Cost of Excelsior?

One of my coworkers is taking the Excelsior program and states it will cost her $11,000. Another person says it will cost her $7,500. It all depends on where you obtain your materials. You will spend a great deal of money if you purchase your materials from publishing companies such as the College Network or RUE. On the other hand, you will save money if you obtain the materials directly from Excelsior or from auction sites such as Ebay.com

I have a question.....can you do your COMPLETE ADN with them or do you have to also go to a community college? I am going to Concorde so it is a private school that is accelerated.

You can fully complete your ADN degree with Excelsior without setting foot in a traditional community college. However, it helps if you complete a few prereqs at a local community college.

I might just have to look into that....happen to know how long it takes? I am already spending 23k on my LPN but I would love to work at my own pace for the ADN! I was sort of looking at Inidian sate for the BSN though

helo
im with college network it i was told that its more if you purchase threw excelsior. And i did all my preeqs at a community college cause its cheaper, and now im doing my nursing classes

you don't have to take your pre-req's at a community college. you can use EC exams, or CLEP or DANTES exams. I needed all the pre-req's and I did it using all EC exams and 1 CLEP.

I didn't buy any College Network, Chancellor's, Moore, RUE, etc. I got the textbooks either free from a friend (who also got them free...long story), and I got others I needed from half.com. You can get them cheap if you look. I didn't use anyone else's "notes" off ebay. If you trust those, as some students have, you can get yourself burned. Read the material you need. Get a good NCLEX review book (I used Saunder's). I swear, everything that EC wants you to know is reviewed in it. If I had problems with an area, I woud read the book, google info, whatever I needed till I understood the content.

The most expensive part will be the CPNE, simply because you need travel, lodging, etc.

I can't believe the publishing co. are telling people it's "MORE" to go through EC? That's crazy! It's MORE to pay all the same fees that EC requires and then also pay for "their" study guides! Wow. Some of those "study systems" are over 300 dollars a piece. That's adding 3-5,000 dollars over the cost you will be paying EC to test out on the exams (or CLEP, or CC, etc). Don't fall for that.

And if you're wondering how long it takes (one poster did...). There is a 7 year limit on the ADN program. You can go as fast as you want (I completed all the credits in about a year or so) or as slow as you want. However, once you get to CPNE time, EC does move slow. It takes a month to get a date, then depending on how long it takes to study for CPNE, maybe six months. They say up to 9 months to wait for cpne date. Then post CPNE, you must wait for them 4-6 weeks to update your status, and then you'll be assigned a graduation date. Each state is different in whether you can take NCLEX before you "graduate" or whether you can just send a complete transcript. Kinda confusing for those who haven't been through that yet, but I hope I described it fair. So the biggest wait is for the CPNE, definately.

Oh, the whole program cost me about 6,000. Just FYI. Good Luck!!!

you finished the program, i confused because collegenetwork told me to go threw them cause its cheaper, in know they take 92 dollars out my account every month

The College Network is nothing more than an expensive publishing company that sells Excelsior materials. It is totally unnecessary to go through the College Network because they serve as a middleman, collecting money along the way.

The College Network can't honestly make a claim to be the cheaper way to go. As other posters have said, there are numerous ways of reducing costs without paying unnecessary fees to publishing companies. While I bought many of the books that Excelsior recommended, I checked out some of them from the library, returning them when I finished and incurring no cost.