The Ultimate College Degree Hacking Guide (Bachelor Degree FAST and CHEAP)

This is the ultimate college degree hacking guide. I'm going to be talking about how you can get a bachelor's degree incredibly fast, in many cases less than a year. And on top of this, you'll be able to get a bachelor's degree at a fraction of the cost. Now, this is something that typically I only shared with my consulting clients or people who subscribe to my Patreon or bought one of my products. But to be honest, I want as many people as possible to benefit from this. So in today's video, I'm going to be revealing the entire thing to you completely free. And all that I ask for in return is that you gently tap that like button. Let's aim for at least 3,000 likes on this video. So this is going to be a seven step process, and I'm going to go into each step in detail. And this is basically going to be like a mini course or a guide. I'm not going to just talk about the surface level stuff. I'm really going to get down into the nitty gritty details. I'm also going to provide a guide to you during the video that's going to make the entire process incredibly easy. It's basically like a cheat sheet. And the strategies and tools I'm going to provide in this video are what makes it possible for some of my consulting clients, for instance, to graduate with degrees in less than a year. And these aren't just crackerjack box type degrees. These are legit degrees where you get a job and you do it in less than a year and you pay a fraction of the price. And I know a lot of people are probably very skeptical of this, and I don't blame you. Most universities do not allow you to do what I'm about to show you, but there are a select few that do. So there's going to be seven overall steps. And let's go ahead and jump in right now with step one, which is you need to evaluate your current situation. So I want you to make a list of the certifications or certificates that you have. I want you to make a list of all the college classes that you've already taken, all the AP or IB classes you've taken, any classes that you might have tested out of. Sometimes if you have professional experience or military experience, you can actually use that experience to test out of classes as well. So make sure you put that on this list, too. So you want to have an updated transcript and resume on hand for this step. Next, you want to have a really good idea of what career you are going for. Now, I know that this is more easily said than done, but there are three resources that I recommend to you in order to figure out the perfect career. The first resource is my video, How to Find the Perfect Career for You. That's a really great video. Definitely check that out. The second resource is my free six step guide to finding your dream career. That's available in a lot of my different videos. I post it down below. And then the third resource is this really good career aptitude test, which Careerexplorer.com does. I've looked at so many different career tests and Careerexplorer.com has the best one. So definitely check that one out as well. So before you enter college, you want to at least have an idea of what type of career path you want to get into. Now, you might change your mind down the line, and that's totally fine if you do. No problem. But you want to go into college with a plan. It's so important that you have a plan before you go into college. Now, once you know what career you want to go for, that's going to make it very easy to figure out if you need a college degree in the first place. And if you do, which college degree you should go for. Now, you can shorten the length of just about any college degree out there. For instance, I was able to get a doctorate in five years and nine months. I did that through a series of different methods, but, you know, one of them was attending an accelerated university. And there's a bunch of different methods you can use to do this, such as taking CLEP exams, taking classes during high school, taking extra classes, testing out of classes. And I've made many videos on the different ways that you can, you know, shave two years off your college degree, for instance. I'll link that up here. However, there are certain types of degrees that you can shorten much more than others. So using these other methods, you might be able to get your degree at a normal university down to, you know, two and a half, maybe even two years, which is amazing considering the average bachelor's degree takes 5.1 years. But if you want to shorten your degree to even less than that, in some cases as little as two months, then that is what the rest of this video is going to be about. And yes, I did say two months. You can legitimately get a bachelor's degree that's respected. It's not like a crackerjack degree in two months. And my friend Josh Maticor actually did exactly that. And it was with one of the harder degrees, which is computer science. And then right afterwards, he got an offer from a fang company. So it was a totally legit degree. It's respected by the biggest and the best companies in the world. But there are only specific types of degrees that you can do this with. But the good news is these types of degrees tend to be some of the better ones. So, for instance, you can do it with just about any type of business degree, accounting, marketing, human resource management, health care management, information technology management, business management, as well as a bunch of different MBA degrees, which are master's level degrees. You can also do it with pretty much any type of education degree, elementary education, special education, mathematics education, etc., as well as different master level degrees too. And you can do it with pretty much any technology related degree. So something like information technology, computer science, cloud computing, cybersecurity, data analytics, health information management, etc., as well as master degrees too. And finally, you can do it with many different types of health related degrees, although it is somewhat limited. Nursing, health