My Bellevue Experience

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Bruboy, Aug 21, 2008.

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  1. Bruboy

    Bruboy New Member

    It's been 3 long years since I embarked on my pursuit of an MBA with a concentration in finance at Bellevue University and my journey is finally at an end. I have completed all the course requirements and should receive my diploma around the end of September.

    For those of you that are not familiar with Bellevue it is a B&M school located in Bellevue, Nebraska. It is regionally accredited and its business program is IACBE accredited. The school was founded in 1966 and began offering DL programs in 1996. The graduate costs are currently $405/credit.

    I thought that I would share my experiences at Bellevue with all of you. For me the program consisted of 12 courses, 3 foundation courses, 6 core courses, and 3 concentration courses. Each semester was 12 weeks long with the exception of summer courses that lasted 10 weeks.

    Of the 12 courses 9 were taught by fulltime facility. These fulltime faculty members all held a PhD in their respective fields. They graduated from schools such as the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Purdue University, and Texas A&M. The 3 instructors that were not fulltime faculty held masters degrees in business, one was a doctoral candidate at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. To sum up the instructor’s credentials 75% were fulltime faculty holding a doctorate and the remaining 25% held a masters degree or was a doctoral candidate. I would also like to note that all the instructors I had at Bellevue graduated from AACSB accredited schools.

    Each course required from 5 - 10 hours of my time per week. All courses required considerable weekly reading, an individual project, and a group project. A proctored comprehensive final exam was required for 10 of the 12 courses, one course required a comprehensive take home final with a turn around time of 36 hours, and the final capstone course did not require a final exam. The capstone course had an online quiz every 3 weeks, all other courses had a weekly online quiz. All courses required weekly assignments for discussion and participation throughout the week was mandatory.

    The blackboard online classroom was easy to navigate and very reliable. The library resources for me were excellent. I am completely happy with the education that I received at Bellevue and I highly recommend that those looking for a quality DL education at least consider Bellevue.
     
  2. Randell1234

    Randell1234 Moderator

    Congratulations on your accomplishment!! What is next (had to ask)?
     
  3. skidadl

    skidadl Member

    Thank you very much for sharing. These are the type of posts that interest me the most. I like to hear about the details of the course work and such.
     
  4. RoscoeB

    RoscoeB Senior Member

    Congrats, Bruboy!

    Great job!

    Thanks for sharing your experience.

    Roscoe
     
  5. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member


    Good job!!!!! Enjoy your new degree.


    Abner :)
     
  6. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Congratulations and welcome to the MBA Club! :)
     
  7. manjuap

    manjuap New Member

    Congratulations. Whats next?

     
  8. Vinipink

    Vinipink Accounting Monster

    Long time no see!

    Welcome back!
     
  9. OnMyWay

    OnMyWay Grand Duchess

    Thank you for sharing your experience. I am also interested in these types of reviews.
     
  10. Bruboy

    Bruboy New Member

    That's it for me. If I were considerably younger and/or had a lot more money I might look at another degree. At 57 years old and still paying for my two son's undergraduate education I feel that my MBA is as far as I'll go.

    I would like to say though that for those of you that are much younger than I, you live in a marvelous time with nearly unlimited educational opportunities. It does dismay me to see so many of my younger coworkers not take advantage of what is available.

    Lastly many thanks for everyone's kind words and congratulations.
     
  11. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    You mean you're not going to continue on to doctoral studies? Sorry, I guess that means I can't haze you about that! :D
     
  12. JazzyMac

    JazzyMac New Member

    Bruboy, congrats! Does Bellevue allow you to double up MBA courses? Can you take more than one at once?
     
  13. Bruboy

    Bruboy New Member

    Yes you can take more than one course, many of my classmates took two courses per semester. I personally could only handle one course per semester, partly due to my financial and time constraints. I also felt that I would not be maximizing my learning experience if I attempted more than one course.

    One other note regarding Bellevue, their grading system uses pluses and minuses. In other words to get an "A" you will need a 94 or better average. I've included the grading system below.

    Grade A 0.94 - 1.000
    Grade A- 0.90 - 0.939
    Grade B+ 0.87 - 0.899
    Grade B 0.83 - 0.869
    Grade B- 0.80 - 0.829
    Grade C+ 0.77 - 0.799
    Grade C 0.73 - 0.769
     
  14. joel66

    joel66 New Member

    This is a really good review about the school. I'm curious if a thesis was required or did the school focused more on comprehensive exams at the end of each course?
     
  15. Bruboy

    Bruboy New Member

    The courses did require a proctored comprehensive final along with a project (group, individual, or both). The last course (capstone course) required a group business plan to be developed and presented. The knowledge needed for the business plan drew from many of the courses in the program similar to what I believe a masters thesis would require. Actually I'm not sure if a thesis would be applicable to a MBA program. Perhaps others could comment.
     
  16. joel66

    joel66 New Member

    Thanks for the info, I would assume the capstone course would be similar to Excelsior's BUS495 Case Analysis, but probably be more than 10 pages. lol
     
  17. friendorfoe

    friendorfoe Active Member

    Great post, I'm starting their MSMIS in a few days and looking forward to it. It's been a while since I've taken a proctored exam, were these open or closed book or a mix?

    Oh and welcome to the MBA club!
     
  18. Bruboy

    Bruboy New Member

    The 10 proctored exams for the MBA program were all closed book with a 3 hour time limit. I'm not sure if the proctored exams are part of the MSMIS program. The proctored tests always took me the full 3 hours to complete. I used my local librarian as my proctor. She had to be approved by Bellevue. The tests were emailed to her and all test materials (including scratch paper) was mailed back to Bellevue.

    One class had a midterm and final that were open book take home exams and another class (the capstone class) did not have any proctored exams. The catch for the take home exams was that the tests had to be returned within 36 hours of receiving them and the professor made them quite difficult. My lowest grade for the program was for this course.

    Overall I was completely satisified with every aspect of attending Bellevue.

    Thanks for the warm welcome!
     
  19. friendorfoe

    friendorfoe Active Member

    Thanks Bruce, that was helpful.
     
  20. joel66

    joel66 New Member

    Bruboy,

    Would you be able to check out Liberty University Course Guides and let me know how those classes compared to Bellevue? I was checking out Liberty University and reading the amount of work that is required, and it seems like a lot of work for 8 weeks. I can see getting everything completed in 10 to 12 weeks, but sure about 8. Right now, I am up in the air between Bellevue and Liberty.

    If possible, for Bellevue you have the following courses
    MBA 633 Advanced Organizational Behavior
    MBA 652 Marketing Strategy

    Liberty University
    BUSI 500 Organizational Behavior
    BUSI 520 Strategic Marketing Management

    Edit: I forgot to mentioned, I called the school and tried to get a syllabus, but they only show the outlines that is on the website.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 29, 2009

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