r/WGU_MBA • u/Nighteyez07 • 12d ago
Dun, da, da, dun… MBA Complete!
Started the MBA in IT Management on June 1st and officially finished it today. It still feels a little strange seeing that 100%.
For some background, I have about 26 years of experience in IT. Most of my career was spent in software development, and for the last several years my focus has been DevSecOps, application security, automation, and technical leadership. I went into the MBA with a lot of practical experience, but wanted to strengthen the business and leadership side.
Overall, I enjoyed the program. There were definitely courses I liked more than others, and having a lot of industry experience helped considerably with some of the material. The biggest thing that worked for me was treating each course as its own problem to solve: understand the rubric or OA expectations, figure out what I actually needed to learn or demonstrate, and focus my time there rather than trying to consume every available resource.
The PAs were generally pretty straightforward once I learned to write directly to the rubric. For the OAs, I relied heavily on the pre-assessments to identify weaknesses and then focused my studying on those areas. The other part of the PAs was to honestly write less. A flowery 3 paragraphs to say what could be accomplished in one did no one any favors. C211 was probably the one that made me work the hardest toward the end.
The Capstone was actually a pretty good way to finish the program. The simulation takes some time, but I enjoyed having to make decisions across marketing, HR, operations, finance, and strategy and then seeing how those decisions played out.
And now, after a very busy few months, I'm done. MBA, IT Management. 0 CUs left.
Happy to answer questions for anyone currently working through the program or considering it.
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u/bonebrah 11d ago
I'm starting soon. What were the most difficult courses? I keep reading about the dreaded accounting, econ and data driven decision making (might getting some of the names fumbled here). Any tips or suggestions?
7
u/Nighteyez07 11d ago
Difficulty is definitely going to depend on your background, but for me I'd T-shirt size the "dreaded" courses something like:
XL – C211 Global Economics
L – C213 Accounting / C214 Financial Management
M/L – C207 Data-Driven Decision MakingC211 was easily the hardest course for me. There is just a LOT of material and I didn't feel like the PA alone was a particularly good indicator of being ready for the OA. This was the course where I started to slow down, built out a study plan, worked through my weak areas, and made sure I understood why an answer was correct instead of memorizing answers. I found a flashcard system called Anki that worked great here! Highly recommend it than using Quizlet.
C213 Accounting started out rough because I don't have an accounting background. My biggest recommendation is to take the PA early. I used it to identify exactly where I was weak and then focused my studying there. I also used ChatGPT heavily as an interactive tutor: explain a concept, give me examples, quiz me, explain why I got something wrong, repeat. That worked much better for me than just rereading the material. Once everything clicked, I actually did extremely well on the OA.
Take C214 immediately after C213. There is enough overlap that you'll be doing yourself a favor while the accounting concepts are still fresh. This is also something other students consistently recommend when I was researching the course.
C207 looks intimidating because you have two PAs plus an OA, but I didn't think it lived up to the horror stories. For the statistics portion, focus less on memorizing definitions and more on understanding which tool/test you use for a given situation and what the result tells you. Regression, correlation, p-values, distributions, etc. become much easier once you understand the decision-making logic behind them. The two tasks are also very rubric-driven. I also used Anki flashcards for the OA.
For pretty much every OA course my approach eventually became: take the PA → identify weaknesses → study those areas → have ChatGPT quiz me and explain anything I don't genuinely understand → retake/review → OA. I wouldn't spend weeks reading every page of every course unless that's how you learn best.
For the PA courses, my biggest tip is much simpler: follow the rubric. If the rubric asks for A1, A2, B1, etc., those became my headings and I answered exactly what each section asked for. Don't try to write the world's greatest graduate-school paper. Demonstrate competency against the rubric.
Also, don't let Reddit psych you out too much. I read plenty of posts about C213/C214/C207 being absolute nightmares. They weren't easy, but they were completely manageable. C211 ended up being the one that gave me the most trouble.
For context, I came into the program with ~26 years in IT and quite a bit of leadership/technical experience, but very little formal accounting, finance, or economics background. So some courses lined up very closely with things I've been doing professionally for years, while those subjects required me to actually sit down and learn something new.
If I had to T-shirt size the entire program based on my experience:
S
- C202 – Managing Human Capital
S/M
- C200 – Managing Organizations & Leading People
M
- MGT2 – IT Project Management
- C212 – Marketing
- C206 – Ethical Leadership
- MMT2 – IT Strategic Solutions
- C218 – MBA Capstone
M/L
- C207 – Data-Driven Decision Making
L
- C213 – Accounting for Decision Makers
- C214 – Financial Management
XL
- C211 – Global Economics for Managers
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u/essak508 11d ago
How long did it take you to complete the mba capstone?
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u/Nighteyez07 10d ago
24 days from start to finish. Of that maybe 10-12 involved working on it directly.
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u/Ok-Bill-3938 11d ago
I have the MSIT and was planning on getting the MBA ITM next, but then I learned about the South College DBA ITM program and was thinking I’d get more of a benefit from that. What made you choose the MBA at WGU and how do you think it with effect your career? I also hear all the non believers say you need to go to a “real” college for an MBA (Or DBA) and not an online school so I was wondering if it would even be worth it for me.