information management, health services coordination, as well as master's degrees like MBA and health care management. So there are some really good choices here when it comes to degree hacking, when it comes to the options that you can pick. So once you know which degree you're going for, we're going to go ahead and move on to step two, which is you need to find a competency-based education model university. So what exactly is competency-based education? Well, the best way to describe competency-based education is to first talk about what traditional universities do. So at a traditional university, they say it takes four years, but in reality, it usually takes over five years on average for you to get your bachelor's degree, and then another two to three years to get your master's. The reason it takes so long is because you have to buy textbooks, you have to show up to class, you have to do group projects, you have to go to labs, and then finally, after you do all that stuff, it takes a long amount of time, you take a test which determines whether you are competent in the subject or not. You don't go at your own pace, you go at the pace of the class as well as the professor. Now, the problem with this is whether or not it actually takes four to five years for you to learn the information necessary to get your degree, universities are going to try to make you go to school for four to five years because they make more money. The longer you go to school, the more money they make. It's pretty simple. So they're really incentivized to drag things out, teach you slowly, and make you take classes that have nothing to do with your major. So for instance, when it comes to the difficulty or rigor of a major, there really is no comparison between an education degree and an engineering degree. Engineering is clearly much, much more difficult than an education degree. It truly does take four to five years for someone to get an engineering degree. Now, I know that everybody has their strengths and weaknesses, but engineering just simply is objectively more difficult than education. But because of the fact that colleges make more money, they try to drag out that education degree into four or five years, even though realistically, it could very easily be done in one to two. It's a scam. Now, on top of this, traditional universities tend to be incredibly strict about what classes they allow you to transfer in. They're also very strict about what classes they allow you to test out of. And it makes sense because, again, if you test out of a bunch of classes or you transfer in a bunch of classes, they're going to make less money. So what competency based universities and competency based education models do is they allow you to go at your own pace. So if you want to work extra hard and get through a degree fast, they allow you to do that as long as you are competent. You're not judged based on how much time you spend on the degree. You're judged based upon how you do on the quizzes and the tests. Now, there are many competency based colleges out there that are popping up, but some of them are clearly better than others. Now, some really good options that are very gracious with the transfer credits that they accept and they also do a competency based model or something very similar to that are going to be Western Governors University, which is WGU, Thomas Edison State University, which is TESU, Excelsior College, Charter Oak State College, University of Maine at Presque Isle, which is UMPI, and Southern New Hampshire University, which is SNHU. Now, these different schools offer different degrees in some cases. So one might be better for your situation because they offer the degree that you want. And if you're wondering whether these schools are good or not, WGU actually ranked number four on College Factual's list of schools that have the best value. And this was out of over 1,400 schools. Thomas Edison State University ranked number 14. And with all of these colleges that I mentioned, the degrees can be done online. So they are extremely convenient. And all of them are relatively affordable as well. Not only are they cheaper than the average school per year, but you can also get the degrees done faster. Many people report graduating from a school like WGU, for instance, with less than $10,000 of total cost, whereas the average degree nationwide in the United States cost over $80,000. Now, the school that has the most reviews online, the biggest community, and the biggest network effects in general is WGU or Western Governors University. So I am going to be using them for my example in the rest of this video, but definitely check out the other ones. And one thing I'll mention is before the pandemic, these types of colleges typically were only for people who are already in a career, and they wanted to get a degree in order to switch careers. That was the major demographic of the types of people who attended these colleges. But since the pandemic happened, and all colleges went online, things have changed. Many people who are 17, 18 years old are enrolling in these different types of colleges, because they realized if they're getting the same experience with an online school as they're getting with a normal school, they might as well attend the cheaper and better online school so that they can finish with a lot less debt, and they can do it much faster. So this school isn't just for busy adults anymore. A lot of people are adopting this alternative education model. Now, by the way, when you do select your college, do not enroll yet, right? That is going to be several steps down the line. I cannot emphasize this enough. Do not enroll. But once you've selected the college, we are going to move on to step three, which is you are going to contact a counselor at the college. You're going send them your transcript, your resume, all that information that I told you to gather before. And then what they should do is they should send you back a list of classes that you would have to take. Basically, they'll send you back the