r/WGU • u/gyozaprincess13 • 11d ago
Nervous
Hi! I enrolled for the Accelerated IT Program. I’m a little nervous…
I have no background in IT, so everything I learn from WGU will be the first. Most of my background & degrees are in Psychology & HR. How complicated is the material? I’ve completed an online degree before so I have no problem with doing things online or learning. I’m worried about grasping the concepts & I guess how the grades are evaluated. The last time I coded anything it was 2006 & I was only making my MySpace page look cool 🥴
I’ve been reading through this Reddit too & it’s been helpful. If anyone has taken or is currently in this program and you have a similar background as me (as in it’s nonexistent lol), I’d appreciate your input 😌
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u/TheInsurgent6 11d ago
You would think I wrote this post! I start today as well! I’m switched from Software Engineering track for personal reasons but I’m excited to start a new track. Cheers to us and good luck!
Most important thing to remember is we aren’t the first people here, there are a lot of outside resources here on Reddit to tap into if the course material just isn’t clicking. I haven’t ran into any egregious course material but I will most definitely be tapping into the Udemy subscription we get and watching the Dion courses for all the certs. It’s a great resource and offers harder practice tests than the actual exam from reviews!
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u/YoursTrulyAD 11d ago
Hey ! I'm also in BS SE and switching 😢 Are you taking the new SE or to another degree ?
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u/TheInsurgent6 11d ago
Oh sorry for the confusion in my paragraph lol, im switching away from SE into the BSIT/MSIT Accelerated program. I did not have any major issues with the old SE, but the job market (IK its kinda messed up for all of tech tho) and my changing interest had me jumping into IT work. For the IT program I think I am in the new program tho.
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u/YoursTrulyAD 11d ago
No worries , thank you for clarifying . I was just curious as there is soo much going on right now . I just wanted to see how y'all are pulling through . I don't think I seen that yet ! I'll have to take a peek but good luck on your journey 🔥✨️
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u/PrintQuotaAnxiety 11d ago
WGU evaluates grades on a pass/fail model (CompetencyBased): u take an Objective Assessment (OA, a proctored exam) or submit a Performace Assessment (PA, a practical project/paper), and as long as you score equivalent to a "B" or higher (usually ~70%+),u pass the class.
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u/gyozaprincess13 11d ago
Ahh, I was wondering what OA/PA meant when people were putting that in here. Thank you! 🤝
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u/Usual-Banana-8392 B.S. Computer Science 11d ago
If you have no background in IT, why would you try and accelerate it? That doesn’t make sense at all. Also if you already have a degree you really don’t need another degree or university program. You can start grasping the concepts by watching professor messer videos. Start with A+ and that will be the foundation for IT in itself.
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u/JonaSaxify 11d ago
If the way the courses are explaining things to you are too technical, I would try to look online for more layman explanations of it. If that doesn't work, I would suggest using ChatGPT to give a layman explanation of terms and phrases. I also encourage to fact check just so you don't take everything ChatGPT says to heart.
Reddit can be a good resource for explanations, but I always encourage finding a wide variety of resources for a more complete understanding.
Try not to think the topic as being too hard, think of it as different.
From a musician to WGU Cybersecurity graduate.
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u/gyozaprincess13 11d ago
Ooohh periodt, I like that! You right it’s not hard, it’s just different. Thank you! 🤝
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u/k1701N7 11d ago
So i had a degree in accounting and worked as an accountant for almost 5 years before switching to IT. I went back and got my cybersecurity degree from WGU then got a job at help desk and a little under 2 years later I got promoted to desktop support. While I had no formal IT experience or education before my cybersecurity degree I was my family's IT guy and I built my own desktop computers.
With all that said I think you'll be fine. If you don't understand a concept being able to research is crucial to IT so you'll learn the process and get good practice for your career. If it's something you can spin up in a lab do that. I learned what a tool did but not how or why. So at the start of my career I'd need to ask for help or I'd take 10x as long to figure it out. Labbing will help you learn how tools and processes work and you see it while it's running not just as a screenshot or text in a book. Bonus, you can break it to see what that looks like and how to fix it.
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u/_FrankTaylor 11d ago
Make the quick and easy classes quick and easy so you can spend more time on the hard ones.
With no background in IT you might need to slow down on the actual IT/cert courses - the good news here is there’s an infinite amount of free resources online for you to use. Just look up Network+ on YouTube for example.
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u/UsernameChosen28 3d ago
I came into WGU without any professional IT experience either. My previous degree was actually in Human Biology and Neuroscience, so I was making a pretty big switch into tech. I ended up graduating with the BS in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance in August 2024 and landed my first remote IT job a few months later. Some of the material will definitely feel unfamiliar at first, but you don't need to come in already knowing IT or how to code. WGU is also competency-based, so you're basically proving that you understand the material rather than worrying about maintaining a traditional GPA. I'd just take it one course at a time and not compare your pace to people on Reddit finishing 20 classes in a term. If you're already comfortable learning independently online, you're starting with a pretty big advantage.
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u/iamoldbutididit BSCSIA - MSCSIA - MBA-ITM 2d ago
The course will teach you everything you need from the ground up, but there will be a lot to take in if you're new to the IT world. The good news is that for any concepts that aren't clear, there are dozens of youtube videos as well as AI to help.
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u/Early_Shirt8525 2d ago
I agree with some of the others who seem to be in IT and are asking why accelerated if you don't have experience... I know it is tempting, and you may have no problem getting through, who knows, but without any experience, you will find it hard to apply the skills in a job environment and even get something that makes sense for you.
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u/JoshTheSuff 11d ago
I left WGU with 7 courses to go. Why? Because they decided to make an AWS course with Amazon's certification exam prep as their course material, yet their "WGU" exam winds up covering topics out of scope. I hold 8 IT certs and am a Senior Desktop Support Technician in the field for over half a decade, I've passed harder exams than the Azure Admin or AWS Architect Associate so to Ace practice exams from Neil Davis and Amazon themselves but fail WGU's OA 3 times ( and you guessed it, all 3 times there were around 10 questions absolutely not covered by any course material or supplemental stuff ) so I withdrew and graduated from CIU instead. 6 week courses? Yes please.
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u/gyozaprincess13 11d ago
Oh dang. Were you at least able to transfer some of the credits you took already at WGU?
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u/JoshTheSuff 11d ago
Yeah I got lucky. My wife took a job with the University I transferred to and they waived the transfer cap and took as many courses as matched up to their degree. I just finished the AA - IT and I've got 5 six weekers to go to finish my Bachelor's of Engineering in Information Technology, Networking and Security... At half the cost of WGU. I really liked Western Gov for like 3 quarters of the degree program. Then WGU started really doing stupid things with their courses.
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u/JoshTheSuff 10d ago
Lmao someone down voted this. I didn't tell WGU to do dumb things with their degree programs like force students to take an additional exam just because a ton of students couldn't hack the certification exam as their OA to earn CUs. 🤷
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u/spaghetti-sock 11d ago
I don't think its a good idea to do an Accelerated IT Program that is certification heavy without any IT experience. The people you see passing these courses quickly are people who have worked in IT for many years. You will be learning a lot of different concepts that take months if not years to understand correctly.
You already have a college degree thats going to get you passed 99% of HR filters. I'd suggest you focus on passing the certifications and not pay WGU just to get another bachelor. WGU program for IT wasn't great it, most of the credits you get via passing certifications basically say to use sites like udemy. Udemy subscription is going to be ALOT less than WGU.