Advice needed - looking to earn CS credits

[Merlin]

All those courses can be taken through Study.com but you'd have to check with Georgia Tech to see how  or if they transfer. Also, whatever hoops you'd have jump through as an International student.

I'm pretty sure you'll need to have taken the core CS courses via an actual college or university to be considered for the OMSCS. While they don't specifically state non-ACE in their requirements, they will look at your transcript as part of the approval process and I suspect they will probably not consider ACE credit courses on the same level as university courses. They are trying to only invite candidates who they think will excel in their program, so they want people who have demonstrated high academic rigor.

I'm also considering the OMSCS program if I don't move on to a PhD program elsewhere, but if I decided to go that way, I'd probably go back to WGU to complete an undergrad CS degree first so I would have proper university CS credits on my transcript. My thoughts are that we know that GA Tech accepts WGU courses while we don't know that they will accept ACE. For an international student, WGU isn't an option, but there are other ways to get those credits from community colleges and other online schools.