 What's happening guys? It's Shane here and in today's video we are going to be going over how to get a legitimate college degree in one year. And I know that a lot of people probably think that this is some sort of Mickey Mouse degree or it's not possible, but actually it is. It's a respected degree that you can get in one year or less. What? What the f***? And this is going to be a strategy that previously I only revealed to consulting clients or people who took my college 101 course, but I'm actually just going to be putting it on YouTube so I can help as many people as possible. So if you appreciate that, go ahead, gently tap the like button, hit the subscribe button and ring the notification bell so that you can watch more videos just like this. So this is going to be a seven step process overall. So let's jump in right now with step number one, which is you need to evaluate your current situation. So people watching this video can come from so many different backgrounds. Maybe you're 18 thinking about going to college. Maybe you're, you know, 20, you're like halfway through college or maybe you're somebody who's like midway through their career, but they want to go back to college and get a different degree. So we really have to evaluate your current situation. And by that, I mean, we need to make a list of all the certifications you have, all the experience you have, all the classes that you've already taken. So we need to get your updated resume, your updated transcript, get all of that information in one place. Because if you have certain certifications, you can actually test out of classes. And we're going to get to that a little bit more later on in the video. But if you have job experience, sometimes you can also test out of classes there. And of course, if you've already taken the class from another university, then you can test out of classes with that as well. Another thing is you might have military experience. And in many cases, you can use your military experience to test out of certain credits as well. If you took AP or IB exams during high school and you had a certain score on the test, many colleges will let you test out of those as well. So there's many different ways that you can test out of classes. But some schools are much more generous than others about what they accept. And that brings us to step two, which is you want to find a competency-based university. So what exactly is a competency-based university? Well, the best way to explain it is just to contrast it to traditional universities. At a traditional university, they try to fit all different types of degrees into the four-year model. So you're expected to graduate in four years, whether it's a super, super easy degree or if it's the most difficult degree. And I know that difficulty is subjective. Different people have different strengths, of course, but objectively speaking, some degrees are just much, much harder than others. And so therefore, it doesn't make sense to try to fit a degree that you could get done in one to two years into the four-year model just to make everybody fit into the same box. Competency-based universities are different because they will allow you to go at your own pace. You pass the classes or don't pass the classes based off of your competency, not based off of how much time you spent taking the class. Now, I'm going to give you a list of schools that are very well known to be extremely friendly in terms of the transfer credits that they accept in. And they have different models of how they teach people, but typically it is something very similar to a competency-based model. And these schools include but are not limited to WGU, which is Western Governors University, TESU, which is Thomas Edison State University, Excelsior College, SNHU, which is Southern New Hampshire University, Charter Oaks State College or COSK, UMPI, which is the University of Maine at Presque Isle. And there are several others, but those are the main ones. Now, probably the most popular one is Western Governors University. And for the purposes of this video, just to keep things simple, I am going to be using WGU as my example. But with that being said, a lot of these other colleges are phenomenal as well. And there are certain strengths and weaknesses that each one of them have. So definitely look into it on your own. Also keep in mind that some of the universities might offer the degree that you want to get, whereas the other ones don't. So that might also influence your decision on which university you attend. Step three is going to be to contact a counselor at whichever university you choose. So big thing here, do not enroll yet. Very, very important. Do not enroll in the university. You are just contacting the counselor in order to send them your experience, right? You're going to send them your resume, your transcripts, what experience you have and then ask them, which classes can I test out of? And you might even want to do this at several different universities and see which one of them are the most generous. And after you send all that information into WGU, for instance, they will send you a report back telling you which classes you transferred in and which ones you still have to take. And then we're going to move on to step four, which is you want to test out of more classes. And again, I just want to emphasize you do not enroll at this point, okay? You know, the counselor might be trying to get you to enroll and that's not the step that we're at. That's still several steps down the line. Because if you enroll at this point, you're going to be wasting a lot of time and money and I don't want you to do that. Now at a normal university, my favorite way to test out of a lot of the Gen Ed classes is by taking what are known as CLEP exams. These are the college level examination program and this is basically the low hanging fruit of testing out of exams because it's much easier to take a CLEP exam than it is to take an AP exam for instance and you get to test out of the same amount of units. Now I've talked extensively about CLEP exams before on other videos, but basically you just have to get 50% to pass. There are many people that especially with some of the easier classes can pass on their very first try with minimal studying. Some of the harder classes you might have to study a little bit more for, but they're very cheap, very inexpensive. With that being said, at some of these competency based universities such as WGU, there are even better methods for you to test out of an exam. And this is basically by taking those same classes through third party companies such as Study.com, Striderline or Sophia. Now in my experience with coaching clients as well as talking to people who have actually gone to WGU such as my friend Josh Matacor, Study.com