New here; intrigued, slightly confused and overwhelmed

[LevelUP]

Before I go off, to confirm: I would take a look at what courses on study.com, etc. are accepted for credits from TESU or WGU (I contacted them, they said it's fine as long as I can get past their admissions; for my college, I would need to get it transferred to USA equivalent and then they would take a look to see if any credits would be awarded) then I would do a count of how many courses would net me a number of credits, do all the courses and only afterwards apply for admission at TESU, WGU, etc? So I would start university with a large chunk completed? Or am I misunderstanding?

Yes, this is exactly right! Except with WGU, you must finish all available credits before you enroll. With TESU, you can enroll and keep a "running tally" of where your credits are going.

As an example for WGU, I was looking at their partners:

For Sophia courses that can be credit transferred for BS of software engineering I would start buying and doing multiple of these Sophia courses:
https://partners.wgu.edu/transfer-pathwa...instId=796

For Study.com: 
https://partners.wgu.edu/transfer-pathwa...instId=678


Some certificates:
https://partners.wgu.edu/transfer-pathwa...instId=870


So basically I would take a look at every course in the bachelor program, and then I would take a look at a 3rd party course that could be exchanged for credits later on. Then I would spend a year doing all these courses and then applying for admission for the bachelor of software engineer, etc.? Then I would just do the program mandatory courses that I cannot get from 3rd party sources?

Yep, exactly. For most WGU degrees, there are between 78-86 available credits that can be transferred from sources like SDC, Sophia, etc. It looks like the one you want has 84 credits that can be completed via alternate means. The plans on the wiki are kept up to date as much as possible, but definitely double-check with the WGU Partner site to confirm before taking anything (I see a couple of things that should probably be changed/updated; nothing major). They'll sometimes change things around without any real warning. It can be a bit frustrating for potential students. But it's still faster/cheaper to do things this way than to take 100% of your classes from WGU itself.

Start with Sophia. Then I would try the Coursera certificate that isn't covered by SDC/Sophia courses (Google UX Design Professional Certificate). Then try a month of Study.com for things not covered by certificates or Sophia (such as Computer Science 201 and Computer Science 307) This will let you decide if you want to finish with SDC courses or if you find the Coursera style to be faster/easier for you. If you like Coursera better, do those certificates instead of SDC. If you like SDC better, you can ignore Coursera.

I see, perfect, thanks for the info!

Regarding the changes, I was looking at the Sophia partner page: https://partners.wgu.edu/transfer-pathwa...instId=796 and it looks like all the Sophia courses are displayed as a code ( ENG1002 (SOPH-0030), ENG1020 (SOPH-0049), or ENG1001 (SOPH-0015) ) which I can't seem to find anywhere on the  Sophia website. Study.com partner page seems to be the same but there things English 305 seem to have search results when I search for them in the study.com site which is helpful.

To be 100% sure which would be transferable, would I get links of all the courses from https://degreeforum.miraheze.org/wiki/WG...egree_Plan and then email an enrollment counselor to confirm, or would there be a faster way (for the courses I have a hard time identifying in the partner page)?

I would start with the Wiki to make your spreadsheet. Then verify that all the courses work with the WGU partners page and make your final selection of which course to take.  Use Sophia Ace Guide to translate Sophia codes to courses. (links on Wiki WGU degree plan pages)

WGU could change the requirements for each degree before you get the chance to transfer credits into WGU, so there is always the risk of that, though most likely if there are changes, there won't be much.

[jobojoe285]

Thank you everyone for the resources and help. I really appreciate it and I am very glad I found this community. Apologies for replying so late, I was out of town.

I have been thinking about all these options. As of right now I am 90% decided on WGU Software Engineering. Based on the program courses, program name (which is quite important for TN Visa from what I gather) and my overall career trajectory + experience, it feels like this may be the best option for me, however, I am also looking at TESU like how everyone advised. I am also keeping Georgetown in mind, even if I do not go with it now, I may do their program in the future just because they are ranked much higher on the "best universities" lists I've been finding. My thinking right now is to get the paper ASAP, then later on I can beef up my resume with higher level institutions, when I can afford to have free time / no deadlines.

I will be moving in the upcoming weeks so until then I will be investigating these 3 universities and figuring things out. As for whatever challenging classes will come, I will take it 1 day at a time. I can definitely do it. Even though I was not the greatest student, I never failed a class and I don't intend to start now .

I will update you on my progress later this year and at that time I can hopefully give some advice to new members. This is a very exciting (and a tiny bit scary) time for me. I can't believe I even have a chance at doing a master degree, not something I ever thought I could achieve in the past, if I am being honest. I always wanted to be a "master" at something in my life, this could (will!) come actually come true.

