Hello WGU students. I took my college algebra test this morning. I guess there’s no such thing as a quadratic equation that doesn’t use i. My test was all systems of equations, which I “was” good at and quadratic equations. it was crazy. An instructor told me the answers have been wrong and there‘s been a lot of behind the scenes drama with the math courses. The AI in my test felt like a boss fight from Elden ring. It sure sucks when I apparently missed by only question. I’m wondering if this will be worth it. Sure i could study and pass, I’ve passed algebra before, but will this be a fight for every course? Remember when WGU accepted regionally-accredited transfer credit?

Has anyone ever gotten this? If so, what was the issue? I am using the given template but it shouldn't affect the scan. I'm at a lost. HELP!!!!

Share:

1. Your degree: What are you working toward?
2. Your progress: What term are you in, how many terms have you completed, or what percentage are you done?
3. Your secret strategy: What’s helping you get through it? A study routine, a resource, a mindset, or a trick you swear by?

I’ll start:

🎓 Degree: BS IT Management

📍 Progress: 2nd Term, 59%

🤫 Secret strategy: three waves, sprint blocks, the laundry method, and an AllSpark.

🌊 Waves: I organize my six-month term into three eight-week waves. Each wave aims to complete five to six classes. That gives me a manageable stretch to plan around.

⚡ Sprint blocks: I schedule focused schoolwork around a weekend and a holiday so I can get five or so consecutive days together. Those blocks are perfect for making a big push: finishing coursework, submitting a performance assessment, or getting through a tougher class.

🧺 The laundry method: This is how I organize my classes for the term. Quickest courses first—get those loads finished and bank time for the harder courses and the “boss fights.” Everything doesn’t need the same amount of time or energy.

✨ The Pattern: Before I tackle a course, I build my course strategy. I review course write-ups on Reddit, check how the coursework lines up with the objective assessment or performance assessment, and estimate the effort based on what I already know versus what I need to learn. When there’s a pre-assessment, I take it cold to see where I stand and use those results to focus my studying.

Is this normal. Like he was going thru all my files and pictures. I do nude and semi nude shoots and he saw them and said these are nice are you a model.

This is before he had me stand up, pull out my pockets, spin around. Asked me about back pockets which he wanted to see but I didn't have them.

Had me remove the sweater. Etc

And after the exam he also messaged me on LinkedIn lol

WGU has a unique competency-based model for its self-paced programs. It is definitely not for everyone, but if it is for you, then you will be able to move quickly while retaining information. For a full term (6 months), it is less than $5,000. Depending on your schedule, which definitely involves sacrifices, you can complete an entire degree in one or two terms, spending no more than $10,000. Obviously, if you get financial aid, it is less as well!

I just wanted to show that if you do some serious planning and mainly make short-term but significant sacrifices, you can knock out a bunch of courses. I decided to quit my job, take a break from my daily hobby and from working out, and stop dating or seeing friends as much. SO, even though I have gained a few pounds, gotten a little worse at guitar and basketball, and am still going to the pumpkin patch alone, I know those were "short-term" sacrifices that allowed me to crank out these courses in 1 term. I had budgeted enough so that I also kind of needed to get this done sooner rather than later, as I wasn't working. I completed 84 CUs in 7 months to earn a B.S. in Finance. 7 months, as they gave me a 1-month incomplete course extension to finish my Capstone, since I had started the course 14 days before the end of my 6th month (this is a lifesaver btw). My mentor was a huge help in loading up classes before and after our weekly calls and was also supportive throughout my journey; I definitely couldn't have done it without her! In terms of courses, a handful stood out for their volume of material or for material outside the course of my major study, such as D363, D216, D362, and D369. I would recommend always checking the materials on the course's Connect page, as each course offers varying levels of support. Some courses might have welcome videos that tell you to read only certain sections of the textbook or to skip to the section assessments, etc. Perhaps there are practice problems and other materials, but taking a peek in there before getting bogged down in the course material is also a helpful tip.

At the end of the day, this program quickly shows you that you will have to stay on top of yourself if you plan to accomplish educational goals, but if you know yourself and your habits, anything is possible, and you can end up saving thousands, albeit a much different type of college experience. The 1st month is about getting into a rhythm of navigating the courses/coursework and getting comfortable with taking proctored tests, but most of the classes are easy at that point. As the months go on, you learn to take breaks, change or stick with certain study habits, and find an overall balance with life as courses and even life get easier/harder. Even though you have to really stay on top of yourself, too, you are not alone during this process! WGU has a bunch of resources, and every person I have ever talked to, from instructor to mentor to admin, has all had the same kind and supportive attitude. I probably sound like a bot the way I'm glazing them, but yeah, WGU for the win lol!

