Student Experiences at Western Governors University (WGU)

cablegod

earweed wrote: »

Congrats on being so close.
This term ends for me Aug 31st and I'll then have 1 term left. I take 70-642 next week then I'm going to try to do the 70-643 before this term ends (2 months should be enough) which will leave me with only the 70-647 and TWA1 and CPW3 for my final term.

Funny, I talked with my mentor this evening. I am not studying for CLC1 at all, it's friggin common sense that any "normal" person can pass, just booked the exam for 2 weeks out. I added TWA1, and the Capstone to this term. My term ends July 31, so I will be finishing by then since I am not wasting any time on CLC1. I'm starting on Technical Writing right now, taking the CLC1 exam in 2 weeks, and proceeding to work on the capstone, which I think will be easily doable by the end of next month.

Then taking the rest of the year off for some much needed R&R, and starting back on the MBA:IT Management in January.

SephStorm

hmm. Whats up with the cisco emphasis on BSITS? Defiantly a good idea to have a CCNA, but I have never seen a market for CCNA:S.

Now the Associate exam aside, I am seeing good things about the CIW exams. Wouldn't it be a good idea to add say the CIW Security Essentials and/or CIW Professional (1DO-470 exam) cert to the BSITS, and leave the Security+ and CIW Security Analyst to the MSIA program.

This has an additional benefit to MSIA students. Students take the Ethical Hacking and Countermeasures class as part of the degree program, which I believe is the nice name for the CEH. CEH is one of the exams used to award the CIW Security Analyst certification. In addition, the CIW Associate they will have gotten before they can take 1DO-470 will take a year off of the ISC2 CISSP requirements.

asurania

Passed my Security+ exam today .

Can't wait to start my BSIT: Network Design and Managment on July 1st. Hope to finish the 8 courses pretty quickly(39 credits), so i can start my masters with WGU in Jan.

Survey: Who is starting on July 1st in here?

tomahawkeer

asurania wrote: »

Passed my Security+ exam today .

Can't wait to start my BSIT: Network Design and Managment on July 1st. Hope to finish the 8 courses pretty quickly(39 credits), so i can start my masters with WGU in Jan.

Survey: Who is starting on July 1st in here?

I will be. Same emphasis as you as well.

thenjduke

tomahawkeer wrote: »

I will be. Same emphasis as you as well.

I am as well and same course. I will have alot of my IT courses done and alot of the general educations as well.

dennis1960

Hey everyone,
I talked to WGU yesterday about enrolling into their university. Thought about the decision long and hard and decided that the BS would be more beneficial in the long run than just updating my certs. Taking the BSIT-Sec route. Scheduled some time Saturday to take the Readiness Assessment test. Need to bone up on my math and essay skills since its been 10 years or more since I went to college.
I do want to say that the opinions I found on these forums and especially this thread convinced me that this is the right path for me and my future in IT. To all of you that have posted your thoughts and experiences I want to say thank you. I hope my experiences are as rewarding and fruitful as yours have been.

nate2

Can one of you please refer me to WGU so I can save on the application fee money? Thanks! I'm new and the PM isn't working right now so you can email me: moderated

cablegod

nate2 wrote: »

Can one of you please refer me to WGU so I can save on the application fee money? Thanks! I'm new and the PM isn't working right now so you can email me: moderated

Sent you the info a minute ago. If you need anything else, let me know.

mikej412

Rather than POSTING YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS, set your profile to receive emails from members -- then members can click on your user name in your post and select the Send Email option. Emails will be sent to your TE Registration email address. And for the people replying, the message will be forwarded to that user with your TE Registration email address.



Edit your user Control Panel (User CP menu option at the top)


Go to the Setting & Options section along the left side & select Edit Options


In the Messaging & Notification part of the page go to the Receive Email section and CHECK Receive Email from Other Members options.

azjag

earweed wrote: »

Go to the WGU Community and see what my opinion of Exam Farce is. It ain't pretty. Most students that have posted on the community over there aren't against having something like that required but would like something of better quality. I'm doing the examfarce for 70-642 now and I have never seen such a useless collection of questions. They go from ridiculously easy to the really obscure and don't touch much in between.

