Taking courses at WGU not part of my degree program? And credit by examination

[Merlin]

When it comes to getting credits from the education program, I also have thought about if I could take the pre-assessment for those math courses to show my program advisor that I would be ready to take the assessment for those courses, and to come in with the program having studied the material for the math courses thoroughly before I enrolled. Do they require you to register for courses before you take the pre-assessment?
When it comes to the education courses, if I did study that material beforehand, I could also be able to complete them quickly if I took the pre-assessment.

You have to have completed orientation and hit the first day of your term before you can look at any of the course material or take any of the pre-assessments. At that point, you can take the pre-assessments for any of the courses in your program even if they are not your current active course.

That said, I do not recommend taking pre-assessments until you're sure you're ready to take the final exam. You only get one pre-assessment (well you can take it more than once but it is always the same) so once it has been taken, you won't have anything to use as a gauge to tell if you're ready to take the final exam (OA).

Some people suggest that you should take the pre-A and then use the results of that to study for the OA, but I find that to be terrible advice. You should always skim the course material to find knowledge gaps and study those first. Once you think you're ready to take the OA, then take the Pre-A to validate that belief. If you earn a high score on the Pre-A, then you should schedule to take the OA.

Another good reason to study first is that the Pre-A and OA may not always align. So by only studying the things you miss on the Pre-A, you may miss large chunks of the study material and fail the exam. If you fail the exam, it is a huge pain in the butt to get a chance to take it again. It usually requires meeting with a course instructor to do a formal study plan with assigned readings, quizzes, etc. This takes a long time and ends any chance at acceleration.

So it really is not faster to take the pre-A first and then study, especially if you fail the exam. If you are sure you know the material coming into the course, then, by all means, take the pre-A first. But if you're not sure... wait until you're officially active in the course and skim through the lessons and watch a few cohorts on high speed first to be safe.

When it comes to discrete math 1 and 2, is the material for them the same as the TESU discrete math course but separated into two courses, or is that course just equivalent to just discrete math 2? I have seen colleges just offering a discrete math course without being seperated into 1 and 2.

I haven't taken those courses, but it is my understanding that the Discrete Math I is a traditional Discrete Math course, while Discrete Math II is a more advanced version of the course that combines concepts from Discrete Math I and layers on some Statistics, DS&A, and requires basic programming knowledge.

In terms of transferability to TESU, my guess is that Discrete Math I will come in as MAT-270 (DIscrete Mathematics) at TESU and Discrete Math II will come in as something else. Probably MAT-299 since it doesn't look like TESU offers a Discrete Math II course. If you're lucky, it will come in as an upper-level course (MAT-399 maybe?)

You cannot access WGU courses early. You must be in the course to take the pre-assessment. I'm watching people on a Facebook group count down until the 1st right now. Many are freaking out because they want to get started, but they can't.

This only applies to people before the start of their first term. Once you're in the program you can look at all the courses in your program. You won't have access to everything unless the course has been activated, but you can scan through any non-licensed course materials and take pre-assessments if you like. Though, as I said above, I don't recommend it.

Prior to the summer of 2019, WGU students had full access to all their course materials, including licensed materials, as soon as they finished their orientation course (which started on the 15th of the month prior to the start of their first term). But WGU locked that down last year to avoid paying additional license fees and reduce costs, etc.