As a closing argument, I just want to say that I (and most likely many others like me) always have this imposter syndrome on my shoulders, even though I have knowledge and a certain type of thinking. Just need to remember I can do many things if I put my mind to it and don't give up.

Again, thank you all, I took everyone's advice quite seriously and will work to finish what I need to finish. I also very much appreciate the speedy answers. I may come back to ask some questions regarding identifying some courses, etc. but besides that, have a great day and week !

[jobojoe285]

I finally finished my WGU spreadsheet and I attached it to this message (I also attached it in a WGU category thread I made to ask some WGU related questions).

As a side note / question, how is everyone's experience with WGU in terms of career and help to find a job? My only concern would be how much it would help me to find a job. From an outside perspective, it looks like a decent school.

[LevelUP]

I finally finished my WGU spreadsheet and I attached it to this message (I also attached it in a WGU category thread I made to ask some WGU related questions).

As a side note / question, how is everyone's experience with WGU in terms of career and help to find a job? My only concern would be how much it would help me to find a job. From an outside perspective, it looks like a decent school.

WGU, in general, isn't going to help you find a job. You need to do that on your own.

[fmsoa]

I finally finished my WGU spreadsheet and I attached it to this message (I also attached it in a WGU category thread I made to ask some WGU related questions).

As a side note / question, how is everyone's experience with WGU in terms of career and help to find a job? My only concern would be how much it would help me to find a job. From an outside perspective, it looks like a decent school.

WGU, in general, isn't going to help you find a job. You need to do that on your own.

Exactly. Let's be real, if an undergrad degree is fast, cheap, and offers great career service, basic demand and supply would dictate that school must have a ~5% admissions rate, certainly not an open admission policy. And right now the market is so competitive for fresh CS grads (even w/ internship experiences) to get decent jobs, and we are talking American students

[jobojoe285]

I have been working on an essay for an english course and I have used my text on various AI content checkers, including CopyLeaks which apparently Sophia uses. I swear, I am not lying, I wrote the text myself and these checkers say it's 80%+ written by AI????

Is this a normal thing, what am I supposed to do? I feel like the only way to make sure it's not "ai content" is to write it like an absolute moron? I mean I need to pass this class...

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I finally finished my WGU spreadsheet and I attached it to this message (I also attached it in a WGU category thread I made to ask some WGU related questions).

As a side note / question, how is everyone's experience with WGU in terms of career and help to find a job? My only concern would be how much it would help me to find a job. From an outside perspective, it looks like a decent school.

WGU, in general, isn't going to help you find a job. You need to do that on your own.

I understand just because I would have a bachelor I would not be swarmed with offers (unless maybe it was some super prestigious one). I was more wondering if what people's experience was with recruiters when they mentioned WGU degrees. At the end of the day, I think if the recruiters have not heard of the school, their reaction would be pretty neutral, as in "you have a bachelor, ok good, 1 checklist from the job requirements done".

I fully understand I still need to do what I am currently doing, applying to any job that is related to my exp, etc. For what it's worth, WGU counselors told me that WGU offers some help in the job search, but they did not elaborate so who knows what that really means.

[rachel83az]

I have been working on an essay for an english course and I have used my text on various AI content checkers, including CopyLeaks which apparently Sophia uses. I swear, I am not lying, I wrote the text myself and these checkers say it's 80%+ written by AI????

Is this a normal thing, what am I supposed to do? I feel like the only way to make sure it's not "ai content" is to write it like an absolute moron? I mean I need to pass this class...

Yeah, this is (unfortunately) normal. There's no good answer on how to avoid AI detection with text you 100% wrote yourself.

[Dnightowl]

I have been working on an essay for an english course and I have used my text on various AI content checkers, including CopyLeaks which apparently Sophia uses. I swear, I am not lying, I wrote the  text myself and these checkers say it's 80%+ written by AI????

Is this a normal thing, what am I supposed to do? I feel like the only way to make sure it's not "ai content" is to write it like an absolute moron? I mean I need to pass this class...

Yeah, this is (unfortunately) normal. There's no good answer on how to avoid AI detection with text you 100% wrote yourself.

I agree. AI detection software isn't sophisticated enough to determine if someone is actually using AI. Especially, if they wrote the essay themselves. It's frustrating. The best recommendation I have is to run your essay through GPTZero or other sites and rewrite you work until it reflects mostly human writing.

[jobojoe285]

Just wanted to give everyone a super-small update. I finished 4 sophia courses, looking to finish 2 more in the next 1-2 days (well waiting for one to get graded). My goal is to finish another 7 in the next 10 days. Will it be possible? No idea, but that's my goal and I will go nuts on it!

[bjcheung77]

If those 7 don't have any touchstones, I don't see an issue with it as there most likely won't be any delays in grading...