College Network

mzscooby · Jan 10, 2011

I personally feel like The College Network is a waste of time. I feel taken advantage of and now I'm stuck paying $7000 for nothing. TCN is NOT affiliated with Excelsior College (I know because I spoke with the admissions office @ Excelsior). All TCN is is a test prep and 3rd party. You DO NOT need them to get your education. My advice to anyone thinking about going through TCN is thoroughly research them. I wish I did!!!!! Now I have to fight to try and get out of this bogus contract. Now unfortunately I may have to put getting my RN on hold because I have 2 pay back a $7000 loan. :mad: So disappointed!!!!

Inlandnurse · Feb 8, 2011

I recently signed up for The College Network to finish my nursing career but now that I have read some of the threads I don't think that was a very good idea. I want to discontinue my services and I was wondering if that was possible I also wanted to know if excelsior would be a better choice or should I just do traditional college classroom.

Ok, I hope your three business days have not expired. This what happened to me, after California fired excelsior college from our state. I was told by a college network sales person about the new LVN to BSN at Indiana State. I was told that I only needed $100.00 down and I would only have to pay $140.00 a month. I started with the lifespan module. That was five years ago and $7000.00 later. I have still not tested out of lifespan. LOL! The sales person did tell me that I only had three days to change my mind. The LVN nursing students in California are desperate. They took away the one program that allowed the LVN to continue to work take care of your family and go to school to complete your RN. When I found out about this new program in my state that did the same thing as EC I signed up for it with out thinking If this was good for me. I did this before California approved the program. It would have been much more had I waited after the approval.

I tried to plan a schedule and just study but I could not find the motivation. It takes a disciplined self motivated person to study very uninteresting subjects. That was while I was working full time and I had small children. It was in 2009 after being laid off as a nurse case manager due to the hospital wanting Magnet status I got serious about advancing my career. I called the college network like many times before. I was told that I could not get any refund on exams I did not take. I have a lifetime membership and I could trade in the modules for another program. I finally got real with myself and went to the ISU website and found out about their agreement with a community college - Ivy Tech. I was able to take all of my phase one classes on line. I switched out some of the general ed modules with the college network. They were nice to do that. I am now studying the nursing modules with out difficulty. Oh, I almost forgot I was able to get financial aid while going to Ivy Tech. :lol2: They won't give you a cash refund. I am not going to put the college network down. I am sure it is helpful to some people. Just make sure that it is right for you. I wasted thousands of dollars. :crying2:

Inlandnurse · Feb 8, 2011

I personally feel like The College Network is a waste of time. I feel taken advantage of and now I'm stuck paying $7000 for nothing. TCN is NOT affiliated with Excelsior College (I know because I spoke with the admissions office @ Excelsior). All TCN is is a test prep and 3rd party. You DO NOT need them to get your education. My advice to anyone thinking about going through TCN is thoroughly research them. I wish I did!!!!! Now I have to fight to try and get out of this bogus contract. Now unfortunately I may have to put getting my RN on hold because I have 2 pay back a $7000 loan. So disappointed!!!!

They will work with. Tomorrow is not promised to us. Don't put your education on hold. Go for it!

LadyinScrubs, ASN, RN · Feb 18, 2011

Telling people to "expect a high pressure sales pitch" an opinionated statement that doesn't reflect 100% truth, so the only reason to write that would be to scare people...unless YOU have personally met with a cn rep -- but it doesn't sound like you have.
If what you're pointing out is "almost obvious" then your basically calling everyone who has used college network to earn their RN an idiot IMO. there are thousands of nurses who have been successful using college network and I suggest looking through the stories on their website.

One does NOT need to use The College Network--and I would advise against it; should one wish to transfer to another college. I do not believe TCN has an accreditation; TCN classes/credits are accepted by only a few colleges and their credits are not transferable to most colleges. Community colleges offer the same courses at a minimal cost, they are accredited, and their units are transferable; but you have to take the classes at the college and attend class. If you are working full time, you have to determine which program is best for you.

I can only talk about my experience with The College Network and ISU. I did meet with the rep. Fortunately, I had all my pre requisites and other university courses complete. I only needed to take the 4 challenge courses. When Bryan, their rep for my area, found out that I had completed all my undergrade and pre requisites and would not be taking any classes other than the challenge course, he quickly left me with the paperwork. I was able to look at the contract and info at my leisure without pressure.

I considered all my options and decided to pay the $1800 for the 4 challenge courses (actually all I got was the books and I did the independent studying). When I contacted Bryan to sign up, he would not return my calls. Since TCN requires that the rep complete the contract, and the two of us had to sign it before it was valid, I had a problem. Instead, I called TCN home office and their customer service did a phone enrollment.

My testing was done through ISU. It should be noted that one must enroll in the university and enroll in the challenge class to take the tests (each challenge class costs about $300-400.) I had the nursing books for the challenge courses and had a good but dusty knowledge of the subjects. Instead of purchasing the TCN challenge books, I could have pruchased the Lippincott subject review books for about $25-40. Instead, I decided to shell out the money to TCN--because ISU stated that TCN review books were designed with the exams in mind. After taking the exams, I found the info in their books was very similar to the Lippincott review books. I also found that much of the same info was also covered in the NCLEX review, rationale, and question book. I did recognize many of the NCLEX review questions on the ISU challenge tests. Bottomline: I could have saved the money and studied on my own. Hindsight is 20/20.

Please do not misunderstand, the TCN ISU challenge books were well written and comprehensive. The e-books are available through the TCN website, but I found reading off the computer very tiring. Their customer service said that for another $50 +/- for each book TCN will send a hard copy. Ordered the hard copy book and my eyes were happy. They made life easier as I did not have access to the internet where I did much of my studying. Since I work 3rd shift, I did all my studying between problems and other issues. It took me about 3 months to complete and test out of the 4 ISU DL nursing challenge courses.