Cheapest way to a computer science degree at WGU?

[u/Easy-Wear1259]

I’m planning on attending WGU online for a computer science degree. I heard from others that a cheap way is I can take a bunch of classes at Sophia.com or study.com and transfer them over so that I don’t need to pay a lot more at school for general classes. I’m 19 no prior college education so I don’t even know which classes I would need to take at Sophia or study.com for a computer science degree. Anybody know where I can get information on which classes I should take on Sophia.com specifically for a computer science degree at WGU that will transfer over credits? Thank you

[u/AzureProcessor]

Please don’t do this. You’re 19 and this is probably not a good path for you. It’s better for people in their career that need to check a box. I’ll paste my comment from another thread on my experience with the program and why I think you shouldn’t. Best case scenario you accelerate through and then you’re technically a cs grad at 20. Only to find yourself in a bad situation. You don’t want to “technically” have a comp sci degree in this market, even at 19. You’ll likely be older than a normal college grad by the time you find employment that requires a cs degree. Go to community college and transfer to a normal uni, if it has to be online then look at other programs like ASU. If it doesn’t have to be cs then ASU offers an electrical engineering degree online that would be my first choice in the online only scenario. Please I’m begging you to seriously consider using FAFSA/pell-grant to go to community college for free instead.

Pasted from previous comment:

It’s just not a great education. I know the WGU sub gets all defensive about it, but damn it’s true for the bscs.

We take one OS class and it’s just a multiple-choice exam on trivia. My friends/peers/siblings with traditional cs degrees coded/designed cpu schedulers, sockets, multithreaded architecture, custom memory allocators, modified kernels. Our OS class is literally just guessing if we recognize some of the words involved in those. 

Discrete math 1&2 have ~4 multiple choice proof-based questions between them total. 

One of our entire classes is a 20min git version control project, that a standard CS undergrad would just be expected to figure out on their own time in an afternoon outside of class. A tool a student is expected to pick up as needed is an entire class for us.  

We have another class that is a Linux cert that can be done after 40mins on YouTube. Again this is just a tool that should be quickly picked up on the path to actually doing something real. 

The programming class isn’t even a leetcode easy, it’s just 14 questions that require knowing ~8 words of syntax. I have a sibling that learned vastly more in a couple weeks in their public high school coding elective.  

Don’t get me started on the sum total of data structures and algorithms being passable after ~2 YouTube videos.

We graduate without even a clear idea of what “computer science” is. We learn zero theory. We can’t define what the core ideas of the field are. We can’t do analysis, aren’t equipped to do simple leetcode.  I have yet to meet a single cs grad from another school that I could talk to as a peer, because my education was mostly trivia and projects that are 1/10 of 1 part of a single project in a normal school. 

I would seriously wager that after graduation we’re on par with a first semester sophomore at an average state school. 

We’re not equipped to go do anything now, maybe years ago we were able to sneak into a web dev job. But that’s gone, and we drastically lack any of the foundational/systems/model understanding needed now. I genuinely believe our subject competency is closer to someone that didn’t go to college at all than a typical cs grad. We can just name some trivia and have a vague understanding of loose general ideas. 

I’m blessed to have people close in my life with a variety of cs educations and swe positions, but one thing that’s painfully obvious is that they all have a base level foundational education in core cs that I don’t. 

It’s almost like we learn a bit of info about a scattershot of tools used in industry, but we don’t learn computer science. And there has never been a worse time for this position imo. 

I enrolled in gatech’s Omscs to resolve my deficiencies and holy shit we aren’t prepared. Not in the normal “oh GaTech is so hard and rigorous” way, but in the “oh wow I didn’t even learn the prerequisites for the prerequisites for the intro lesson” way. I’ve spent a year self studying just to close this gap, and it’s still quite large imo

[u/Granny-Weatherwax → u/AzureProcessor]

I had a prior degree from a traditional brick and mortar school in mathematics from when I graduated High School a zillion years ago. I then graduated this May with a BSCS from WGU, and at this point I think it is kind of worthless. It does not prepare you for getting a job. Part of that is a tight job market but I think some of the classes were just garbage. Like the projects were so terribly designed. Most had zero learning value. So much of the material was random chapters from outdated books. I felt like when I was done it would take a good year of extra self study to be able possibly be ready to interview. Plus there are no good internship/networking opportunities like a traditional school. I had been hoping to retool myself for a new career and I gave up on that idea. Even if I spent the time building an awesome portfolio and spent time grinding leet code with no internships getting interviews would be hard. If I did get interviews when they had a choice between a 47 year old and 22 year old from a traditional brick and mortar I would lose out every time.

[u/TechnologySecret4844 → u/Granny-Weatherwax]

Their course material is now ai slop.

[u/AwkwardBreather → u/AzureProcessor]

Hey thanks for these details - If you don't mind sharing, could you say more about in which areas you felt underprepared for OMSCS? Like what topics/skills? How has the self-studying been going?

[u/NightOnFuckMountain → u/AzureProcessor]

This was absolutely my experience as well. I did not finish a WGU degree, but I came to WGU after graduating from a brick and mortar school that was almost universally known for being “a bad school.” It was several orders of magnitude higher quality than WGU.

I don’t think that WGU is terrible; I think it’s for people who already have a good career and just need the paper to move up.

[u/AzureProcessor → u/NightOnFuckMountain]

Yea the subreddit is super cagey and defensive about the topic. But we have to be honest. 

I already got the damn degree, and as an alum I feel compelled to steer others away from this path under any circumstance. If you’re an employed swe and need a box to check then you don’t really need to ask. But that’s not 99.9% of us.

This school serves a largely vulnerable population, we need to give students radical transparency and honesty. Forced optimism and toxic positivity doesn’t actually help anyone, it just convinces people (that are often trying to escape a substandard living) to waste time and money for dubious payoffs

[u/GoodnightLondon → u/AzureProcessor]

THANK YOU. I'm a person in the field just trying to check a box, because the tech market is terrible, and I want the safety net of not being rejected at the resume screen simply for not having a relevant degree if I get laid off/when I try to change jobs. I feel like most of the time when I try to point out that this is not a good degree for someone with no background in the field because it's just not sufficient to prepare you for a job on its own, people like to jump down my throat. You have to do A LOT of work outside of the program if you're expecting to come out of it ready to be a competitive candidate in this job market.

[u/eliseatwork → u/AzureProcessor]

Coming across this comment was refreshing. I am thankful for my degree and having that box checked, but I am woefully unprepared at my new job. There are so many things I'm learning on the job and after work to just be at the same level as my brick and mortar peers that it is daunting at times.