Degree Plan

It's official.  I have a plan for all of my "free time" the next 3-3.5 years of my life.  It's called a WGU Degree Plan.

It is pre-populated with a standard course plan for my degree program minus the accepted transfer credits.  I am able to manipulate the order of the courses and assign a target date range for each course.  My first task was to choose the first 12 credits (but not more than 15) for my first term, set dates for each course and then have my degree plan approved by my mentor.  Then on July 1st, I had to select each course on my first term and enroll in them.

Now my first 4 courses are available to view.  On each course is a button for "Course Material" and once that button is selected you're locked into the content and exam for that course at that time.  I can hit the button on all 4 courses and study concurrently if I wish, or just work on the courses one at a time.

I am hoping to complete 6 courses in the first term, but since that's 21 credits, I was only allowed by my mentor to enroll in 15 (4 courses).  Once I complete those 4 courses, if there is still time in my term I can enroll in one additional course at a time apparently until I reach the 20th of the last month of my term, a new course cannot be activated in the last 10-11 days of a term.

My first 4 courses are Spreadsheets, Intro to IT, IT Foundations and IT Applications.  I hope to also add English Composition and Critical Thinking and Logic.  We'll see how I do.

Orientation Schmorientation

It's time to get oriented!  Full disclosure, I historically have little patience for mundane tasks.  I admit it's a personality glitch.  In the case of orientation, all the info presented I anticipated to be things I already knew from my proactive research, but I do understand function of a "required for all" orientation.

My orientation was turned on Friday morning, the 15th of the month prior to my start date.  I was so excited to dive in but dreading the hours of boring videos.  It was supposed to take an estimated 6-8 hours.  It took me 5 hours to complete, 6:30-11:30pm.  You don't have to do it all in one sitting.  It will save your place wherever you stop and there isn't a "save my place" button or anything, you can just X out.

For those wondering, it was divided into 9 modules.  The first 7 were WGU general orientation, how to find things on the website, how to modify your Degree Plan, good study habits, resources, and where to turn for help.  The 8th was program specific, in my case, about the college of IT.  I would've liked more specific info on the college, staff bios, demographic makeup of the student body, job outlook, etc.  It was pretty basic mostly covering things I already knew from my research before and during the application process.  The 9th was a wrap up.  There were some short answer and some multiple choice quizzes over the content along the way along with some "self discovery" activities.

At any rate, I'm glad it's over.  Hopefully I'll be assigned my program adviser soon so we can set my degree plan.  I'm anxious to tweak the pre-populated one that automatically appeared in my student portal.

I was notified this morning that my "Student Success Kit" shipped.  More on that when it arrives.

Dollars and Cents

First things first, I was awarded the "Women In Technology" scholarship!!!  Yay me!!!  Like most WGU scholarships, this $2,000 award directly from WGU is dispersed at $500/term over 4 terms.  I was notified via email 6 days after my phone interview with the scholarship committee representative.  The 2 factors that I suspect contributed most to this are first that I've worked in the male dominated field of IT a total of over 14 years and second that I coach a Girl Scout First Lego League robotics team, so I am passing along an interest in technology and building the next generation of technology minded women.  Yes, being a Girl Scout pays off, spread the word.

The financial aid sections of my enrollment portal finally lit up with some to do items, including setting the amount of financial aid I wish to receive.  I set it for the cost of tuition/fees, minus my scholarship, plus the cost of a new laptop.  Going forward, I will only accept financial aid for the amount of tuition and fees.  This will keep my total student loan repayment as low as possible when this is all over.

I haven't had a new PC in 8 years, and while the beast I built is still going strong for my everyday needs, it is a bit behind the times and at 70 lbs (it's a giant behemoth gaming tower), certainly is not portable.  Time for a beefed up laptop with all the modern features and enough capacity to dual boot in a different operating system if necessary for hands-on course work.  My "proctored exam station" will be my big PC in the basement.

My first 2 terms (semesters) are all financially figured out.  I am taking out in student loans the cost of the first 2 terms plus a computer.  WGU costs $3485/semester, I have $500 in scholarship and up to $3000 annual reimbursement from work for each term (one term is in 2018, the other in 2019), which covers my first two terms entirely.  At the end of my first year the only thing that will be on my student loan account will be the amount I used for a new computer.  These will certainly be the cheapest 2 terms of my college career.

Going forward into next year, term 3 will have a $500 scholarship, and I'll apply for a local $1000 scholarship, so I'll have additional loan amount of net $2-3K.  Term 4 will be a new year (2020) and will be the same as this first term, $500 scholarship and $3000 reimbursement from work.  There will be 2-3 additional terms beyond this.  I will hunt and apply for additional scholarships/grants along the way, but between WGU's low tuition, my current scholarship and $3K annual tuition reimbursement from my employer, this should be a relatively low cost investment compared to traditional Bachelors degrees and other online programs.  At this point I estimate my final net student loan due to be about $8,000.