chamberlain or Western governors for RN to MSN?

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Hi there,

 

I am finally getting my butt back to school after taking a year off to start my RN career. I have looked into WGU and Chamberlain for my RN to MSN program. Looking for any input on either of the schools from current students or alumni. Any info would be greatly appreciated because I am having a hard time choosing which program to enroll in ?

 

Thank you ?

Specializes in Nurse Leader specializing in Labor & Delivery.
Chamberlain College's RN-to-BSN program costs in the $17k to $21k range, depending on how many transfer credits are accepted.

WGU's RN-to-BSN program costs in the $3,500 to $10,500 range, depending on how quickly the coursework is completed. I personally paid $5,800 to complete 34 credits in 10 months. :)

And Bob's your uncle!

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Specializes in Emergency, Case Management, Informatics.
Interesting that Chamberlain is affiliated with DeVry. I have a electronics degree from them. Excelsior College would not accept any of those credits, maybe Chamberlain would?

From all I'm hearing though, WGU sounds good.

Are you looking to get into the BSN program or the RN-to-MSN program? I only ask because WGU will not accept any Master's-level transfer credit, but will likely accept some or all of your credits from DeVry.

If you have an ADN, you will get at least 55 transfer credits. With your (I assume) Bachelor's from DeVry, you will get more. Here is WGU's policy on CC credit transfers. I could not find any specific information on students transferring in with a Bachelor's degree: Community College Transfers | Online University Admissions | Western Governors University Online

I transferred in with an ASN from Excelsior and a handful of random credits that I'd racked up from other sources. IIRC, I only had to complete 35 CU's (credit equivalents), and all of those were the upper-division nursing courses.

My experience with WGU's BSN program was so great that I continued on to get my MBA Healthcare Management. The only reason I didn't pursue an MSN through WGU was that I thought I wanted to be a Nurse Practitioner, so I went with a local university FNP program. Turns out, I don't want to be an NP and I'm now in that university's Executive Leadership MSN. I would have saved myself a ton of time, headache, and money if I had been smart and gone straight through the RN-to-MSN program.

But, hey, that's life.

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Are you looking to get into the BSN program or the RN-to-MSN program? I only ask because WGU will not accept any Master's-level transfer credit, but will likely accept some or all of your credits from DeVry.

If you have an ADN, you will get at least 55 transfer credits. With your (I assume) Bachelor's from DeVry, you will get more. Here is WGU's policy on CC credit transfers. I could not find any specific information on students transferring in with a Bachelor's degree: Community College Transfers | Online University Admissions | Western Governors University Online

I transferred in with an ASN from Excelsior and a handful of random credits that I'd racked up from other sources. IIRC, I only had to complete 35 CU's (credit equivalents), and all of those were the upper-division nursing courses.

My experience with WGU's BSN program was so great that I continued on to get my MBA Healthcare Management. The only reason I didn't pursue an MSN through WGU was that I thought I wanted to be a Nurse Practitioner, so I went with a local university FNP program. Turns out, I don't want to be an NP and I'm now in that university's Executive Leadership MSN. I would have saved myself a ton of time, headache, and money if I had been smart and gone straight through the RN-to-MSN program.

But, hey, that's life.

Wow great info Murse901, and thanks to everyone who has responded. Chamberlain is out. I am considering WGU and have also heard about the U of Texas at Arlington program and someone mentioned Purdue as well. Have not looked at those two yet.

I'm a January graduate of EC's ADN program and going for the ADN to BSN degree. One possible bump in the road, hopefully only a rumor, is that WGU may make me re do A&P and Micro..is that true?

I graduated from DeVry in the dinosaur era ha ha..1983 with a degree in Electronics Technology..like a 2 year degree..worked in the field for 25 years and doing a career change now. Not sure if that will help but I will ask. EC would not take any of those credits or my LPN vocational school stuff.

Thanks again.

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Specializes in Nurse Leader specializing in Labor & Delivery.
One possible bump in the road, hopefully only a rumor, is that WGU may make me re do A&P and Micro..is that true?

If you can provide documentation that there was a lab component to the classes, you should not have to redo them.

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If you can provide documentation that there was a lab component to the classes, you should not have to redo them.

No labs with EC..big fat books though ha ha..

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I just checked out University of Texas at Arlington. Anyone doing that one? Heard some good comments on a few nursing groups on fb.

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Specializes in Nurse Leader specializing in Labor & Delivery.
I just checked out University of Texas at Arlington. Anyone doing that one? .

I'd guess no, since this is the WGU forum. I know there are some threads about UTA in the online degree programs forum.

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Specializes in Outpatient/Clinic, ClinDoc.
No labs with EC..big fat books though ha ha..

You will have to redo A/P and micro (I'm also an excelsior grad) but you will find them MUCH easier than the EC versions. Micro is a very easy test and it took me a weekend to do physiology. The lab was no big deal, took a week of fiddling with test tubes. :) So total less than two weeks to redo those classes.

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Specializes in Emergency, Case Management, Informatics.
I graduated from DeVry in the dinosaur era ha ha..1983 with a degree in Electronics Technology..like a 2 year degree..worked in the field for 25 years and doing a career change now. Not sure if that will help but I will ask. EC would not take any of those credits or my LPN vocational school stuff.

Thanks again.

Unfortunately, probably not much will transfer from your DeVry degree if it's an Associate's. That's just based on my assumption that it's probably an Applied Science degree with lots of vocation-specific courses. Any GenEd courses should transfer, but your ADN would take care of those anyway. Still, you have to send in that DeVry transcript, so it doesn't hurt to look and see what they'll give you credit for.

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Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
I just checked out University of Texas at Arlington. Anyone doing that one? Heard some good comments on a few nursing groups on fb.
This is the Western Governors University forum. If you want more feedback on UT Arlington's BSN program, click on the link below to get to the UTA forum:

https://allnurses.com/university-texas-arlington/

By the way, I live only a few miles from UT Arlington. The school's nursing programs have a great local reputation, but I still wouldn't enroll in their RN-to-BSN program because too many prerequisite courses are required that are specific (e.g. Texas history, Texas government, etc.) and time-consuming.

My coworker enrolled in UTA's online BSN program in January 2014 and she's still working on the prerequisite coursework to this date. I enrolled in WGU's online BSN program several months after my coworker and graduated 10 months later.

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So much great info. I am trying to decide between WGU and Chamberlian. My ultimate goal is FNP, would one school have an advantage over the other ?

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Thanks- yours is a very helpful post! I'm looking at WGU for RN to MSN after 4.5 years in acute care/cardiac step-down.

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