WGU admits without standardized tests: undergraduates need a high school diploma or GED plus transcripts, graduate applicants need an accredited bachelor's, and every applicant works with a one-on-one enrollment counselor. Terms start the first day of every month, so you can begin within weeks of applying. The highest-value move is transfer credit, WGU accepts up to roughly three quarters of a bachelor's from prior credits, Sophia and Study.com courses, and industry IT certifications, and every transferred CU is a CU you never pay a term to earn.
Who gets in
Admission is open-access by design. Undergraduate programs ask for the diploma or GED and transcripts; graduate programs ask for the accredited bachelor's and transcripts; nobody asks for the SAT, GRE, or GMAT. A handful of programs add their own gates, the nurse practitioner tracks screen GPA and prerequisites, prelicensure nursing has state and capacity limits, and Teachers College licensure programs verify state eligibility for field placement. If your target is one of those, clear its extra gate first and let the general application follow.
The enrollment sequence
Apply and meet your enrollment counselor
The application is short and the counselor call is where real decisions happen: program version, start month, and the transcript plan. There is a modest application fee; the counselor frequently has a waiver code, so ask before paying.
Send every transcript you have
All of them, including the semester you would rather forget. Credit evaluation is free money at a flat-rate school: courses cleared by transfer come off your Degree Plan entirely.
Consider a pre-enrollment credit sprint
WGU accepts credit from partners like Sophia and Study.com, self-paced and cheap, and counts many industry IT certifications for course credit. Students who spend four to eight weeks banking transfer-eligible courses before enrolling routinely delete a full term from their degree, saving several thousand dollars.
Pick your start month deliberately
Terms begin the first of every month, and your six-month clock starts then. Start when your calendar has runway, not the month your enthusiasm peaks: a term that opens two weeks before your busy season donates those weeks to the void. Enrollment must be settled within the first ten days of the term.
Meet your Program Mentor and map the term
Once admitted you get the Degree Plan and a Program Mentor. This is the moment to plan pacing, and where our term-mapping desk earns its keep: two courses in motion, assessments sequenced, no idle evaluation queues.
Transfer credit, the fine print that matters
- Bachelor's programs accept transfer for the general education block and much of the lower division; the ceiling runs to roughly 75 percent of the degree
- Sophia and Study.com courses map to specific WGU courses; match the published equivalency list before buying anything
- CompTIA and similar IT certifications convert directly to course credit in the Technology college, and several are also embedded inside WGU courses
- MSN and NP program cores restrict transfer sharply; clinical and specialty courses are almost always taken at WGU
- Evaluation happens before your first term, so the sprint has to happen before, not after, enrollment
Watch-outs after you start
Two administrative rules bite new students. Twenty-eight days of inactivity triggers administrative withdrawal, so even in a slow month, keep something moving in the portal. And the term boundary is absolute: courses open at term end post as Not Passed and travel to your next term's plan. Both rules reward the same habit, steady assessment throughput, which is precisely the thing the task service manufactures on demand.
Enrolling this month or next
Send your program and transfer situation. We map the credits worth sprinting and the first term worth planning, free.
Sources and verification
Facts on this page come from official and independent sources, and anything that matters is worth checking against the originals:
- www.wgu.edu/about/institutional-catalog.html: WGU's Institutional Catalog, the primary source for assessment, grading, and term policies
- www.wgu.edu/financial-aid-tuition/tuition-business-degrees.html: official per-term tuition published at wgu.edu
- nwccu.org: Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, the institutional accreditor
- www.ccneaccreditation.org: Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, the nursing accreditor
- apastyle.apa.org: APA Style, the official style authority behind the formatting rules