Reality Check Please?

JulesRN10 · Apr 7, 2010

first of all, welcome to allnurses! this is the resource for all of your questions...ask away--there is always someone willing to help. you can also get on the epn on the excelsior site, although it is not usually as "busy" as it is here. i completely understand your being skeptical of the excelsior program. it does seem too good to be true at first glance. yes, there is "only" 1 test for each class--the final. each exam is 130 questions. you print the study guide which is your syllabus for the class. it tells you what your study plan is. it can be very daunting! when you feel comfortable/confident about the material, you pay for the exam and go to pearson to take it. there are practice exams which are optional but very helpful. as for the gen ed requirements, i found excelsior to be very generous in what they took for mine. the classes i took in my pn program did not transfer though; i went through a vocational program, which was not accredited for those classes to be accepted. i have to redo anatomy and i have to take microbiology. the info lit class is generally required of all students. you can take it through penn foster which is much cheaper and it only takes a few hours. you can also use clep test for most of the other gen eds, saving a little more money. or, you can take them through a local community college. whatever you choose, if you don't take it directly through excelsior, always send an email to the advisor and ask permission to take it elsewhere. they will email you back stating yes or no. i am almost finished with my nursing classes which have taken me since august. i should have already been done, but i took a bit of a break in the middle. i still have my 2 science classes to finish also. overall, i should be complete in about 1 year. not bad for teaching myself the material, staying motivated, and becoming highly resourceful about the info. i love it. oh, also, you can take the first 2 nursing classes before you pay the enrollment fee. do that! you have to pay a fee for each year you're in the program, so save yourself a bit of money and do everything you can before you pay the fee...that way you can finish up in the first year and save the money for celebrating when you're done! on a side note, how do you like washington? i lived on whidbey island for a few years--beautiful! and the olympic peninsula. loved it!! miss it! anyway, good luck in your decision, and feel free to ask any and all questions you come up with--i have found some great friends/confidantes here! julie

Editorial Team / Moderator · Apr 7, 2010

There is also the FCCA - Focused Clinical Competencies Assessment - that comes between the nursing exams and the CPNE. I know "seven exams" sounds like a piece of cake, compared to traditional programs, but the exams cover a wide variety of topics, they aren't easy, and students have to be great at staying motivated to study. StudyGroup101 has a pretty good overview of what the exams cover: http://www.studygroup101.com/Descriptions.html.

Excelsior doesn't do a lot of "advising" until you actually have transcripts evaluated, and then they're better about "advising" once you actually enroll (cha-ching, $895). However, you can do some exams before you officially enroll, but you probably know this because I think you've been reading a lot of posts here. :)

Another former Wash. resident here -- I used to live in Port Angeles, then Port Orchard.

caliotter3 · Apr 7, 2010

Have never heard of Excelsior accepting nursing classes taken at other colleges. They require all students to take their nursing exams even though completion of 50% of an RN program elsewhere may have been the means by which one qualified to enroll at EC.

DaFreak71 · Apr 7, 2010

First of all...thanks for the great replies! Last night I joined the Study101 Yahoo group, haven't popped over there yet though. Too busy researching lol.

I read on the Excelsior site (in the tombs...was hard to find) that they actually will evaluate nursing classes to see if they can be counted toward some of the nursing tests! There was some language about needing to have an in-depth description from the former college about the class content to see if it really covered what Excelsior requires. It also mentioned something like not taking any tests until the transcript had been evaluated because if you take a test for a class that you are "challenging" and you fail--obviously they wouldn't give you credit for what you had already done. There was an additional caveat about the nursing classes having to be five or fewer years old. I started my RN program in 2006 hehe.

I attended a regionally accredited associates degree nursing program...I've seen the descriptions of the Excelsior classes (the class objectives) and to my amazement, at LEAST two are identical. We had an entire nursing psych semester, a full semester of maternal/child/reproductive nursing, and one of the life span class material was completely covered in my second semester. It will probably boil down to them needing an official detailed description of the class content...no problem. I'm sure my previous nursing school wouldn't have any problem doing that for me. I'm also fully prepared to hear "No...you're taking them all aside from the one LPN's are exempt from". I won't be upset or anything. I'll tell ya one thing though...I have ZERO interest in birthing babies lol, I hated maternal/child nursing. Sorry to all you parents! Nothin' personal lol!

Thanks for the heads up about the alternate route for the Information Lit class. I suspect I'll just take it from Excelsior because I am too lazy to bother with hooking up with another college. Easier to kick down the $240.00.

You all make excellent points about needing to be self motivated. I'm fortunate in that I actually LOVE studying. Academical motivation has always been "my thing". :lol2: I'm a nerd and proud of it!

Someone said something that really struck me in different thread. In that thread someone had made a comment that could have been perceived as a put down to the self study route. Several of you countered with sentiments akin to "This route is not for people who are too lazy or dumb to attend a traditional program. Excelsior students are very self motivated and don't need to be spoon fed the material and they don't care for the toxic attitudes/drama of a traditional program". This resonates with me because I am so self motivated and because I am not a "traditional student". In my former RN program, lecture consisted of the instructors reading power point slides that were out of date. If you missed more than 3 days out of the semester (lecture or clinical) you would be dropped from the program. I just don't need to be babied like that. I respect that some students do need the structure of a classroom based program, but I'm not one of them. So the point that was made in that thread changed my preconceived notions about a self directed program in that I was able to drop a bias that I wasn't even aware that I had!

