A little WGU MSISA Review ....

[stretcharmy]

Just completed my first and hopefully, final pass of JIT2 risk management. I'm currently 592 in the queue for grading. YIKES! This is my last writing class for my degree, sans capstone.

[stretcharmy]

Passed the CHFI test yesterday. I will have to say that I was very disappointed by the exam. There were so many questions that you could figure out just by reading the question carefully. Some of the questions were completely obvious in their answers because the other three options were ludicrous, something I would expect to see in a kinder garden class. Because of this, I would put this exam at a level easier than Microsoft. I would say that the exam is not a very good test of ones abilities to absorb the material, and unfortunately will not use it as a gauge of skill professionally when my employees have it.

On a good note, only one class left, cryptology.

[stretcharmy]

So since I completed all of my writing courses I wanted to do a word count tally. WOW, that's a lot of writing

45,460

[JTP]

Congrats on the two certs! I'm about a third of the way through EC-Councils training, you weren't kidding these videos are terribly dry.

That's a pretty impressive word count!

Good luck with Crypto.

[stretcharmy]

Well I finished Crypto. Not my favorite subject to say the lease, personally I just don't find it interesting. The practices tests are not very indicative of the real deal and I don't think they prepare you for the test very well. I scored 87% on the last practice and I barely passed the exam. I also took the test late at night, which was also a bad idea on my part after a weekend of Halloween fun. But as with clep and DSST, a pass is a pass and I'll take it.

I have also finished up the capstone prospectus but I'm waiting on my wife to edit it for me before I submit. I'm aiming for a pass on the first try, I'm not sure how long the grading cycles will be and want to finish before OEM.

[stretcharmy]

Passed the capstone prospectus. Sweet! Wasn't' too hard at all. But its very repetitive, found my self saying the same thing in four different ways from four different perspectives (i guess thats the point). On to the written report.

[JTP]

You're really pushing through this. Keep it up!

[stretcharmy]

You're really pushing through this. Keep it up!

Thanks for the support. It's been challenging. At times the stress of WGU's poor expectation setting and feedback for some of the assignments added to my stress. If I didn't want to finish in one term it probably wouldn't be such a big deal.

[Getiton1]

Great idea! What a wonderful way to "pay it forward" I hope everyone does a little summary like this for all the Masters programs…especially at online schools. I truly think we are AHEAD of the curve. I would much rather do an online program than think about driving home… well….NOW at 10:20PM in the evening after working all day. Online is the way to go…especially for a masters degree. Many Masters programs now want you to have a few years of professional experience. I am eager to hear your feedback on this program and hope others will do the same for other majors and even other schools. Nice going making this post/thread.

I thoroughly enjoyed rebel100's review thread and it was in part a large reason as to why I decided to do my masters through WGU. So thanks rebel for that! For the benefit of others that are interested in the MS Information Security and Assurance degree I decided that I will do the same thing.

Some background
I have been in IT for almost 20 years. I didn't obtain my BS until this year. I had done well in my career without it but it was becoming too much of a limiting factor. I didn't much enjoy B&M schools due to the speed. It was just too slow for me. Online worked much better for me and since I did so well with my BS I decided to get my masters. I decided on the MSISA because security is hot and it's only going to get hotter. I have been working in the IT security field for 7+ years so I have a good background. I am set to start on Sept 1 and my intention is to complete the degree in 6 months. It's a pretty aggressive timeline but I'm hoping that my experience is solid enough to accomplish it. I became pretty adept at writing papers at TESC fortunately(unfortunately) and based on rebel's information started writing from the rubric at the start.

So that's it in a nutshell. I'll post more once I get started.

[stretcharmy]

I'm 3/4 done with the capstone report. Feeling a bit run down. 7000 words so far, I'm guessing the paper will top 10,000 when complete. Trying to stay the course and muscle through.