curriculum. Now, different schools will do this differently, but typically, they're just going to send you some sort of list via email or something along those lines. So this is a really easy step. And what makes it even easier is the fact that my friend Josh Matakor and I actually made an entire spreadsheet that maps out all of WGU's classes. This is basically a way of making it super, super easy for you to do all of the next steps. So definitely check that out while you're following along. I'm going to put that down in the pinned comment below as well as the description. And it's probably going to be useful even if you don't go to WGU. But if you want me to try to map out the classes for all of the other schools as well, let me know. It's a massive amount of work. But if you guys really want me to do it, I can do that as well. So once you know which classes you have to take, we're going to go ahead and move on to step number four now, which is we are going to test out of classes. Now, again, we are not enrolling in college. If you enroll, you're going to be throwing money into a fire, OK? Do not enroll yet. Even if the counselor tries to get you to enroll at this point, don't do it. Remember, it's in their best interest that you enroll in college even while you're doing this process because they will make more money. So even though I really love these colleges, they still might be incentivized to get you to enroll as fast as possible. Now, there are three websites that are well known for being really good for taking classes that you can either test out of or transfer in credits to a lot of these different schools, including WGU. These three websites are Study.com, StraighterLine.com, and Sophia.org. Now, in my experience with my coaching clients, as well as talking to Josh Matakor, who is basically the king of WGU, I mean, he literally got a degree in two months. He did like a speed run on a computer science degree and was able to get it in two months. Study.com is the best one, right? It's the most reliable. It's the best one. It has the most classes. It has the least amount of issues transferring in. It's also one where when you take the classes, they do a really good job, and you're able to get it done very quickly. But with that being said, sometimes StraighterLine or Sophia offer classes that Study.com doesn't. It's pretty rare, but sometimes they do. So on that spreadsheet that I linked below, I have the exact classes that are recommended to take on Study.com to transfer into WGU. And if Study.com doesn't offer it, we have the Sophia or the StraighterLine class that you can take as well. So we basically did all of the work for you. This is a massive amount of work, and it's all organized in one easy-to-use sheet. Now, if you do choose to use Study.com, there is a 30% off for the first three months coupon code that they gave me. All you have to do is type in Shane Hummus at checkout. Now, typically, there are 35 to 40 classes you have to take in order to get a bachelor's degree. And in many cases, after you get done using Study.com, you typically only have 10 to 20 classes left to take, and in some cases, less than 10. And a lot of my students tell me that they're able to knock out a lot of these classes, especially the general education ones, in less than a day. So you're taking a class that would usually take you an entire semester in one day, and you're doing it at a fraction of the price. Now, additionally to this, there are certain certifications that you might take anyways if you're going to go into the career that also transfer into WGU. And we put those on the spreadsheet as well. So again, this is just like a master list makes everything so easy for you. If you made it this far into the video and you appreciate all of our hard work, go ahead, share it, like, comment down below, do something that will help with the algorithm. Now, after you've taken all these classes on Study.com, Sophia, and straighter line, and maybe you've taken a certification and you've tested out of it, whatever you want to do, go ahead, let your counselor know. Let your counselor know all the classes and transfer all of that into WGU or whatever school you're attending. And so theoretically speaking, let's say you took three months to complete this step, which is completely possible. At this point, you're still not going to enroll, right? There's still one more step before you enroll, and that is the next one, which is pre-game your remaining classes. And by pre-game, I mean you are going to pre-study the classes that you have left, right? So you transferred all those classes into your counselor. They gave you a list of the classes you have left, or if you're using the Excel spreadsheet down below, you pretty much already know which ones you have left already. Then you move on to step five, which is to pre-game your classes. And what you're going to be essentially doing here is whichever classes you have left, you're going to study them on your own. Now, there are many different ways to do this, and it really depends on the classes that you have left, of course, but there's lots of resources out there online for you to self-study. So for instance, Khan Academy is phenomenal. I think everybody has used Khan Academy before. They're amazing. If you're doing the computer science degree, there's free Code Camp. There's the Odin Project. There's YouTube. A lot of the time, YouTube, you can just look up tutorials on there. There's lots of people that explain stuff. Study.com even offers a bunch of free classes. It's just that if you want to get credit for them, you do have to pay at the end in order to take the test. And the best resource of all, I would check out the WGU subreddit because they have strategies for how to study for the different tests on there. Now, once you feel like you've pre-studied all these classes and you feel really confident about what you've done and you think you're going to be able to pass the classes relatively quickly, this is the point where you would actually enroll, right? And in our hypothetical example, let's