Tabitha1111

The EBP paper is what kept me from graduating in one term. They call it The Beast for a reason. It took me two months to complete it when everything else I had done in 1-2 weeks. Really the only advice I can give is to just try to do one section each time you sit down to study. I had to really break it down and do one small piece at a time. It is a huge, overwhelming task otherwise. But you will get it done and it will feel good to pass it! Good luck!

I started the RN to BSN program at WGU on November 1, 2015, and I will be done by July 1, 2016. I wanted to be done in 6 months, but classes have been changing a lot lately and they are now harder to pass so it slowed me down a bit. Still, I can't complain about being done in 8 months instead of 6. My student mentor was great, he always opened classes as soon as I was ready and would even call me when I was taking longer than usual on a class to make sure I was okay because he was used to me emailing him almost daily to open the next class. You do have access to all the course work from day one so you can always work ahead in any class, you just won't be able to submit anything until your student mentor actually enrolls you in the class. While I was waiting in the queue for a grade in one class, I would start on the next one. Overall, my experience has been good. I have had quite a few frustrations with the courses changing and being made harder and several things that seemed very repetitive, but that's no different than any other school and there isn't anywhere else this affordable that I can do all online at my own pace, so I take the good and the bad. I will have my BSN in the next 3 weeks and it will all be worth it anyway.

Thank you! I love Whidbey Island! It's beautiful up there. :)

There were no clinicals in Portland this year, and usually are not from what I hear. They do normally have PHSW in Vancouver though which is very close to Portland. I worked throughout the summer clinicals and on campus portion. I had an urgent care job on evenings and weekends so the only time I had to take off was the one week of my preceptorship. You will be off by 4pm all days and always off Fridays, except preceptorships, that's when you have to be flexible and work your preceptors hours, whatever they are.

Hi! I couldn't reply to your PM yet, not enough posts on here, so I thought I would reply here: First of all, I am so sorry I did not see this until today. Congratulations on getting accepted. I heard it was really competitive this year. I didn't think it was terribly hard, there was just a ton of reading. I worked 50 hours a week during the program, M-F 40 hrs and then one 8-10 hr shift a weekend at my second job. It was really hard, but I managed. You can definitely work during the online part. In the summer when you start the on campus and clinicals you might have to be more flexible. I got an urgent care job to get me through and was able to still work my usual schedule through all of the summer stuff. Phew! You will need all of the books! Last year they changed some on us when we actually got to the orientation from what they had mailed in our acceptance letter so I had to send some back and get others. But I found old editions on Amazon for super cheap anyway. They do not post any lectures, they do post the powerpoints from their on campus, but they are useless. Don't even bother with them ever. All of your test questions come out of your textbooks. The Lewis text is your number one best friend. Study the questions at the ends of the chapters, sometimes they use them on tests. DO NOT. I repeat. DO NOT forget to take a weekly quiz. You will have one due every Sunday. It is open book, but it is timed so you have about 1-2 minutes per question, so don't expect to not study all week and then just take the test open book. You don't have time to look everything up. I know a girl who forgot one weekly quiz and they dropped her and would not let her back into the program at all, so don't miss one! It goes super fast so don't get behind. They lost a clinical site (PHSW in Vancouver) this summer due to them switching to epic and declining students, so they had all Oregon and Vancouver folks at St Johns in Longview. They don't have clinical sites in Portland usually, but this is different every year. Maybe you guys will get lucky. Preceptor sites are varied, some got ED, some hospice, some ICU, some med-surg, some cardiac, etc.

I had a 4.0 gpa, but they don't look at that for the bridge program so it doesnt matter. They only use your entrance exam scores.

I am fairly local (45 minutes away) so I just drove. The out of town people recommended the Red Lion hotel or the Comfort Inn and most stayed there when coming in for things, they said do not stay at the Motel 6. Clinicals were okay. We had a hard time because they lost their Vancouver site so they had to move all the Oregon and local people to the Longview hospital, but they made it work. All the group clinicals are at the hospital. Group clinicals are all med-surg and then they have some specialty placements for precepting. Some students were lucky and got ED, ICU, Mother Baby, Peds, etc. Some got med-surg again and there were some cardiac/tele. The instructors are all fabulous, so that's a plus. We had 4 weeks of Mon-Thurs group clinical and then 7 12 hour shifts for precepting. Everything is Mon-Thurs for the two weeks on campus and the clinicals. Make sure you keep up on your ATI throughout, don't save them until the night before you come to campus like some did. While on campus, you will do lots of proctored ATI tests.

Be ready to read. They don't post any lectures, so don't bother with the power points. The med-surg book was most used of all. It's just tons and tons of reading. I used you tube a lot to help because I learn better with visual and audio, but most (if not all) of the test questions come out of the readings. There are weekly quizzes due every Sunday and if you miss one you are done, no second chances, so make sure you keep up on due dates. Let me know if you have any specific questions. Just take one week at a time, one reading at a time, and it all adds up so fast. The year will be over before you know it.

Hi! I just graduated from the online LPN to RN at LCC (August 2015 graduation). It was fine. No worse than any other program. I had my ups and downs, clinicals were especially frustrating. But I would do it again in a heartbeat because it got me to my RN. There were quite a few students from various areas of Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, and suburbs. They either carpooled to labs and clinicals or got hotels in Longview. There were some clinical sites in Olympia, Centralia, and Bellingham.

I just graduated from the LPN to RN online (August 2015 graduation). I had scores of 90 on the TEAS V and 83 on the LPN Step test last summer (2014). I had a 4.0 gpa going in, but they don't calculate that into their bridge program, it's just your combined scores on both the entrance exams. I heard that the scores this year are really high so people who passed the minimum, but didn't get really high scores are not getting in this time around. The school also said they had a high volume of applicants this year too.

Hi there! I just graduated from the LPN to RN bridge at LCC August 2015. Did you get in? I heard it was super competitive this year.