Excelsior College RN to BSN

TiffyRN, BSN, PhD · Jul 24, 2014

Let me copy/paste a response I gave to this same kind of inquiry back in May. I finished up last December.

I just finished the Excelsior RN to BSN program a few months ago. I did not attend EC for ADN. I'll try to give a summarized version of pros & cons.

Cons:

1. You can't run through this program in less than a year unless you are incredibly talented or the rules have changed. 3 major barriers; A. You can't start any online courses until you finish their Information Literacy course which runs over 8 weeks. You can't get this course anywhere else; only the EC course will fulfill their requirement (when I went, you could take it through Penn Foster). B. You can't take any BSN nursing courses until you take the expository writing course ENG 201 Writing for the Professions which is given as a 15 week course. There is one other acceptable course given through BYU and it's not exactly accelerated. On the positive, the EC course is excellent to teach you how to write the exact kind of paper you will need to write through the rest of your EC path. C. You can take Research (the course or the exam) until you finish Statistics. This is a reasonable requirement but could slow you down. D. You must finish all the rest of the nursing courses before you take the final course; Capstone.

2 . This is the information age people. When a professor posts final grades for a semester, it shouldn't take a week or two to give you official credit for this course. Especially important when you are trying to get into the courses I described above (trying to get credit for the writing course, statistics, any other course so you can get a seat in Capstone).

3. Possible pro/con: Depends on your style: EC has very few BSN courses that are available to be done by exam unlike their ADN courses. At this time, there are still quite a few general education courses but for the BSN nursing courses there is only Community-based Nursing and Research in Nursing. Note: EC is discontinuing these exams as of January 2015 making all their nursing courses traditional online courses.

Pros:

1. EC is very generous in accepting credit (except with that writing course and information literacy). They try to plug every college credit you have into some hole. They accept CLEP/DSST/ACE credits, they give credit for many nursing specialty certifications.

2. They are pretty reasonably priced compared with others. My BSN, which included my getting about 20 credits of general eds (I used plenty of CLEP/DSST) cost me approximately $12,000. Thankfully I got about $7,500 in reimbursement from my employer (could have gotten more if I had timed things better).

3. Overall reasonable quality of professors. I had quite a few outstanding professors, a couple of mediocre ones and maybe one I felt was below par.

4. This is no fly-by-night diploma mill. You will get "properly schooled" and if you are open to it, you will actually be exposed to excellent material that can elevate the level of your practice. If you are not open to it, you can probably cruise through unaffected.

As to the specific question about writing papers:

There are many papers to write. This is an easy way to evaluate learning without having to put people through proctered exams. Every 3 credit course will likely require 2 major papers. The weekly postings require minimally 250-500 words to meet requirements.

I have my issues with EC (doesn't everybody have an issue with their school?) but overall, this college provided a very high quality program. You can find cheaper and faster ways to go but they are a solid program.

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Jul 24, 2014

Welcome to Allnurses.com!

Your post has been moved to the Excelsior forum with the goal of attracting responses from others who have completed their nursing programs.

Medic85907 · Jul 24, 2014

I haven't finished my ADN yet but one point. Information Literacy took me about four hours to complete from start to passing with an A. It doesn't take eight weeks to finish.

TiffyRN, BSN, PhD · Jul 24, 2014

True, hardly anyone takes 8 weeks to finish Info Lit, but it doesn't matter as you can't start any other online courses until that 8 weeks has past and the grade posted.

MallysMama · Jul 27, 2014

I did my RN-BSN through Excelsior. One thing I didn't realize at the time was that the courses you can test out of still give you a grade that goes towards your GPA. (I had assumed the tests were pass/fail...and figured as long as I passed- I'd be good to go!) I passed the tests with almost no studying....and got C's that killed my otherwise excellent GPA. Looking back now- I should have retaken them (and studied first). I'm now looking into grad school and worrying about my GPA holding me back. So- make sure you study before testing out of the classes!!

NotMyProblem MSN, ASN, BSN, MSN, LPN, RN · Jul 27, 2014

I'm on week 13 of the 15-week final course of the program. As of January 1st, 2015, all nursing components will be course-option only. The courses are very doable. I entered the nursing portion last August 26th and am now 2-3 weeks away from being done! I didn't have to take the nursing elective because I received my ASN from EC in 2010. I took the BYU Persuasive Writing course and some others have taking a comparable course from LSU. The BYU course is self-paced and they give you a year to complete it. I did it in 2 months but it could have been completed sooner but the grading turn-around sucks! It doesn't teach you any particular format, though. You have to already know MLA, or APA (a must for EC courses). Although I have had my issues with EC, they were not course-content related and I highly recommend their RN-BSN program.

Karen014 · Jul 30, 2014

Where did you hear that EC is no longer having credit by test and course option only???

JustBeachyNurse, LPN · Jul 30, 2014

Where did you hear that EC is no longer having credit by test and course option only???

This is for the RN to BSN option. Challenge exam still an option for the ASN program