(05-15-2019, 01:57 PM)saraholson Wrote: My roommate is doing a teaching degree thru WGU right now, and he had previously done a couple courses thru Study.com. He says that Study.com is actually higher quality course material  compared to WGU (so far). I am sure it varies class by class.

When I first started my journey, WGU would not admit me because I had zero college credits. They sent me away, saying i had to do some classes thru Straighterline first, then take a 'readiness assessment'. Well, sending me away was the best thing they ever did for me, because then I found this forum! I will add, my experience with WGU "mentors" and customer service has been BAD, bad bad. Same with my roommate. The dedicated mentor he has for his class now, often does not show up to their meetings and gives dumb excuses like 'oh i forgot' or 'oh i was running late'. She wastes his time because he is sitting there waiting around at home for their video chat.

I am enrolled at TESU and have done a combination of straighterline and study.com and sophia courses, then transferred them to TESU. My experience with TESU has been very good. I would say, if you ever need help, EMAIL them rather than call them. If you call, someone rude answers the phone, lol. But by email, everyone is super helpful and patient.

I chose TESU just so my degree would say 'university' rather than 'college'. That seems shallow but it was important to me.

I will say that when I was trying to choose a school, I spoke to Excelsior College and decided against them because they said i had to pay thousands up front (i believe it was $2000) in order to enroll as a non-traditional student (i.e. study.com and test outs). They essentially make you pay the equivalent of a residency waiver fee up FRONT, regardless of when you want to graduate. So once you pay, you are stuck with them.

I spoke to COSC and they seemed super nice and helpful, and familiar with nontraditional degree students (like us on the forum). I decided against them because, at the time, they took the actual grade from Straighterline/Study courses, rather than just a pass/fail. So if I did badly on a Straighterline course it would affect my overall GPA. I did not want to go this route because I had some bad experiences with Straighterline courses, where the final exams were worded poorly and I would miss them due to not understanding the question.  I am not sure if COSC still does this or not.

Just my personal two cents!

(05-15-2019, 01:57 PM)saraholson Wrote: I am enrolled at TESU and have done a combination of straighterline and study.com and sophia courses, then transferred them to TESU. My experience with TESU has been very good. I would say, if you ever need help, EMAIL them rather than call them. If you call, someone rude answers the phone, lol. But by email, everyone is super helpful and patient.

I will say that when I was trying to choose a school, I spoke to Excelsior College and decided against them because they said i had to pay thousands up front (i believe it was $2000) in order to enroll as a non-traditional student (i.e. study.com and test outs). They essentially make you pay the equivalent of a residency waiver fee up FRONT, regardless of when you want to graduate. So once you pay, you are stuck with them.

I spoke to COSC and they seemed super nice and helpful, and familiar with nontraditional degree students (like us on the forum). I decided against them because, at the time, they took the actual grade from Straighterline/Study courses, rather than just a pass/fail. So if I did badly on a Straighterline course it would affect my overall GPA. I did not want to go this route because I had some bad experiences with Straighterline courses, where the final exams were worded poorly and I would miss them due to not understanding the question.  I am not sure if COSC still does this or not.

1. WGU program mentors are mainly there to encourage you to keep moving forward to complete your academic progress requirements. Like any mentor, they vary in quality and mentoring style. Some are terrible or incompatible with your learning style and some are excellent. The nice thing is if you get a bad or incompatible mentor you can "fire" them and ask for another that suits you better. This is also helpful since it helps WGU know so they can find better mentors. I lucked out and got an amazing mentor at the first go, so I've been very happy so far. So don't let a bad course mentor hold you back.
   
   
2. Some of WGU's courses are older and are purchased from textbook and course developers just like the ones from Straighterline so their quality varies as well. I've heard horror stories about the poor quality of some of their older courses, but I haven't run into any terrible ones yet. Their newer courses tend to be internally developed and better suited for competency-based learning.