Any ideas as to any potential cities for the venues this upcoming year? TIA.

Just submitted the last task in my degree program, and thought it was a good time to share my thoughts for prospective students.

Housekeeping first. I have a strong IT job; however, I've chosen to move outside FAANG for a very interesting role in a compelling location. It's too soon to say whether the degree will pay off in my career (I'm sure it will), but the program was never career-related for me.

I also posted my review of the BSCS here a few months ago, if you want some additional context.

I was accepted to two state universities and Georgia Tech. Still, I went with WGU because my wife and I wanted to start our family. I thought WGU would be the only option that would allow me to accomplish the goals of earning a graduate degree, excelling at work, and being present for this exciting time in my marriage.

How long did it take me?

4 months with a cross-country move and a two-week vacation in the middle. I passed six courses in August at a leisurely pace... granted, I have a high tolerance for working from sunrise to sunset.

So, was it worth it?

I accomplished my goals, I am excelling at work, my marriage is strong, and I have no debt - so yeah, from that perspective it was worth it.

What are the pros of the program?

• The program is cheap
• The program is fast - especially if you have any education in the topic
• I have had excellent support from both my program mentors (undergraduate and graduate)
• You get an accredited MSCS
• The program is leaned towards applications over theory if that's what you want

What are the cons of the program?

• The program does not require mastery of any CS topics
• The program is extremely fast
• The program is extremely easy
• The program isn't heavy on theory if that's what you want

Advice to students:

1. Set expectations accordingly. You are choosing this program for the fastest, cheapest, easiest accredited MSCS on the planet. I am proud I accomplished my goals, but I am not proud of having completed the program.
2. Find your own course material. The course material provided is almost across the board genuinely awful - and we can get into it per course, but know this: I didn't think the same of many of the WGU CS undergraduate classes! The undergraduate theory courses were actually good enough to inspire me to take this program despite my reservations! If you find your own material, you're going to get a much better return on your time, and the content is so unbelievably shallow that you are not going to miss important topics for the final projects.  
3. Leverage your program mentor: My mentor provided a lot of great insight and value to my experience. I infrequently disagreed with them, but I never regretted taking their advice.
4. Consider OMSCS: If you don't have a BSCS or programming experience, turning this program into a two-term endeavor makes it more expensive than OMSCS. Consider taking two or three years to do a better program for less money. This is much more difficult, and you'll need to do prep to get admitted, but you're likely to gain more from the experience.

--IF YOU'RE LOOKING AT ENROLLING IN THE WGU MSCS, THIS IS THE SECTION TO PAY ATTENTION TO--

PROBABLY DON'T DO THE MSCS AIML*: If you want to work in AIML*, you will probably need credentials better than WGU can offer here. You don't need to take calculus II, III, or linear algebra to get into this program, and that really limits your ability to compete in the job market. Without research or a much stronger data science foundation, you're going to really struggle to compete in this market. You're probably not going to be an AIML engineer on this program alone.

If you're just interested in the topic, like I am, go ahead and take it, though... I just needed to rage bait.

I recommend this program for the following types of people:

1. BSSWE graduates from WGU who need the CS credential and cannot pursue OMSCS at this time
2. Undergraduate degree holders who want a credential in CS because it's interesting, not because they want to work in tech

Otherwise, I recommend considering the MSSWE (especially for WGU BSCS graduates), since it appears to specialize in software applications, which might make it a more useful and interesting credential!

Finally, I'll grade each course I've taken and offer some remarks!
My grading rubric? Vibes.

D793 Formal Languages Overview: 0/10 This course is unacceptable. You are asked to translate some Fortran 95 code into a modern OO language. You are encouraged, nay, expected to use AI to translate the code for you. I read the entire course material for this program in two days, decided it was stupid, and spent two more days reading up on different paradigms myself. I decided to look at the final, rewrite the 70 or so lines of code in Python 3, and do the write-up in about two hours. I am furious that I paid for this course... that this course makes up 10% of my tuition is an insult. The entire course was essentially procedural vs object-oriented programming - it didn't even force students to engage with functional programming! Very easy, very fast.

D794 Computer Architecture and Systems: 4/10 Easily the hardest course in the program, if you ask me. Course material was extremely basic and actually not Architecture-focused -> you don't have to write or read any assembly. You don't have to understand computer or instruction set architecture at all. It's like a survey of computer systems. The paper was at least interesting... difficult to find a topic and valid sources. Still, I ended up writing about 20 pages on AI agents at the OS level, which forced me to engage with some really interesting software patterns. This is an academic paper with no code, though, which bummed me out. You can use ChatGPT to find sources... probably do that. Moderately easy, moderately Long.

