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Go"Not for the ill of heart"
When I was looking at colleges, I had a hard time even finding a college to go to. It was not due to myself lacking motivation or intelligence. I was a single mother with a job in surgery. Most people working in a hospital knows what its like working rotating schedules. I worked in a military treatment facility and it was hard finding coverage for me to go to finals at a brick and mortar college. Western Governors were not really well known but their tuition was cheap. Upon talking to the counselor, I was pleased with their format being competency based. What does that mean? No required discussion boards twice a week, homework, papers, exams, etc. You have to display competency by actually doing what you would need to do in a real world scenarios. I know that sounds cheesy and maybe force fed but my second and third classes blew me out of water. I had taken classes before but it was basically trivia based (read the book & answer the questions in the exams/homework). I did not expect having to apply what I learned to practice. So here's what to expect: Each student is given a student mentor. Your mentor helps you pick your classes, open up your learning resources, if you need to develop a learning plan, etc. Student mentors are quite useful. If you don't utilize them, then it is on you if you don't succeed. This is not their standpoint. Just mine. I made the mistake of not utilizing my student mentor for months. Finally after feeling stuck for several weeks on a subject, I called my mentor up. She helped me build a formal training plan, contacted a course mentor to help me, and when my computer went kaput, she even helped put in a request for a loaner laptop until mines got fixed (I cancelled it bc I had someone fix it for me). Course mentors are as well. A lot of times I did my classes without help from course mentors because I lived in Hawaii time zone so I did not think I would be able to make it to conference calls and sessions. I found that if I notified my course mentor, they would set time aside for me (at a convenient time for me) to help me break down information in layman's terms. Extremely useful. Also they can send you links to the recordings or get on whiteboard with you. Online library is fantastic. I thought every college was like WGU with a good library. Turns out I was wrong. Upon talking to some coworkers who were in college, their libraries did not have the vast amount of content that WGU had. Course of Study (COS) is your road map for success in your class. It tells you what to study. Many a person reads on their own without paying attention and having to re-do their papers over and over again. Did I mention that the online library and e-textbooks for your classes are covered under your learning resource fees? If you think $145 is too much for a six-month term, look at textbooks and how much they cost. You can end up paying way more per semester if you did not have this option. Also, pay attention to your rubrics for your papers. Flat rate tuition is amazing. A little less than $3000 per six-month semester + $145 learning resource fee, the school is a steal. Your proctored testing is paid for each class. So if you take 10 classes and need 10 proctored exams in the semester, you are saving over $60/test. This is great for the I.T. majors too because it covers your Comptia, Microsoft, Cisco, etc. certification exams. If you are on a military base, the education center is available for you to take your exams at. Otherwise, a Pearson or Prometric center is available. If you want to take the exam at home, they will send you a camera to do online proctored testing. The only bad thing I can say about WGU is that I wish there were more programs to take. However, I am aware that WGU is working on adding more bachelors and masters programs.
