 How to get a bachelor's of science in cloud computing in as little as six months. That's what this video is going to be about, and I know that probably sounds unbelievable, but it's something that many people have done. There's tons of testimonials online on YouTube and Reddit, etc., of people that have done this exact process. And this is a completely legitimate top 10% regionally accredited, institutionally respected degree that will get you a job. Now there are several different universities where you can use this accelerated process, and basically what it is is competency-based education. Now in this particular video, I'm going to be using the example of WGU, which is also known as Western Governors University. And this video could potentially save you four years of your time, 100,000 plus dollars, endless hours of headache, and a bunch of opportunity cost. Because not only can you get your degree really quickly, easily, efficiently, and cheaply, but on top of that, you don't have to move across the country, and you don't even have to quit your job. That's right, you can just do this flexibly online while you're working at your job. And this is not one of those scammy, for-profit universities that you hear about online either. And this process is something that until very recently, until I did this exact series, I only taught to my paid consulting clients. But in this video, I'm going to break down the process incredibly clearly. And simply, I even have a cheat sheet, which I will tell you about, and I'll actually jump into it and show you how to use it here in a moment, that will make this entire process ridiculously easy. So if you appreciate all my hard work creating this entire series, go ahead, gently tap that like button, and let's jump into it right now. So this particular cloud computing degree is a specialized track that WGU very recently just released. And it's going to be the Azure Track. Now, Azure was created by Microsoft, and it's one of the largest cloud computing platforms available. It's also growing really fast, and there's a ton of demand for people who are experts at using the platform. So this is going to be a four step process, and you really want to be careful and follow these steps exactly as I tell you to do them. If you decide to take shortcuts, or you don't follow the steps exactly, it will likely cost you thousands of dollars and months of your time. So the first step is you want to go ahead and transfer in all of your existing credits. Now, the great thing about competency-based universities such as WGU is they tend to be extremely gracious about the credits they accept. So normal traditional universities will sometimes accept AP and IB classes, but I've seen cases where you have to score like five on the AP class for them to accept it, which is very difficult to do. So you might have taken the AP test, you scored a three or even a four in some cases, and yet you still can't use it as credit. Normal universities also sometimes accept credits from other colleges. But again, they can be very picky about this as well. But WGU not only accepts all of that and they tend to be really gracious with that, but they also accept certificates and certifications, military experience, work experience, CLEP exams, etc. Now in the case of a lot of the technology-related degrees, another thing that you really want to do is take as many of the certificates and certifications as you can. Now, once you've done the step, you want to go ahead and move on to step number two, which is you are going to go ahead and use third-party companies to test out of many of the remaining classes. This is probably the most important step. Now in this particular degree track, you're going to be taking 37 total courses. And a lot of the courses you can test out of super quickly using these third-party companies, and that's kind of the reason why you want to use them. They're faster, cheaper, and easier. I have seen examples of students testing out of multiple classes per day, but in many cases, one class per day, especially with the entry-level classes, is very doable. Now, if you're super busy, you've got a full-time job, you've got a family, etc., I totally understand you're going to be a little busier, you're not going to be able to do them that fast. But with that being said, even if you're super busy, you can still very comfortably, especially with the entry-level classes, test out of one class per week. And so in just a few months, even if you're really busy, you can test out of a significant amount of the classes that you're going to have to take anyways. And by the way, here's an example of somebody who is able to finish this degree in one semester, right? So they literally did one term at WGU one semester, and they were able to test out of 87 credit units. And at WGU, I believe this degree is around 110 credit units. So they were able to transfer in around 20 to 30 credit units before they even started on the degree. And you can actually transfer in more than that, and I'll go over that here in a bit. But yeah, definitely take your time on this step. This is the most important step. You want to save yourself as much time, effort and money as you can. And testing out of these classes using third-party companies is the best way to do that. Now, once you've tested out of these classes, and you've transferred them into WGU, you are going to move on to step number three, which is you're not going to enroll, you are going to pre-study the remaining classes. Now, this is a step that I see a lot of people skipping. And I really recommend not skipping it, because I've seen countless examples, so many different people where let's say their goal is to graduate in like two terms or three terms. And they decide to skip this step, and they end up graduating in an extra term, right? And they only do maybe a week or a month in that extra term. But unfortunately, the way it works at WGU, well, actually fortunately, but unfortunately in this particular case, is you actually pay per term. So a term is six months, and you pay around $3,500 to $4,000 depending on the degree per term. So you really want to try to get it done within that term. Even if you spend a single extra day or a single extra week, you have to pay for the entire term. And it's like this at WGU, as well as a lot of the other competency-based universities. So definitely don't skip this phase. And the two absolute best resources I can recommend to you are going to be the WGU subreddits, especially the subreddits that are specific to the degree, and then also the Facebook groups. So on these subreddits and Facebook groups, people will share tips, tricks, strategies, tactics on how to study for these classes as quickly and efficiently as possible, and pass the exams as fast as possible as well. And a lot of the time they're going to recommend resources that either cost nothing or they're extremely affordable. So some of the resources I often see recommended are, of course, YouTube channels, blogs on Google, Khan Academy gets recommended quite a bit, depending on the class. You do see Udemy courses being recommended once in a while. And oh, by the way, Udemy courses are another thing that WGU will sometimes accept as credit as well. So send in your Udemy courses. I forgot to mention that earlier in the video. And then, of course, there's very cheap resources online, like either free textbooks or affordable textbooks, if you want to order a physical one, you can do that as well. Now, if you're super busy, plus you have a plan and you kind of know approximately when you're going to be able to graduate, you can skip studying for some of the classes and only study for the harder ones. But you really want to be careful with that because you don't want to be in a situation where you're faced with having to pay for an entire another semester or an entire term because of the fact that it's like right on the edge. You're going to feel really stressed. You're