Electives, different between AS and AAS, and Math

Nursing Students Excelsior

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Hello,

Sorry if these questions have been answered but I am having trouble finding information about this.

It's actually 3 questions:

1) What is the different between AS and AAS programs? does it matter?

2) What electives are you allowed to choose? What do you recommend? I'm having a hard time finding a list of classes to choose from.

3) What about math? Where do you guys take this class? it's not offered in registration.

Thanks

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Specializes in Med/Surg, LTACH, LTC, Home Health.

Here is my take on your questions. The difference in AS and AAS is in the electives. For the nursing degree, an EC advisor told me that in AAS, you can take whatever electives I wanted to take, such as art classes or English classes, etc. but the AS required that I take electives specific to the area of science, such as psychology, sociology, biology, etc. I don't know if it matters for other degrees, but for nursing, it didn't matter for an ASN/RN. Now, there may be additional requirements should you decide to go further than the ASN/AAS. In my case, since I chose the ASN, I was allowed to take whatever electives I wanted for the BSN since I had already met all of the required science portions in electives as well as required sections.

As for choices, CLEP exams offers almost everything, if not all, that you would need. I would suggest that you ask an advisor to instruct you on which exams could be taken for the AS and the AAS degree. For a jump start on acquiring an easy 6 credits, I've taken and recommended Analyzing & Interpreting Literature. It is a CLEP exam and is easily passable without studying for it. I took this exam based solely off the word of others before me who had taken it. I literally heard about the exam on one day, registered for it the next day, and took/passed it on day number three with a score of 62 (only needed a score of 50 to pass all CLEP exams). Just in case you're not familiar with CLEP exams, the scores are not grades. A score of 50 is equivalent to a C.

Finally, any college-level math course is accepted. But again, get the official word from your advisor. CLEP also offers an Algebra exam for the math whizzes of the world. Unfortunately, I was not one of them. I took College Algebra online through DeVry. I believe some students use Aleks.com, UExcel, or DSST. You may want to double check the Excelsior College website for a math offering because Excelsior College offers every course or exam needed to meet degree requirements that they offer.

I hope this helps! Good luck! :)

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Specializes in Med/Surg, LTACH, LTC, Home Health.
Excelsior College | 1. Choose Your Exam
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