There are no grades here. There is competent, and there is again.
Every other school on your shortlist hands back a letter or a percentage, and a strong paper with one weak section is still a strong paper. WGU does not work that way, and the difference is the single most important thing to understand before you enrol — because it decides whether the model carries you or grinds you down.
Two kinds of assessment, judged very differently
Almost every course ends in one of two things, and they fail in opposite ways.
The Performance Assessment
Written or applied work you submit — a plan, an analysis, a project. It is judged by evaluation faculty against a rubric that is published to you in advance. That rubric splits the task into aspects, and WGU's own policy is explicit about what happens next: each aspect is assessed on its own merit, and evaluators do not assign an overall score.
There is no total. There is no weighting that lets a strong section carry a thin one. On the rubric types WGU uses most, you need Competent in every aspect for the task to pass, and students are not given partial credit for good effort.
The Objective Assessment
A proctored exam, taken under observation. It is pass or not pass, and unlike the Performance Assessment it does not come back for revision — it comes back for a retake. Retakes are where the model stops being purely generous.
- First attemptIncluded in your term tuition.
- Second attemptAlso included. Most nurses who fail once clear it here.
- Third attemptChargeable — $60, paid out of pocket, on top of the flat term fee.
- Fourth attemptChargeable — $60 again, and this is the last one you get.
- After fourThe cap is four attempts per assessment in total, counting attempts made if you retake the course in a later term. It does not reset.
What this changes about studying here
None of it makes WGU worse. It makes it different in ways that suit some nurses enormously and defeat others completely.
- There is no B+ to settle for. Everywhere else you can absorb one weak argument inside a good submission. Here that submission returns, however strong the rest of it was.
- The rubric is the whole brief, and you get it up front. That is the trade the model offers: total clarity about what is being judged, and no relationship with the person judging it. For a certain kind of nurse this is a relief rather than a loss.
- Feedback is a verdict, not a conversation. Evaluators did not teach you and will not negotiate. You revise against the aspect that failed and resubmit.
- Revision cycles eat the thing you are buying. The term price does not move, so every returned task and every cooling-off period comes out of the same six months.
Who this genuinely suits
Nurses who read a rubric and treat it as a checklist do extremely well here, because that is precisely what it is. If you have ever been frustrated by a marker's taste — by not knowing what they wanted — this model removes that problem entirely.
Nurses who need a person to notice them, who work best when someone is expecting the work on Thursday, or who have historically relied on a strong overall average to cover a weak patch, tend to struggle. Not because the standard is higher, but because none of the usual supports are there to catch you.
The four-attempt cap is per assessment and does not reset when you retake a course in a later term. A nurse who burns attempts early on a difficult objective assessment can reach a position where the only remaining route is a course they have already paid two terms for. This is uncommon, it is avoidable, and it is worth knowing about before you enrol rather than during.
Not sure whether you would thrive under a rubric or resent it?
That is the question this whole school turns on, and twenty minutes on the phone will settle it more honestly than any brochure. We have no stake in which way you go.
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