going to feel like you have to work a lot faster than you want to. And it's just not a good situation to be in. Now, once you feel confident with your preparation, you're going to go ahead and move on to step number four, which is very simple. You're going to enroll in WGU and knock those remaining classes out as fast as you possibly can. And by doing these steps, it is very realistic for a normal person to do this entire process in less than two years, even if you have a full-time job, even if you're super busy. And if you accelerate it, which some people do, there are many videos of people on YouTube really taking this process seriously and doing like speed runs. For instance, Josh Matacor, my really good friend, he's basically the king of WGU. He's gotten like three different degrees from there. He was able to get a computer science degree, which is probably the hardest degree you can get at WGU in two months. So if you take this process really seriously, you can finish the degree super quickly. But even for somebody who's taking it semi-seriously, you can probably do it in a year or less. Now, with that being said, let's go ahead, jump into the sheet, and I'm going to take you through this entire process step by step, and I'm going to show you how you can do it for yourself. And by the way, the cheat sheet is going to be down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. All right. So now we are inside of the cheat sheet and I'll quickly go over everything so you kind of understand what it is. First of all, if you go file and make a copy, you will be able to edit it and put in your information in your specific situation and basically do whatever you want with the sheet. The only downside to that is if I make any updates to the sheet, which I very likely will, you know, for instance, maybe a new study.com class comes out or you know, I decide to update all the Sophia.org classes, you will not see that. So you will have to look at this original sheet in order to see any updates or changes. And very quickly, let me go over this, this back home thing, I should have deleted that. So I'll go ahead and get rid of that. But this first column right here is going to be the ID number for the class. Now, the reason that we included this is because oftentimes, if you're looking at the subreddit or Facebook group, they will actually include the ID number for the class. So it's an easy way for you to quickly look up information on the WGU subreddits and the Facebook groups. This next column is going to be the course name. And this is basically the name of the course at WGU. The next column is going to be the units in each course. The next column here is probably the most important column. And this is the classes at study.com that map up with the classes at WGU. So for instance, statistics 101 is the study.com class number 68. And that will map up exactly with applied probability and statistics. So if you take statistics 101 at study.com, that will transfer in for applied probability and statistics on top of that, if the class isn't offered at study.com, it may be offered at Sophia or straighter line. And in that particular case, we will go ahead and put those classes in for Sophia or straighter line. And like I said, we are going to be trying to keep this updated as much as we can. And then for the certificates, it's kind of the same thing. You know, this certificate will transfer in for that class, for instance. Now, another thing I will mention very quickly is the classes that are in green tend to be the easier ones. If you scroll all the way to the right, you'll see that they are the general education classes, the classes in yellow are the core classes, and the classes in red are the program specific classes. And generally speaking, the green classes are the easiest, the yellow classes are medium difficulty and the red classes are the hardest. Alright, so let's move on to step number one. Now, in this particular case, of course, I'm just making this up. During high school, you took AP math, and you also took biology. So you were able to transfer those two in. And then you took one semester of college where you also took communications and economics. And you also knocked out all of these certifications because you knew this is what you were going into, you wanted to, you know, get into cloud computing. So you knew you had to take those certifications anyways. So you went ahead transferred all of those in, and then you're going to go ahead and move on to step number two, which is the test out phase. So you're going to go ahead and test out of all the classes that you can. So as you can see, there are a lot of classes that you can test out of. Now again, you study.com for this. I also like Sophia.org gets pretty good. But I found that when I told people about like all the different classes, it just kind of confused them. And so I just wanted to keep this really simple and just put study.com. Now by the way, if you do choose to use study.com, there is a 30% off your first three months with study.com code. It's Shane hummus. I believe I also have a code for Sophia.org. So if I find that I'll go ahead and put that in here as well. But yeah, that will save you a little bit of money on study.com. And it also helps the channel out. So I'd appreciate it. Now once you test out of all these classes, and you transfer them into WGU, this is what it's going to look like. So you're really only going to have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine classes that you have to take. So you were basically able to test out of 75% of the classes before you even enroll in WGU, which is pretty awesome. So at this point, you would move on to phase number three, which is the pre study phase. So you'd go ahead pre study these classes. And then when you feel confident about it, you think that you can graduate in one term. That's kind of what you're aiming for. But two terms max, then you'd go ahead enroll in WGU and knock those classes out as fast as possible, which of course is phase number four. And then after you did that, you knock it out in, let's say one term, which is very possible with this degree, then you would move on to phase number five, which is brag to your friends and family that you were able to graduate with a fully operational degree in as little as six months. Everyone's going to think you're a genius. But if you're really nice, you will send this video to all of your friends and family so that they can do the same thing as well. Now, one thing I always like to mention at the end of these videos is WGU is a phenomenal option. One of the reasons why I only recommended them to my consulting clients before I did this series is because of the fact that it's a great option, but it isn't necessarily the best option for everyone. So, you know, please make sure you do your own research, right? So I'm presenting this information, but that's not the same as me doing a consultation session with you, because if I did a consultation session with you, I would know your specific situation. So it's possible that depending on your situation, maybe going to a bootcamp is better or self-study is better or something along those lines. But with that being said, there's two different things. The first one is WGU is not the only competency-based university or accelerated university that you can use. There are other really good options. And then the second thing is WGU and a competency-based university might not be the best choice for you. So for instance, if you cannot study remotely, it's probably not a good choice. If you hate the fact that you are going to be studying remotely and therefore your network probably isn't going to be quite as strong, WGU is probably not the best choice for you either. Now, these are two things that I go over in this video right here, where I talk about whether WGU is worth it and also the pros and cons. So definitely check this video out to make sure WGU is right for you.