Western Governors University

Firstly, some of these review I find hilarious. I know plenty of people who graduated who have had great success. I used VA education benefits to pay for the program. I am now an MBA student at a top ranked university. I was worried I wouldn't get in at first, but I am holding a 3.9 and just as prepared as anyone else in the program. WGU isn't easy either, you don't have instructors, you just get a heap of material to study. Its all on you, that was the hard part for me. Overall I'm happy with the... Read More achievement. The most annoying part of WGU is the proctoring, it sucks, the company they use sucks. For people that claim WGU isn't a real university, riddle me this. Why is it, in a top 20 MBA program I have un-proctored exams, when at WGU I was 100% proctored? I can actually just cheat my way through an MBA at this point, and its $70K. At WGU, you aren't cheating at all, zip zero chance of cheating. I think at 35 I've just learned in life, people will whine and complain about anything if they don't get their way. Some people need to have the hand held through a program. WGU is for those who don't need that. So if you independent, smart and like to succeed on your own. WGU is probably for you.

Earned my RN to BSN in 4 months, including 80 clinical hours. I did have to find my own clinical site and preceptor, but that wasn't hard for me. I started looking as soon as I found out the requirements. I felt the class material and requirements were easy to follow. The rubrics were detailed so I always knew what they expected to pass. If you are self motivated and goal oriented this will work for you. If you're lazy, have a hard time focusing, or just aren't good at school then this might not... Read More work for you.

There are some good things about having completed my bsn through WGU, but the negatives do outweigh the positive by a long stretch. The positive is that I saved money by completing the degree in 2 terms, which in my case worked out to around $7300. I do believe they have increased the tuition rate recently, but it was possible for me to complete the program and save. The negative is that the school has an utter lack of honest, professional, transparent communication to students and is tremendously... Read More disorganized in sudden program changes. I found out through a FACEBOOK group that my course would now include 60 hours of in-person field experience after being told repeatedly when I asked during enrollment that there was not an in-person requirement. The school never did notify me of the change. If I would not have found out ON FACEBOOK I literally would not have known until I got to that class. As a working professional with a personal and family life, I need to be able to plan. I also did not appreciate the bait and switch. As a student I needed to find my own nurse to shadow, with some narrow guidelines: not in a hospital setting, needed a BSN, etc. Since my graduating the the program has changed requirements again and now requires clinical sites to agree to a contract with WGU, but the student still has to find site and jump through a lot of hoops to get the agreement. (The student also has to have certain vaccination records and AHA CPR and other requirements for WGU to approve them for the field study.) WGU is not efficient on their end to get the sites approved and will not tell students about sites that already have an agreement in place. A lot of students are struggling with this. The school is placing a lot of obstacles to student success, and not communicating with students clearly or honestly.

Most disappointing experience in education I have ever experienced. More than 90 days after being accepted and completing orientation I am still waiting to begin classes and have my financial aid released. Save yourself the headache and go to a real university. The degree on the wall will be worth much more. UPDATE: After 3 months of promises and jumping through hoops WGU dismissed me from my program. Ironically, with 5 Master's degrees under my belt, all from Tier-Level universities, I find WGU... Read More an absolute disgrace and waste of time. Do not bother with them. There are much better options available.

WGU is great, you truly go at your own pace. Every office I've had to contact responds within a day or two, and the instructors are KNOWLEDGEABLE experienced professionals to say the least. Arguably more accessible than my professors in another University I physically attended (office hours being 3 hours 2 days a week). Your education is your responsibility and this school makes you own it. This is how you grow as a lifelong student and professional. If you want to be hand held and things done for... Read More you and achieve grades for just attending class, go somewhere else. In order to graduate you have to know your stuff. Your "mentor" motivates you and adds your class, your instructor has an accessible calendar for you to schedule time with them every day often within a 12 hour window where you can schedule up to 1.5 hours with them to discuss material. Don't expect to be spoon-fed, you do the work but hey, you actually EARN your degree here.

I am genuinely confused by some of these reviews, I think a lot of them show that some of them never actually attended WGU. It's against the rules to help a student understand their material and they're told to read it again? There are only mentors, not instructors? What? If that's the case, who did I make 30-45 minutes appointments with that had a doctorate that literally sat with me and explained exactly how to be successful, how to interpret the material, how to search and comprehend various concepts,... Read More among other things. They were a ghost? A random program mentor? WGU doesn't accept anyone, so not sure where that came from either. They have a pretty extensive admissions process, and they absolutely do reject applicants. They just give them a chance to meet their admission standards via their academy, and not at a community college. All in all, my experience has been AMAZING. The proctors are kind of off sometimes, but I had this issue at my previous college too. It's obnoxious but it's not anything that would ruin your time there. Some of these people need to get a life and realize that maybe they need to go to a community college and have their hands held, because they clearly weren't able to hang on at WGU.

Overall I would not recommend taking the prelicensure BSN program at WGU in Utah. The clinical assignments were a joke. I was placed at psychiatric hospitals for over half of my clinicals, and 98% of my clinicals were night shifts. I understand that it is important for nurses to work night shifts, however, as a student I hardly learned anything at night since there was barely anything to do after 10 pm. It was made clear to me throughout the program that the clinical instructors and schedulers do... Read More not care about their students and the quality of their education. I’m about to graduate in the next couple months and I don’t feel like I have any real life experiences. I know how to answer an NCLEX style question, but as far as real-life nursing goes, I’m going to have to learn on the job.