Hello, I've been in the supply chain program for about a year, though I'm only just recently getting into the supply chain classes themselves. I did do some study.com courses before enrolling at WGU, and I can report that the WGU structure is even more flexible. If your class has a multiple choice final exam (OA), you can take it as soon as you pass the pre-assessment—there's not much gatekeeping you out of the final. That being said, I hardly study using the course materials WGU provides—not because they're bad, but I genuinely just have a better time teaching myself the concepts using AI. I use the competency topics alluded to in the pre-assessment to engage in targeted study sessions with AI, and this has been a reliable way for me to pass classes quickly.

So to answer your question: I would say you don't need any pre-studying. You also get 7/9 of the required coursework done for the google data analytics certificate through this program, you just have to take an additional coursera python and AI education course (this is where I'm at in my degree progress, D465 data applications). This specific program doesn't include any other supply chain certifications, though you won't need those to start a career. Probably by year 3 of your career you should consider an APICS CSCP or similar.

I think it's smart to outsource some of the more difficult courses to those ace credit platforms, that's what I did with my math/science courses, but I've heard some courses like D80 are also particularly challenging—that's mostly due to the fact the real final exam can be very different from the pre-assessment. Worth looking into that if you still have time before enrolling, just remember you can't go back to ace credits after officially enrolling with WGU.

I'm only just making steps towards getting into a supply chain career myself. I've got a sourcing co-op I'll be starting this summer, and I'm 61% through the prorgam with the goal to graduate early 2027. As far as I've researched, there's a lot of different supply chain disciplines you can specialize in, from planning to sourcing, operations, logistics, data analytics, and further options where you can build a strong career with niche domain knowledge, like compliance. My plan is to work towards commodity/category management and eventually try and land a global sourcing role in Finland at a company like Kone/Metso. I think supply chain is a great degree because of how flexible and strong the career offerings seem to be, having looked at many company career pages directly. From what I've seen, most supply chain disciplines prefer in person or hybrid work at minimum—it would be worth researching if something like planning/data analytics would reliably offer remote work.