WGU RN to BSN in 6 months

roser13, ASN, RN · Dec 29, 2015

Why not ask the school advisors?

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Dec 30, 2015

This thread has been moved to our WGU forum.

You have asked this same question repeatedly over the course of the past several days. Please wait for someone to respond. There's no need to continue to post the same message over and over. Thanks in advance. :)

ORnurse9 · Dec 31, 2015

You will probably start with Care of the Older Adult. After that ,talk to your student mentor about your goals and they will advise you. Good luck to you. It's really a great program.

sachmo61691 · Dec 31, 2015

You will probably start with Care of the Older Adult. After that ,talk to your student mentor about your goals and they will advise you. Good luck to you. It's really a great program.

Thank you! Do you have any suggestions of what classes were easiest/best to take first?

The reason why i ask on this thread is because ive read on other threads not to divulge to the course mentor about my plans to finish in 6 months because they may try to slow me down and prevent this from happening. Do you know if there is any truth to this?

benegesserit · Jan 6, 2016

I took 4 terms, so take my advice for what it's worth... but I know where I went wrong, and I've observed a lot of people on here and on FB.

Yes, course mentors will generally try to encourage you to set reasonable goals if you say up front that you want to finish in six months. A lot more people intend to finish in six months than actually manage to do so. I wouldn't be surprised if most people go into it with the intention of finishing in six months, and few actually do. Remember that every single one of us is already an RN who made it into and through nursing school - we're all at least somewhat good students who probably fall on the intelligent side of things. And most still aren't making it through in six months.

My suspicion is that people who are dead-set on finishing in six months are less likely to actually finish the program - they have limited financial resources or hard deadlines that will not allow them to go into a second term, or they are more likely to become discouraged if they aren't making the progress they feel they should, even if their progress is perfectly adequate from an objective standpoint.

There may also be pressure to discourage people from completing the program excessively fast, as well as more built-in roadblocks (such as requiring taking classes in a particular order), because too many people completing the program very fast calls the rigor of the program into question. I do think they are actively trying to make it take at least two terms - there used to be a lot of stories of people completing in 2-3 months. Now that's nearly unheardof, and six months is increasingly rare.

Again, that's all just hypothesizing on my part, not anything official.

If you want to finish ASAP...

1. Take a good honest look at yourself. Why do you want to finish in six months? If you didn't finish in six months, would you still be able to complete the degree, or would your money and effort be wasted (remember, you can't transfer the credits elsewhere)? In your past schooling, have you truly been motivated and diligent? Because if not, you're unlikely to suddenly change. Are you a procrastinator? Are you capable of learning difficult material quickly? What outside commitments do you have?

People who complete the program very quickly are generally quick learners who are extremely motivated, and who have the ability and inclination to devote a lot of time to school. Many have few outside responsibilities. Some have jobs that give them ample time to work on schoolwork on a regular basis.

2. Don't express your desire to finish in 6 months to your mentor. Just go along with the schedule they suggest. The first classes they assign will generally be the easiest (especially if you don't have much in the way of prerequisites - apparently some of those are pretty tedious), which means you can power through them and prove yourself.

3. Join the WGU BSN Facebook community (but don't get caught up in it to the extent that it becomes a procrastination tool!). Use the search function to search each class as it comes up - you'll find plenty of tips for getting through the course with a minimum of excess effort.

4. If your mentor places stupid obstacles in the way to keep you from completing those first 12 units as fast as you are capable of doing so (eg. only letting you enroll in one class at a time, or you pass the pre-assessment by a good margin, but they want you to study for another week "just to be sure"), switch mentors.

5. Once you finish the first 12 units, you can accelerate a class. Again, I'd just go with what they choose. You want to get the first community health class out of the way on the early side, but requesting it as your first accelerated class is basically showing your hand as far as your intention to finish in six months.

