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Go"Unhappy Student"
The admissions counselors were fantastic, and even quelled some of my fears that I had about doing the distance learning program. I have done various on-line classes through different colleges for credit and for continuing education, some good and some bad. I was hoping this would enable me to complete a program that I geographically wasn't able to do. The financial aid process was horrible. I have never had so much difficulty. It was partially my fault because I wanted to use my loan company and not theirs. I had to call my loan company numerous times to fax multiple copies of my paperwork, because WGU kept claiming that they had never received it- and miraculously one of four copies showed up on my e-file dated for the first fax date two weeks after it was sent. Every time I called the financial aid office, I would get a different person who would tell me I needed something different from my loan company, or no one would answer. The scholarship process, a whole different process from financial aid, was easy. I faxed a form and got a confirmation e-mail right away. I completed my intro class in less than a day. I had to wait three weeks before I was able to start my first class. My adviser had trouble with time zones, and would often forget to call me or call later/earlier than the agreed time. I ended up late for or missing meetings on multiple occasions because of this. The adviser really isn't available to do more than cheer lead you. If you're looking for more substantial information/help you can either go to message boards or pull yourself up by your boot straps and find someone/something yourself. The graders seem to be quite varied. Some would follow rubrics and others seemed to have hidden agendas/strong biases. Well researched and supported papers were graded low when it didn't agree with their point of view, or didn't quote verbatim the given text's opinions. The ability to re-write papers/assignments was kind of appreciated (at first I was just thinking I was overreacting, and didn't complain about the perceived punishment for not agreeing with the graders), and then came the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.... I had written my correction, and had given up trying to learn stuff and read additional studies- and attached the correction in addition to the previous answer in a flow form so they could see the changes that were made. I even titled the attachment "correction." They "returned" it to me saying no corrections were made, please re-do. Many of the directions were poorly written, and some were not even grammatically correct. The exercises that involved watching videos often had questions that could not be answered by watching the video, because what you were asked to describe weren't visible (what's on the tables or walls? - and you couldn't see the tables or walls- or what took place during the interaction between a and b? and no interaction took place). Some of the reviews on here say that you need to work, and you learn lots in the process. My experience was different. I committed the time necessary, completed tasks, and even did extra reading to expand on what I was learning. Most of the work at your own pace stuff is simply parroting back information from the text books, without having to obtain higher levels of learning, much of which contradicted my real life experience that was meant to help me get through the program. My high school honors classes required more thought than these "graduate level" classes. It has seemed like a complete waste of time, and I am not planning on wasting my time with the program- despite the price being right. I would also highly recommend making sure that your potential or current employer will accept your degree. Many of the potential employers I had talked to did not accept or weight degrees from on-line only establishments the same way they would a "brick and mortar school."