I guess I lucked out with my mentor. When I started back in Jan 09 he had a requirement of 90% passing on examforce before he would approve the voucher. I explained to him that the examforce practice tests are not an accurate representation of knowledge, skills or abilities for a course of study. He relented and I never had to use examforce.

Now here's to hoping my mentor for the masters program is the same way, or they use a different practice assessment.

earweed

I've been trying to get them to switch to something else. Examforce has had a few halfway decent practice tests (Net+, Sec+, and according to veritas 70-680 wasn't bad) but a lot of them are just awful. The JavaScript I thought was oversimplified until I saw the test and realized the test was pretty simple with a few curves thrown in. If it weren't for all the mistakes in the Javascript test it would have been good. For the MS tests I've had so far examforce is definitely not good.
Examforce is the only proof WGU has that students actually perform ANY work so until they get something better I still go through it and turn in my history to my mentor. U-certify for the 83-640 was a more realistic practice exam, as was the practice tests included with the Labsim/testout I purchased.
If anything I would like to see WGU use a more stringent means of showing that students were performing such as doing the entire Labsim course and WGU having a way to check that the courses were being done. Since WGU already has good relations with Labsim then I'm sure they could get a good deal on the volume that would be used.
Right now our choices that WGU provides is examforce and the skillsoft modules which, quite frankly, are better than exam force.

themagicone

I would be against having to be forced to complete something in order to pass a class at WGU. As long as I pass the proctored exam, it should be enough to declare you know your stuff in a certain subject. Having to show completion in some courses would mean for some having to do a lot more work - some people are able to pass the pre assessment right off the bat and should be able to take the final right away. Just my opinion.

earweed

I agree that some people may have either the experience or just be more dedicated self learners but if you have looked in the Client/server community over there they have a lot of people who are doing really poorly on exams (70-680 especially) and some of those students probably need something more to get them through.Just my opinion, of course.

petedude

themagicone wrote: »

I would be against having to be forced to complete something in order to pass a class at WGU. As long as I pass the proctored exam, it should be enough to declare you know your stuff in a certain subject. Having to show completion in some courses would mean for some having to do a lot more work - some people are able to pass the pre assessment right off the bat and should be able to take the final right away. Just my opinion.

I would like things to be that simple,too-- after all, you can get college credits for sitting CLEP exams. However, given WGU's model and how hands-off it is, I think the accreditors would expect a certain amount of work as part of completing the program.

asurania

i used preplogic practice exam, but what really helped was the free technet virtual labs on windows 7

earweed

The labs are at Windows 7 Virtual Labs but you've probably seen these via claymoores list of resources. Preplogic practice exams are at www.preplogic.com but asurina is the first person I've noticed to have used them for the 680. I haven't seen any feedback on them from anyone else.

asurania

i jus tested the preplogic practice test it was okay ....personally ....selftestsoftware is way better in quality...but for windows 7 it doesn't really matter....

but yea the virtual labs on technet...(the hard question)
do those...and you good to go for the exam

but yea for the MCTS: Server 2008 active directory exam - definatly selftestsoftware practice exam with virtual lab and you pretty much learn everything you need to know for exam

asurania

dam one more week till my start date....

Hope to have my SCOM/SCCM mcsts exam done before i start


Any canadians in WGU...seems like I am the only one....

earweed

asurania wrote: »

dam one more week till my start date....

Hope to have my SCOM/SCCM mcsts exam done before i start


Any canadians in WGU...seems like I am the only one....