Ah...the beautiful Northwest! Things are lovely here. To the first responder--I have a friend that lives on the island! I am native to this area but I spent ten years in the deep South. Quite a culture shock. I never did assimilate lol. It's amazing how different the cultures really are. I particularly love living in Vancouver, WA because we don't have to pay income tax and because it only takes five minutes from my place to downtown Portland. We do have sales taxes, but for larger purchases we can simply cross the border into Oregon and avoid that lol. The scenery, the cool vibe, the weather, and the general attitude of the folks around here makes this area truly awesome. When I returned to the NW after living in the South, one thing I was SO happy about is that I was able to buy my groceries from Whole Foods or other places aside from Walmart! Little things like that make me happy :smokin: RN jobs are a bit hard to come by in Vancouver right now though. As a matter of fact, Excelsior grads have to accumulate 200 clinical hours under the supervision of a RN before they can take the NCLEX. At first that quashed the Excelsior plan for me, but then my brain kicked in and I looked into the Oregon BON. They don't have any extra hoops to jump through so I will simply apply for a license in Oregon (where all the jobs are right now anyway), get the hours under my belt and then endorse over to my state. Gotta love a loophole!

Thanks again for the awesome replies and positive vibes! Ya'll are great! :yeah:

DaFreak71 · Apr 7, 2010

the info lit class is generally required of all students. you can take it through penn foster which is much cheaper and it only takes a few hours. you can also use clep test for most of the other gen eds, saving a little more money. or, you can take them through a local community college. whatever you choose, if you don't take it directly through excelsior, always send an email to the advisor and ask permission to take it elsewhere. they will email you back stating yes or no.
i'm a bit confused by the above statement. i was under the impression that it was always ok to take any pre-req's from another college...i'm not sure what you mean when you refer to asking for permission and letting them decide if it's ok or not.

i am almost finished with my nursing classes which have taken me since august. i should have already been done, but i took a bit of a break in the middle. i still have my 2 science classes to finish also. overall, i should be complete in about 1 year. not bad for teaching myself the material, staying motivated, and becoming highly resourceful about the info.
that's awesome that you've done so much in a short period of time! you're spot on with your statement that this kind of learning environment requires becoming very resourceful lol. if more employers were aware of how focused/motivated/resourceful excelsior students had to be in order to pass the program, i suspect they would prefer to hire excelsior students! hopefully the "stigma" of getting a distance education will go away over time. i'm sure it will. do you feel comfortable answering a personal question? i am curious to know what kind of study schedule you follow. for instance, how many hours per day/days of the week do you spend on the material in order to pass the tests and feel like you genuinely understand the material?
this is subjective, but i'm trying to gauge the level of intensity of excelsior's exams. in a semester of traditional nursing school (rn, not lpn level) we had 4 hour lectures 3 days a week and two clinical days each week. i would spend approximately five or six hours per day hard core studying and i would make a's and high b's on our unit tests. usually a low b on midterms/finals because the material was coming at us so fast and furious. essentially they put us in a situation where you'd need to memorize (as opposed to truly understanding) the material and then as soon as it was learned, you had to switch gears, purge your memory banks, and begin memorizing stuff for the next unit test. since leaving nursing school i have attended wsu (one semester) and my study habits were different. i studied for about 8 hours each day and made a's. i didn't think the material was hard in any way, i was just so fascinated by it that i wanted to study that much. i guess what i'm trying to get at is....based on my study habits and grades, what kind of study schedule would you suggest i adopt in order to be optimally prepared to take the tests? i would like to be able to both have a good grasp of the material and pass the exams with good grades. any advice would be great!
i'm so glad for you that you're well on your way to becoming a rn!

Editorial Team / Moderator · Apr 7, 2010

I'm a bit confused by the above statement. I was under the impression that it was always ok to take any pre-req's from another college...I'm not sure what you mean when you refer to asking for permission and letting them decide if it's ok or not.

It's the CLEPs -- there are some they don't accept. I don't remember which ones, but it was one for English credits.

ExcelsiorNurse1 · Apr 7, 2010

HI! I have an uncle on Widbey Island, owns a jewelry store! Small place bet you have seen him! Anyhow..I loved the Excelsior program. The tests were not easy...but not difficult either! Especially if you have gone through an ADN program already! Probably mostly review. It was actually mostly review from my LPN classes minus the new skills for the CPNE. The only thing I did not like was the long waiting periods it took them to review you at each stage of eligibility. I might be an isolated case, not sure... but be prepared for it to take a couple of weeks to a month to be evaluated after each step. Ex Between becoming eligible for the FCCA, then again to become eligible to apply for CPNE. I actually used all of my books from my LPN program to get through the exams. The content was pretty much the same. Good luck to you! You are right...there are so many negative posts on here about distance learning! But it sure helps those of us that cannot attend a traditional Rn program!

DaFreak71 · Apr 7, 2010

Hiya!

Thanks for the feedback! I actually live in Vancouver, WA...not Whidbey Island. My best friend from childhood lives up there though...and I haven't been up there to visit AT ALL (I suck..I know).

Glad I saved most all of my textbooks! And I will be sure to remind myself to learn patience between now and when I'm FCAA/CPNE eligible. Maybe I should write that on my dry erase board on the fridge. LOL.