing authentication thing okay from a windows XP VM on my OS X 10.6 machine. I tried to do the "practice" thing, but it errors out after the authentication. Can I use the proctoring software okay inside a VM? Snow leopard isn't supported apparently and I can't get bootcamp to work at the moment without doing a full OS wipe and reinstall.

Nobylspoon

CLC1 has MindEdge PDFs for each section. These seem to just be a consolidated set of notes for the section. Is this material sufficient enough for the exam or should I still read the chapters?

I took a pretest before starting and passed but it was a 76. I would like to bring my score up to the 85-95% range before scheduling the exam.

jmasterj206

Has anyone been able to get another license for VMWare? My year subscription is up and I need it again. I guess I could use Virtualbox, but I like VMWare better.

hiddenknight821

jmasterj206 wrote: »

Has anyone been able to get another license for VMWare? My year subscription is up and I need it again. I guess I could use Virtualbox, but I like VMWare better.

Try VMWare Player? I haven't tried it though. I hope it is what you are looking for.

jmasterj206

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Try VMWare Player? I haven't tried it though. I hope it is what you are looking for.

I was finally able to get ahold of someone in Learning Resources and they are setting up a new account.

techtime

I am going to be starting my MBA with a concentration in IT management July 1st and was wondering since it is pretty much exclusively papers should i get some sort of reader(kindle, ipad, tab, etc) and can these access the online resources?

veritas_libertas

techtime wrote: »

I am going to be starting my MBA with a concentration in IT management July 1st and was wondering since it is pretty much exclusively papers should i get some sort of reader(kindle, ipad, tab, etc) and can these access the online resources?

Use the search tool and look for Kindle, Nook, etc. There are quite a few threads on that topic.

Nobylspoon

techtime wrote: »

I am going to be starting my MBA with a concentration in IT management July 1st and was wondering since it is pretty much exclusively papers should i get some sort of reader(kindle, ipad, tab, etc) and can these access the online resources?

I am currently doing almost all of my studying on my Xoom. The Flash integration has a huge advantage over the iPad for interactive content like exercises and videos that are included in the study material.

petedude

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Try VMWare Player? I haven't tried it though. I hope it is what you are looking for.

The newer VMWare Player releases allow you to create images, which is quite handy. I like the newer releases a lot, except you need to keep up with updates as little bugs creep into the free VMWare product.

hiddenknight821

petedude wrote: »

The newer VMWare Player releases allow you to create images, which is quite handy. I like the newer releases a lot, except you need to keep up with updates as little bugs creep into the free VMWare product.

I was merely making a suggestion here. I was only familiar with VMWare Workstation (which is no longer offered) since we use it at school but it wasn't free. So I had no choice but to turn to VirtualBox, which was the only free VM at the time. So I never bother checking the VMWare products, since I was not heavily focused on the server administration stuff yet. Thanks for the info though. Appreciate it.

veritas_libertas

Cool find!

WGU has added a search tool that lets you look for scholarships. This is going to come in real handy for next semester!

hiddenknight821

Right now, I am very excited to start WGU, and I know tomorrow is my first day. I wonder when is the earliest they're gonna update my student portal. Midnight at my time zone or...?

nhpr

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Right now, I am very excited to start WGU, and I know tomorrow is my first day. I wonder when is the earliest they're gonna update my student portal. Midnight at my time zone or...?

You'll get an email around 9AM-ish. I had the COS for the course, so I started a bit early. There's no real advantage to starting early as the course will take you maybe three hours or so, but you won't be able to start any courses until around the fifth.

Raidersfan81

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Right now, I am very excited to start WGU, and I know tomorrow is my first day. I wonder when is the earliest they're gonna update my student portal. Midnight at my time zone or...?

I'm with you on this. I start tomorrow as well and I'm really excited to begin!

demonfurbie

good luck

hiddenknight821

briandy81 wrote: »

I'm with you on this. I start tomorrow as well and I'm really excited to begin!

Awesome! You should chime in the WGU Roll Call as well as updating your signature to keep you motivated.

jdchilders

Good luck guys- i start Aug1st.

Raidersfan81

I start the EWB2 tomorrow and what does the assessment test include or the whole course for that matter? I've read around you can knock it out in a day and it's not to hard, just wondering what some of your thoughts about it.

I keep seeing people around the net talking about another English and math assessment during the EWB2? I don't know if I'm confused or they were just confused and they are talking about the assessments you take to even get into WGU.


Thanks.

Raidersfan81

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Awesome! You should chime in the WGU Roll Call as well as updating your signature to keep you motivated.

Thanks!! I will do that and get it all updated tomorrow.

nhpr

briandy81 wrote: »

I start the EWB2 tomorrow and what does the assessment test include or the whole course for that matter? I've read around you can knock it out in a day and it's not to hard, just wondering what some of your thoughts about it.

There is no real assessment. They have a quiz at the end that you have to score 100% on. However, you have as many attempts as you want on it. I remember hating it because I got one wrong, figured out which one it was, punched in all the answers the second time, managed to click on one of the wrong answers despite knowing all the right ones, did it again, switched two of the answers by mistake, and after four times finally managed to not misclick anything.

Nobylspoon

briandy81 wrote: »

I keep seeing people around the net talking about another English and math assessment during the EWB2? I don't know if I'm confused or they were just confused and they are talking about the assessments you take to even get into WGU.

I started last month and I kept reading the same thing but I never had a second set of Math and English assessments. I think that it may have something to do with your scores from the entrance assessments.

flash23

todays my first day at wgu ewb course locked loaded

MikeinPA

Welcome to WGU flash23. I've been attending WGU for almost 2 1/2 years now. It goes by quick!

flash23

thanks I'm doing the netwowrk design management path you guys got any good tips I mainly got the cert courses keft since I got an Assoc in interdisciplinary studies