RN to BSN at Excelsior?

rmbt418 · Feb 11, 2012

Excelsior's BSN program is a good program. I finished my ASN through Excelsior and I am now working on my BSN. I will be finished in mid April of 2012 (this year). It is overwhelming to do more than one nursing class and one Non-nursing class at one time (if you are working as well), but the entire program is very doable! It took me about 2 and a half years, but I wasn't pushing myself and took a few breaks in between. Please email me with any questions, I'll be glad to answer any questions that you have.

Ronin185 · Feb 12, 2012

yeah , iknow kind of how it runs, was curious if i can do the majority of CLEP and /or exams. i am a better self study student...lol. and i am on a timeline, also, do they still require a video? for the latter nursing courses? thanks much

rmbt418 · Feb 12, 2012

You can do all of the classes through exam except the nursing courses just as the ASN was.

You can push through as many classes as you can handle.

The major difference between the ASN and BSN nursing classes is that with the BSN classes, you must do most of them in order and finish certain classes before you become eligible for the next one.

Yes, they do still require the video, but it's really not that awful. I did the video, planning and everything needed in less than 8 hrs and still passed with a great grade. The video is terrifying when you first learn about it, but it actually not that bad.

Editorial Team / Moderator · Feb 12, 2012

I thought the video was gone after January 2012? Am I mis-remembering?

rmbt418 · Feb 13, 2012

I thought that it was still a requirement, but it could have changed. I did that course in the summer of 2011, so I do not know if it was changed after that.

BostonNurse2876 · Feb 13, 2012

what is this video?? I wanted to keep going(if and when) I pass the CPNE.

rmbt418 · Feb 15, 2012

It's simply a video of you teaching a group of people a selected topic for 30 minutes.

sonimoniH2O · Oct 24, 2012

I already have my Associates & am thinking about going there for my BSN. Would you be kind to inform me on how the nursing classes are online & about how long it takes to finish. Are there exams or papers for the nursing classes ?

TiffyRN, BSN, PhD · Oct 25, 2012

This thread is a few months old but I will tell you of my experience. I went with Excelsior as I would need to get quite a few "leveling" courses no matter what program I attended. My husband was going at the same time and he as a previous Excelsior graduate. As such, he kind of needed to go through them as they were going to give him the most credit for previous work (everyone one else requires labs for sciences and he did mostly Excelsior exams and didn't have labs). We wanted to work together on courses to pool our resources and save money on books. It has worked well for us to be study partners and share books.

I thought they were very generous with my credits accepting nearly all of my previous (nearly 20 year old) college credit. Excelsior still accepts a lot of credit by exam and as far as I know there are no new restrictions on credits for exams like CLEP & DSST though there are some restrictions on ACE credit which I don't understand other than I didn't get my credits that way. I earned something like 19 credits through Excelsior, Penn Foster, CLEP & DSST in the first 6 months I was enrolled.

I started leveling courses back in January (well, I did Information Literacy in one day last December) and started actual BSN nursing courses in May. I might be ready for capstone (all other courses have to be complete first) in January, but if not, then in May and either finish next May or July.

Excelsior is quickly getting rid of its BSN level courses one can take by exam. The only ones left at this point are Research in Nursing & Community-Based Nursing. The teaching video spoken of earlier in this thread is gone, the teaching course requires a teaching plan (pretty simple Word document) and a power-point presentation for the bigger project.

Lots of paper writing for the BSN course. I was terrified of writing when I started this process. I'm still not a great writer, but I'm not afraid to do it anymore. I'm getting better and I actually impressed my Research instructor with my first paper (I chose not to take the exam). I've been mostly impressed by the instructors. Online classes are a pretty decent way to do things except group projects. Trying to coordinate a group projects from people you can only contact through the classroom program can be pretty difficult. The material presented is high quality, but you get what you take from it, it's up to you to study the materials and write decent papers to prove your grasp. It has been hard work and I think I'm already a better nurse because of it.