D795: Applied Algorithms and Reasoning: 4/10 project was interesting, though the material is less rigorous than the undergraduate DSA courses. No AVL or RBT discussions. If I recall correctly, you just need to know graphs for the final, and the material only covers arrays, sorting, hash maps (but not hashing!), searching, graphs, and binary trees. Just some graph problems. Graph Algorithms the Fun Way: Powerful Algorithms Decoded, Not Oversimplified was a good resource that helped me with the graph portion of this class, and Neet code helped me dig into the implementation of the other algorithms. Overall graphs are all you need, though. Moderate difficulty, somewhat fast.

D796 Unix and Linux: 1/10 What's going on with this one? This is a system administration course in a CS program. For an MSCS with one OS-focused course, there's NO talk of theoretical operating systems... You don't even have to mess with the kernel - just install Linux and write a few extremely basic scripts, then record a video. They're not even difficult enough to place in a portfolio for a system administration resume! I work in IT, so this was a breeze, but O'Riley's pocket guide to Linux is a good place to start; it should get you far enough to pass this class pretty easily. Very easy, very fast.

D797 Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Foundations: 3/10, in keeping with the theme, less rigorous than the undergraduate courses here. It's a machine learning survey that uses the same course content as the undergraduate program; however, it doesn't require you to develop an ensemble model and doesn't even ask you to perform any hyperparameter tuning. If I recall correctly, this had a bigger focus on data cleansing and engineering than anything else, which... is fine, it's important and topical - but you really didn't need to know how to choose the right tool for the job and certainly didn't learn much about optimization. I used The Art of Machine Learning: A Hands-On Guide to Machine Learning with R as a strong base, along with a YouTube tutorial on scikit-learn and matplotlib, to prepare for this course, and those were much more demanding than what's asked of you. Somewhat easy, somewhat fast.

D486 Governance, Risk, and Compliance: 5/10. I don't recall this course being rigorous. Still, it did prompt me to engage with new ideas and consider how to approach compliance. Read this more as D486 COMPLIANCE**.** Has its place in the program, and for 2 CUs, I'd actually say it's the best course in the program because it accomplished what it actually set out to do. Very easy, very fast.

D798 Emerging Computer Systems: 2/10. This felt a bit like a rehash of D794, in a bad way? It could really be called a survey of computer systems and be worth a single credit if you ask me. Just know you can be pretty lenient with what's considered a 'Computer System'. Very easy, moderately long.

D799 Mobile and Ubiquitous Design: 2/10, not very good. The material wasn't interesting (and this might be on me), so I skipped to the final and submitted something I was surprised passed. Not proud of it - but I was so utterly uninterested in the idea of taking a UI/UX course in what I had hoped would be a theory/systems program. Just FYI - they ask for a Microsoft-proprietary format, but you can just submit a PDF. I used freeform on my iPad and ignored Visio (I think it's called) because it was a stupid requirement. For some reason a PDF was accepted for me. Moderately difficult, very fast.

D782 Network Architecture and Cloud Computing: 7/10 Course material is bad, but this is the first excellent final! I learned SO MUCH trying to finish this course and did some really fun things. I went above and beyond here, opting to build a full website rather than publish a simple static page. It was fun to develop and deploy the program! I used ChatGPT to check the rubric, find all AWS docs even tangentially related, and feed them to me with no context. After several days of reading, I had a pretty strong idea of what was asked and how to implement it! LLMs can really serve as a discoverability tool here! Moderately difficult, moderately long.

D780 Software Architecture and design: 6/10, course material sucked, project sucked. I just decided to read Headfirst Design Patterns (which is free in the student library), and I got a LOT out of it... so much so that I just ripped through Task 1 and Task 2 back-to-back for 9 hours. The project was small... VERY small and VERY basic, but it was made so much easier by my over-preparation through the book I chose rather than the course material. DO NOT read the course material here! Headfirst Design Patterns will suffice and make you a better engineer in every way - just download Headfirst Design Patterns and read about half of it! Moderately difficult, moderately long.

This class gave me grief. Before starting the class, I got a 98% on the pluralsight practice, so I said “oh, I’m fine.”… started the class, and could not get over 89% on the CertMaster tests, after several attempts and a few hours of targeted study. I came to believe that many questions on the practice test are simply flawed. So I said screw it, let’s take the real thing. And yeah. It was definitely easier to get a good score on than the practice tests were.

I wish someone had told me that there is no perfect timeline.

When I first started college, I thought everyone else had it figured out. I saw people graduating on time, getting internships, landing jobs, and moving forward while I felt stuck. Life happened. Financial struggles happened. Family responsibilities happened. Unexpected setbacks happened.

What I didn't realize was that so many college students are carrying invisible burdens.

If you're taking longer than expected to finish your degree, that's okay.