6. The mentors are only supposed to let you accelerate one class at a time in order to minimize the number of classes that you don't pass if you don't finish. However, if you proven your ability to accelerate, have lots of time left in the semester, and have a cooperative mentor, two at once is a good idea. That way you can work gradually on one of the classes that takes a long time while still making progress on other classes. Again, if you're making really good progress and your mentor isn't willing to accommodate, switch mentors.

7. As far as class order goes... really, the default order, for the most part, makes sense. They do, in fact, have it arranged that way for a reason. The first several courses can pretty much be taken in any order, but the later ones really do build on eachother.

The first community health class has to be taken before the second. The second is the one where you have to obtain 65 hours of fieldwork, which often relies a lot on other people's schedules, so it's good to get the first out of the way as soon as reasonably possible. These two are the only ones you might want to try to do "out of order", so that you can get started on the fieldwork while simultaneously working on other classes.

The only other potential change I'd suggest is to ask to start with a class whose subject matter you're confident in instead of Care of the Older Adult if you've worked exclusively in a setting that doesn't deal with geriatrics. They assign that one first to build confidence because most people find it fairly straightforward, but the lifelong peds/L&D nurses sometimes struggle with it.

8. Don't let yourself get hung up on stuff. Don't procrastinate. Don't overthink things or do more than you need to. Figure out early how to follow the rubric and do no more than what is required. Remember that pass is pass - getting all 4s on an essay or a high grade on a test is personally rewarding, but doing a better job won't get you a better grade and a better chance of getting into NP school or anything like that. Take chances and submit stuff or take the test even if you aren't sure it will pass, and retake or do revisions if needed, rather than taking extra time to make it perfect for the first submission. Once you submit something, don't wait for it to be graded before moving on to the next thing.

9. The flip side of the above... take an honest look at your goals. As far as the quality of the education goes, it's very much a case of getting out of it what you put in. You'll get the same degree regardless, but you'll learn more if you slow down and go beyond the bare minimum. I'm not going to say you can't get a good education going through it as quickly as possible, but ideally there should be a balance between speed and truly mastering the material.

(Before anyone who finished quickly gets up in arms about that... I'm not saying that everyone who completed in six months got a sub-par education. Just that a goal of finishing in six months provides a lot of incentive for taking shortcuts over actually learning.)

featherzRN, MSN · Jan 7, 2016

I'm one of the three monthers and to tell you the truth, I EXPECTED and hoped to get through in a year.. It was just a fluke of luck and a bit of OCD that got me through quicker..

I don't think the mentors slow you down to make more money, but I do agree that a lot of people think they can do it and don't make it so they discourage it on that basis. Mentors are also 'graded' based on how well the students do, so having someone take a bunch of classes they can't finish will reflect poorly on your mentor as well.

As others have said get through the first 12 THEN talk about acceleration. :)

benegesserit · Jan 7, 2016

Yes, course mentors will generally try to encourage you to set reasonable goals if you say up front that you want to finish in six months.

Ugh, just realized that I said "course mentors" here, and meant "student mentors", and it's too late to edit. Sorry for any confusion.

sachmo61691 · Jan 12, 2016

thank you for your help jess

sachmo61691 · Jan 12, 2016

what do you mean by accelerating a class?

sachmo61691 · Jan 12, 2016

Do they usually assign 2 courses at one time when I begin my initial semester? Or do they only assign 1 course at a time when I first start the semester?

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Jan 12, 2016

what do you mean by accelerating a class?

Once a student completes the first 12 credits, the program mentor 'accelerates' a course by adding one that had been scheduled for the second term onto your current (1st) term.

Do they usually assign 2 courses at one time when I begin my initial semester? Or do they only assign 1 course at a time when I first start the semester?

Typically, four courses (or 12 credits worth of coursework) will be open at once when you begin your initial semester because 12 credits constitutes a full course load. However, if you end up with a conservative program mentor, he/she will want you to focus on one particular course (usually it's DPV1- Care of the Older Adult) and see how you do with it.

Once you finish the first 12 credits, the program mentor will start 'accelerating' courses (a.k.a. adding courses that were intended to be completed during the second term onto your first term). Most mentors accelerate one course at a time.