Do you have to be super smart to finish WGU? What can you do to eliminate any doubts

[whiverem]

At other colleges professors do do this (I would say vast majority of them at brick and mortar colleges) I've noticed but I was wondering how it is with WGU. Response to one of my previous threads hinted that this might be the way it is but I wanted to make sure.

Graduation rate for WGU seems kind of high for an online school at over 50%. It's hard for me to buy that so many people are graduating because they know everything perfectly. There has to be some empathy from the people teaching I think.

At the brick and mortar schools I went to a lot of kids didn't know anything a lot of times and were just passed.

[whiverem]

How quickly have people managed to finish the Information Technology, Software Engineering, or Computer Science major, while working full time? Maybe not remotely at a demanding job or maybe remotely?

[rachel83az]

WGU has a lot of exams and very little teacher-student interaction. They won't know you're "working hard" unless you pass the exam. So, no, WGU is not an easy university. It simply happens to be the type of university experience that most students don't sign up for unless they're relatively sure that they'll be able to graduate.

[rachel83az]

There is no good answer to this. With a lot of experience and transferred credits, some students are able to graduate in as few as four or five months. Without experience and/or with few transferred credits, you're looking at 2-3 years minimum.

[whiverem]

There is no good answer to this. With a lot of experience and transferred credits, some students are able to graduate in as few as four or five months. Without experience and/or with few transferred credits, you're looking at 2-3 years minimum.

There are YouTubers and posts on the internet saying people have graduated from start to finish in 6 months or one term. And if you type WGU 6 months into Google a lot of pages related to it show up.

Is 6 months not realistic for most people do you think? Like people working full time or maybe not and just devoting all their time to WGU?

[rachel83az]

Six months is for students who have min-maxed their transfer credit into WGU. You need to come as close to the 90 transfer credit limit as WGU allows you for your degree (each degree has an optimal theoretical maximum transfer limit; some as low as 70 credits, others are 81-84 credits). If you don't already have industry experience, you're going to want to do significant pre-studying. You're also going to need to devote most of your free time to studying for and passing the exams while you're actively in WGU. You need to join the unofficial Discord/Facebook/Reddit groups so you can plan your optimal WGU path.

A 6 month timeframe isn't that unusual, but neither is 8, 10, 12 months. I think WGU has a published average of about two and a half years. There are too many variables to give a definitive answer.

[Pats20]

Took me 30 months with no professional experience, very little transfer credit ( I think 12 credits ), while working 50 hours per week, a house and family.

Forget it. Sorry. I didn’t see this was the WGU board.

[bjcheung77]

Furthermore, WGU, as you know, is competency based, those graduation numbers or % you see are 'expected or projected numbers'... Some students may have 'life happens' moments and take a little longer to finish, not everyone finishes in one or two terms (even though most on this forum does). People learn differently too...

It really depends on the student and their energy, time management, study/work habits, a combination of many factors that vary... Working hard doesn't mean you'll always get done at that time frame, it's knowing the subject and able to display or showcase that knowledge through assessments and other assigned work.

In short, working hard on your requirements does correlate to a better chance at passing. However, some students may not grasp the concepts as fast as others, that is what determines the speed to finish and higher/lower chance of completing on time.

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Update: I have merged both of your threads from today. With more details, we can help you better. It seems you're 'stuck' at the same phase as you were last year - still stuck at starting off, so you've stalled at the very first step. Please provide us more details by following the template and last post addendum here: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...Area-works

[ss20ts]

There are no professors at WGU. There is no one who can "just pass you". There are Course Instructors who help you with the course material. There are also Evaluators who grade the papers/projects. These 2 roles are entirely different people who do not mix together. The Course Instructors do not know what questions are on the exams. They're not allowed to know.

Yes, there have been people who graduated in 6 months. Many transfer in credit. Most are already working in the field their degree is in so they know the material already. They just need the diploma to prove it to employers. It's not a degree you can get in 6 months without a great deal of effort. The graduation rate is high because this school is designed for working adults. Few 20 year olds attend WGU. It's mostly working adults who need a degree to further their career or to make a career change. The age of the students has a great deal to do with graduation rates.

[Maniac Craniac]

I've not seen anyone say "I enrolled with WGU with no transfer credits and no prior knowledge and finished in one term."

A much more common path has been "I transferred in as many credits as I could, spent 6 months studying independently before enrolling with WGU, and spent every waking moment of my life doing nothing but schoolwork and finished in one term."

Even that experience is very rare. The average time for the 100,000+ WGU students enrolled at any given time to graduate with a bachelor's degree is 2.5 years. https://www.wgu.edu/blog/how-long-to-onl...e1902.html

That's 2.5 calendar years with no spring, summer or winter breaks between semesters.