Excelsior/Rue Education?

My mother is an LPN of nearly 30 years who is going to do the AS in Nursing program through Excelsior with the goal of becoming an RN.

Obviously she knows she needs to take the NCLEX as well at the end of all of this in order to be licensed as an RN. The Excelsior program is approved by the state licensing board and she has friends who have taken this route to go from LPN to RN.

She went to nursing school in the 70s and does not have any college credit, so she's going to earn most of her credits through Excelsior testing. She may take courses at the local community college for her general education requirements and then transfer the credit.

She is using a company called Rue Education for test preparation, which also apparently lets her delay enrolling at Excelsior until she's acquired a certain number of credits. They send her textbooks and study guides and then she takes the Excelsior tests on her own. Apparently those can be transferred to a degree program later, when she's ready to take the clinical portion of the Excelsior program.


Does anyone know if Rue is legit or worth the money? Excelsior's website warns against companies like this and I don't want my mom wasting her money on something that won't help her pass the tests.

 

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe she can prepare for and take the Excelsior tests on her own without being an enrolled student, and then enroll at a later time. I don't think she needs to pay a second party for that privilege.