seems to have the most classes that you can transfer in and they're also like really good UI. It's just really easy to use them and it's pretty easy to get through the tests and it also tends to have the least amount of issues when you're transferring those classes in. But with that being said, depending on the degree you're taking there might be a situation where you can take 10 of the classes through Study.com but there's two classes that you have to take through Sophia or Striderline because Study.com doesn't offer them. And all of these services do have a cost by the way but it is very minimal compared to what you would be paying to take those same classes in college. Now basically for all the different degrees you have to take around 40 classes to graduate. Sometimes it's a little bit less than that. So if you can take these classes about one per week if you're working and you're just doing it part-time that means that you could graduate in about 40 weeks. And the truth is with a lot of students that I work with they're able to knock out like one class per day especially with a lot of the easier general education classes. And if you use the advanced strategies in this video by taking classes on Study.com and you really you know put your mind to it and put a lot of effort into it you can even graduate with a degree in two months like my friend Josh Matacor did with his computer science degree. Now that is an extreme example. Two months is pretty crazy to be able to do that. But with that being said a lot of people graduate in six months or less or one year or less. And even if you're doing it part-time and you're going at a relatively slow pace it's very realistic to be able to graduate in two years or less whereas normal degrees take four to five years on average. Now some of these strategies get incredibly complicated. So what Josh and I did is we actually created a spreadsheet that maps out every single degree that you can get at WGU and it maps it to the direct class that you can take at Study.com. And if there is no Study.com class we are actively updating it and putting in Sophia or straighter line. So we worked really hard on this project. This basically does all the work for you and all you have to do is click the link that is down in the description or the pinned comment and make a copy and it's all yours. And if you use the code Shanehummus at Study.com you will get 30% off of your first three months. So if you want to you know give a little thank you to all of our hard work you can use the coupon code. Now on top of that there are certifications that you can get in order to test out of the classes as well. And typically I kind of prefer getting the certifications because they might look really good on your resume. So in that case in my opinion it's a good idea to take those certifications as well at this point and then go ahead and transfer those in too. And again we also put the certifications that match up to WGU on this spreadsheet. So it was like it was a massive amount of work in order to do the research for this. So you know check that spreadsheet out it's going to make your life so much easier. Now once you've taken all these classes you've taken the certifications and you've told your counselor about it you've transferred it all in. At this point we are going to move on to the next step which by the way is not enrolling yet. You're still not going to enroll. What kind of s*** is that? And that is step number five you want to pre-game your classes. So what do I mean by pre-game? I essentially mean you want to pre-study the remaining classes that you have left that you can't transfer in. So maybe you have 10 or 15 classes left that you can't transfer in out of the 40 original classes that you had to take and you want to go ahead get a hold of the curriculum that they have on the website. Look at what you need to learn and then maybe just look up stuff on Khan Academy or any other number of resources that they have online. So for instance if you're getting a computer science degree there's a lot of really great free resources online like the free code camp, the Odin project. There's also some really good paid resources like you know depending on the language you're trying to learn there's some good stuff on Udemy. Code with Mosh is one that as you know I've heard has been highly recommended. For math related classes you can actually take free classes online from schools like Harvard and MIT etc. These classes are all available for free online. They tell you the textbook they use they give you the same problems. You have access to the lectures that the professors gave. You can also even take the same tests with some of them. So all of this stuff is actually available for free online. All you have to type in is like take free Harvard classes online and that sort of thing is gonna pop up. So you can basically take the entire class you just don't get the credit for it at the end. Now for WGU for instance a lot of people will share strategies on what they should study for the different classes on the WGU subreddit. So that's a really fantastic resource as well. Definitely check that out. Finally we're gonna move on to step six which is enroll in a competency-based university such as WGU. At this point you will finally talk to your guidance counselor and tell them that you are ready to enroll. Now if you've done all the previous steps you know it might have taken you three months in order to take the initial classes on study.com and then maybe another three months for you to pre-study the classes that you're gonna take at WGU. And then it's very realistic for you to be able to finish the remaining you know 10 units or whatever it was that you have left in your coursework in another you know three to six months. And most of the schools that I have on this list are extremely affordable. Like they typically cost less than half of what a normal university charges and you're able to get it done much faster. So it's really like one fourth of the price in many cases. So at this point you enroll in WGU and you take those classes that you already studied for. And of course you're probably gonna be able to get through the classes extremely fast because you already know the material and then you're gonna take the final test pass it easily and then move on to the next one. In a WGU for instance each term is six months and you pay per term. So if you're able to finish all of the classes in less than six months then you only have to pay for one term at WGU. And step seven is you graduate and you get to brag to all of your friends that you were able to finish a bachelor's in six months. Everyone is gonna think that you're a genius and if you're really nice you might share this video with your friends so they can be geniuses as well.