Purdue Global gives you three weeks free. Unless you are the nurse most likely to need them.
This is the only school in the network that lets you sit in real classes, for real credit, before you owe anything. It is a genuinely good offer. It also excludes graduate programmes and returning students — which is to say, most nurses reading this.
What you owe if you walk away
Purdue Global's undergraduate trial runs for the first three weeks of a ten-week term. Leave inside that window and you owe nothing. Stay past it and the whole term becomes payable, including the three weeks you were told were free. Switch the two states below and watch what changes.
$0Weeks one to three, trial period
Modelled on Purdue Global's published Commitment policy and its ten-week undergraduate term. Tuition shown is the published standard RN-to-BSN rate of $371 per quarter credit across a typical two-course term; ExcelTrack is billed by the term instead and is compared further down. The instructional-materials fee is waived for undergraduates, so books are covered. Confirm your own term load and rate with the university before enrolling.
Is it Purdue, or is it not?
The most common question about this school, and the one enrolment advisers answer least directly. Both columns below are true at the same time, and which one matters depends entirely on why you want the name.
What the name genuinely gets you
- A public, nonprofit university inside the Purdue system — not a for-profit, which separates it from most online nursing schools you are weighing it against.
- Purdue system governance since the 2018 acquisition, and Purdue University Global on the diploma.
- Its own HLC institutional accreditation, plus CCNE on the nursing programmes with a ten-year approval granted in 2021.
- Generous prior-learning and transfer credit policies built for working adults rather than school-leavers.
What it does not get you
- It is not the West Lafayette campus, and nobody in a hiring conversation will mistake it for one.
- It is separately accredited with a separate transcript. Credit and standing do not simply flow between the two.
- Its history is Kaplan University, converted in 2018. That is not a mark against it, but it is why the name is younger than the reputation attached to it.
- If instant prestige is your first criterion, this is the wrong purchase — and we will say so on the call.
Two ways to be billed, and they suit opposite people
Purdue Global runs a standard per-credit track and a competency-based track called ExcelTrack. Picking the wrong one is the most expensive avoidable mistake available here, and the choice is made before you enrol.
| Standard track | ExcelTrack | |
|---|---|---|
| How you are charged | Per quarter credit | A flat fee per ten-week term |
| RN-to-BSN | $371 a quarter credit | Billed by the term, not the credit |
| MSN | $420 a quarter credit | $3,200 a term |
| Who it rewards | Anyone taking a normal course load who wants the cost fixed and predictable. | Nurses with real prior experience who can clear competencies quickly — the more you finish per term, the less the programme costs. |
| Who it punishes | Nobody in particular. It is the safe default. | Anyone who moves slowly. A flat term fee with little progress is the worst outcome on this page. |
| Three-week trial | Undergraduate only, first-time students only | Undergraduate only, first-time students only |
Answer five things and we will tell you straight
All five at once, no wizard. Change any answer and the reading below updates. Seventeen online programmes sit inside this practice and Purdue Global is only one of them. Nothing tilts the answer.
How it actually stacks up
Every one of these names the reader the other school suits better. If a page only ever reaches one conclusion, it is a brochure.
Use the three weeks properly, or find out you do not get them.
Twenty minutes and it costs nothing, which is fitting for a school whose own offer works the same way. No one on this side earns a penny from where you land.
- Whether the trial applies to you at all
- Graduate and returning students are excluded. If that is you, the whole calculation changes and it is better known now.
- Standard track or ExcelTrack
- Decided by how much of the curriculum you could already test out of. We work that out from your actual experience, not a guess.
- What your prior credit is worth here
- Purdue Global's transfer policy is unusually generous for working adults. Most nurses never have it properly assessed.
- Whether the name buys what you want
- If prestige is the point of this, we will tell you plainly that it is the wrong purchase.
Book twenty minutes
Twenty minutes on the phone at a time you pick. We work through trial eligibility, what your prior credit is worth, and which billing track your experience actually favours.
Contact us Or use the form at the top of this page. Both reach the same desk.