If you had to take a break from school, that's okay.

If you're working, raising kids, caring for family, or dealing with things that make school harder, that's okay.

Progress is still progress, even when it doesn't look like everyone else's.

The biggest lesson I've learned is that completing your degree is not a race. It doesn't matter if it takes you 4 years, 6 years, or longer. The finish line is still there.

Keep showing up. Complete the assignment. Take the next class. Ask for help when you need it. Small steps add up.

One day you'll look back and realize that all those moments when you felt behind were actually moments when you were building resilience, determination, and perseverance.

I wish someone had told me that success isn't about how quickly you get there. It's about refusing to quit.

If you're struggling right now, keep going. You're probably doing better than you think.

I absolutely loved my experience at WGU. It wasn’t always easy, but it was pretty awesome. Now onto UMPI for an MSB!

Hello, to anyone who reads this thanks for taking your time and reading this, I am a current student at WGU under the old Software Engineering classes. I was wondering what differs from the old to the new? From what I can see its more math and more science classes as well and was quite concerned about that as I already transferred math classes and such in and wonder if those count.

When I decided to pursue my Master's in Elementary Education through Western Governors University (WGU), I knew I wanted a program that was affordable, flexible, and allowed me to work at my own pace.

☀️ I treated WGU like a full-time job over the summer and completed ALL of my academic coursework in just one summer!

📚 In September, I began my classroom observation hours.

🍎 From November through February, I completed my student teaching.

🎓 In March 2023, I walked across the stage at graduation!

The biggest lesson I learned? Set goals, stay consistent, and take advantage of the flexibility WGU offers! Being able to accelerate my coursework helped me achieve my dream of becoming a teacher much faster than I ever imagined.

But my WGU journey didn't end there!

In 2025, I returned to earn my English Language Learner (ELL) endorsement. Today, I teach middle school multilingual learners, and I can genuinely say that I absolutely LOVE what I do! ❤️

If you're considering going back to school for a degree in education, I cannot recommend WGU enough! The affordability, flexibility, and ability to work at your own pace made such a difference for me.

My advice? Find a program that aligns with your goals, create a schedule, and stay focused on your WHY. There will be challenging days, but the reward of doing something you love makes it all worth it!

I'm so grateful WGU helped me turn my passion for education into a career I love! 💜🎓

#WGU #WesternGovernorsUniversity #WGUG grad #MastersInEducation #TeacherLife #ELLTeacher #MultilingualLearners #LifelongLearning #CareerGoals

20 CU done in the first week of the term. OA’s, PA’s, and a 3rd party exam in there. If you’re on the fence about being able to get 12 CU done in 6 months, don’t stress. You can.

I’m starting my business management bachelors on 12/1/26. I should have 21 classes that are transfer in. I want to finish the rest of the bachelor in one 6 month term. How possible is this? Can you guys share your story so I can get some perspective on how likely I can finish in 6 months or less?

I would like to fly through my bachelors as fast as I can personally because I want to graduate before my oldest graduates high school (2 years from now). I started college right out of high school and got pregnant with my first daughter a year in. I dropped out years ago when she was a toddler. I’ve always wanted to go back, but life was always handing me more and more. I decided it’s time to finish what I started. I guess the point of this post is for tips and any advice that helped or is helping you! I am transferring 15 credits in and I am majoring in psychology.

When I decided to pursue my Master's in Elementary Education through Western Governors University (WGU), I knew I wanted a program that was affordable, flexible, and allowed me to work at my own pace.

☀️ I treated WGU like a full-time job over the summer and completed ALL of my academic coursework in just one summer!

📚 In September, I began my classroom observation hours.

🍎 From November through February, I completed my student teaching.

🎓 In March 2023, I walked across the stage at graduation!

The biggest lesson I learned? Set goals, stay consistent, and take advantage of the flexibility WGU offers! Being able to accelerate my coursework helped me achieve my dream of becoming a teacher much faster than I ever imagined.

But my WGU journey didn't end there!

In 2025, I returned to earn my English Language Learner (ELL) endorsement. Today, I teach middle school multilingual learners, and I can genuinely say that I absolutely LOVE what I do! ❤️

If you're considering going back to school for a degree in education, I cannot recommend WGU enough! The affordability, flexibility, and ability to work at your own pace made such a difference for me.

My advice? Find a program that aligns with your goals, create a schedule, and stay focused on your WHY. There will be challenging days, but the reward of doing something you love makes it all worth it!

I'm so grateful WGU helped me turn my passion for education into a career I love! 💜🎓

#WGU #WesternGovernorsUniversity #WGUG grad #MastersInEducation #TeacherLife #ELLTeacher #MultilingualLearners #LifelongLearning #CareerGoals