I'm sure there are other Canadians going to WGU. Be sure to sign in at the Tech Exams Roll call thread in the IT Program Community after you start.
From the looks of the certs you have already you'll be knocking out that CIW Foundations class (WFV1) really quick. I was surprised when I first found out that MCITP:EA wouldn't knock out that class. Most of the recent enrolles here have been surprised at the broad areas that exam covered but have passed it easily.

Hyper-Me

VMware has IT academy ventures where schools partner with VMware and can use VMware software in class AND teach the classes without requiring the students to pay the 3 grand.

Unfortuantely most of the schools simply join the partnership for the free software and don't ever make classes out of it.

themagicone

I'm currently taking the foundations class. My exam is Thursday. I started studying on the 1st of June and currently I'm getting between 77 and 85% on the practice test from V Campus. I got 96% on exam force but that thing covers nothing that is on the test. It kept asking me about LDAP and x.500, etc. I've taken 10 practice exams from V Campus and haven't been asked any of that.

petedude

themagicone wrote: »

I'm currently taking the foundations class. My exam is Thursday. I started studying on the 1st of June and currently I'm getting between 77 and 85% on the practice test from V Campus. I got 96% on exam force but that thing covers nothing that is on the test. It kept asking me about LDAP and x.500, etc. I've taken 10 practice exams from V Campus and haven't been asked any of that.

Sounds like you're ready to me.

veritas_libertas

petedude wrote: »

Sounds like you're ready to me.

I agree, it's not that bad.

earweed

I got the 70-642 out of the way. 25 CU's left to graduate. I only have BHV1, BIV1, Technical Writing, and the Capstone Project left. I have over 2 months left in this term and I'm going to try to tackle BHV1 (70-643) either before this term ends or the beginning of next term. If I can get ready for the test in a month I'll do it this term as I would hate to fail the exam and not have sufficient time to prepare and retake it before the term ends and mess up my SAP so I'll probably just take the 70-643 at the beginning of September.
I have noticed one big improvement since the switch to gmail. This is the first time ever I haven't had any problem in attaching my score report when I had to send it to WGU.

themagicone

Passed IT I today!!! I got 87% on it. My very first IT Cert, many more to go. I was sooo worried going in - I thought the pass rate was 75% like the practice tests. Was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.

colemic

themagicone wrote: »

Passed IT I today!!! I got 87% on it. My very first IT Cert, many more to go. I was sooo worried going in - I thought the pass rate was 75% like the practice tests. Was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.

Congrats!

JoshD779

themagicone wrote: »

Passed IT I today!!! I got 87% on it. My very first IT Cert, many more to go. I was sooo worried going in - I thought the pass rate was 75% like the practice tests. Was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.

Congratulations! I'm a complete IT newb and that is also my first and thus far only cert. I also thought that the test was a bit easier than I'd expected, but I also studied like mad for that test. Feels good, donit?

themagicone

I have to ask... Do all testing centers turn their refresh rates way way down just to bug the people who can see screen flicker? It drives me nuts and I've been to 3 different places now. The first place was Sylvan and they must of had it at like 45hz, I had a massive headache after that one. Yesterday at a prometric site it was better but still must of only been like 50-55hz. It's very annoying to stair at that for a hour. I'm used to my LCD, but most test centers I've been to have CRT's - may be that's it? I dunno it sucks.

veritas_libertas

themagicone wrote: »

I have to ask... Do all testing centers turn their refresh rates way way down just to bug the people who can see screen flicker? It drives me nuts and I've been to 3 different places now. The first place was Sylvan and they must of had it at like 45hz, I had a massive headache after that one. Yesterday at a prometric site it was better but still must of only been like 50-55hz. It's very annoying to stair at that for a hour. I'm used to my LCD, but most test centers I've been to have CRT's - may be that's it? I dunno it sucks.

Drives me crazy as well. It really hurts to stare at it.

earweed

Agreed. I drive over an hour to a different test center just because of this issue, all the testing centers closer still use CRTs and have the flicker. The testing center I use keeps more up to date and has LCD flat screens.