say this takes you three months, although you could probably do it a lot faster than that. So at this point, you are six months into the process of getting your degree and you haven't enrolled yet. And this is where you would actually move on to step six, which is you would enroll in one of the universities, right? So you'd contact your guidance counselor. You'd say, hey, I'm ready to go. Let's go ahead and enroll. Now at WGU, you actually pay by the term. So a term takes six months, for instance. And so you can finish as many classes as you want within that six month term. And that is typically what you would want to aim for in terms of finishing the degree. And for many of the different degrees, if you use these strategies, you can finish them within six months. Now, there are some exceptions, for instance, with the nursing degrees, you do have to do some experiential rotation. So it's going to take you longer than that, but there's still a heck of a lot faster than most schools out there. And remember, there are extreme cases like Josh's example, where he was able to do this in two months. So you finish all the classes within that six month term. And that means the total amount of time it took you to get your degree was three months plus three months plus an additional six. And the total amount of time that you were enrolled in WGU was just six months. And as of recording this video, WGU typically charges three to four thousand dollars per term. So if you follow the steps in this video and use the strategies, you were able to graduate with a bachelor's degree for probably around three to four thousand, definitely less than five thousand dollars. And you were able to do all of it in a year or less. So just to use an example, I'm going to go through a computer science degree at WGU, since that's a very popular degree on this channel. And we're going to talk about it step by step, how long it would take and what you would do. So I'm going to go ahead and jump into the computer really quickly. All right. So if you downloaded the sheet, this is going to be something like what it looks like. This is the curriculum for the computer science degree at WGU. So as you can see here, there are a ton of different, you know, study dot com transfers. There's also a few certificates that you can get as well in order to test out of classes. So let's say you did step number one and you had a few classes that you did because you attended community college right after high school. So you tested out of a few classes. You also took an AP class during high school. And on top of that, you also did a certification. So let's see what this would look like after you transfer those into WGU. And I'm just going to go ahead and go to the second tab here. All right. So as we see, you know, you took the English class at community college. You took a communications class. You also took an art class. So you were able to transfer all of those in. On top of that, you took AP calculus during high school. So you're able to transfer that in. And you got this certification, the ITIL certification, because you thought you might want to go into IT, but you decided against it. And same thing goes for the CompTIA Project Plus certification. You are also able to transfer that in. So I just went ahead and put a line through them. But if you want to, you could just delete the entire row as well, whatever you think looks better. So at this point, you would move on to the next step, which is you would start testing out of Now, if you use Study.com for all of the available classes, which as you can see, there's quite a few of them. This is what it would look like. So I went ahead and I crossed it out with a line, but I also made it red to indicate that you tested out of them using Study.com. So as you can see, most of the classes you tested out of, there's not that many that are left. And so at this point, you would move on to the next step, which is you would transfer all of those classes in. You'd talk to which would probably look something like this. So as you can see, there's really only one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and then the capstone. So eight classes plus the capstone, nine classes total that you have to take in order to graduate with your bachelor's degree. So at this point, you'd move on to the next step, which is you would pre-study all of these classes. And you could use a lot of different resources. Khan Academy would be great for discrete mathematics, data structures, and algorithms. Free Code Academy would be great for a lot of the programming stuff. You can also check out the Odin Project. Josh recommends Code with Mosh. He really likes Code with Mosh. That is a paid resource. A lot of the time, Udemy can be pretty good. And if you don't want to pay for it, you know, a lot of the time, YouTube has a lot of great resources. It might take a little bit longer. It might not be quite as structured, but you can still do it on YouTube for free. So you'd pre-study these classes. And once you feel comfortable, what you do is you would go ahead and tell your enrollment counselor that you are ready to enroll. You'd enroll in WGU or whatever university you want to go to. And you would knock those classes out as fast as possible. And finally, once you're done with all of this, congratulations, you'd move on to the very last step, step number seven, which is you would graduate with your degree. And you'd probably bragged to all your friends that you finished your bachelor's degree in less than six months. Everybody will think that you're a genius. And hopefully, if you're a nice person, you'll share this video with them so that they can be geniuses as well. Now, like I said, I mapped out the curriculum for WGU. If you want me to do that at TESU, Excelsior, and some of those other colleges, let me know. And if you enjoyed this video, check out my other video right here. I made it just for you. Go ahead, gently tap that like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera that you have on the video. And I will see you next time.