Pacing your Clarkson clinical hours, week by week

The pacing rules Clarkson has published

Two rules sit on Clarkson's live program pages. The note under every NP track limits you to a single clinical course per term, and the same note describes the tracks as built for moving through those courses one after another. Doubling up to catch up is off the table.

The rest comes from the 2021-22 Graduate Nursing Student Handbook, the newest one publicly available. It told students to space their hours across the whole term and to reach the halfway mark in hours by midterm, since reaching that mark was what it took to pass at midterm. It held NRS 830 hours until after the Graduate Weekend sign-off. And it stated that hours completed before the final approval of your site and preceptor paperwork do not count toward the course total.

Because today's edition is available only by request, get a copy from your Graduate Nursing advisor and check whether the midterm expectation has changed. Your course syllabus in Canvas is the other place pacing expectations appear.

The midterm checkpoint

Half the hours by midterm sounds simple until you convert it. A 160-hour course means 80 hours by roughly week 7 or 8 of a 15-week semester, or by about week 6 of the summer term. A DNP-level final course of 250 hours means 125 hours by the same point.

Two things eat into the first half. A preceptor whose paperwork is still moving through approval cannot supervise countable hours yet, and under the 2021-22 handbook, paperwork still unfinished when the first week closed could force a withdrawal from the course. A slow start, such as a preceptor on vacation in week 2, has to be made up before midterm, not after.

Front-loading helps wherever the preceptor's schedule allows it. If you finish the first half at 60% rather than 50%, a sick week later costs you less. If you are already short at midterm, the behind on clinical hours guide sets out the options.

Fitting hours around your RN job

Clarkson expects its graduate nursing students to hold RN jobs for the length of the program (the 2021-22 handbook states it outright), so every clinical hour is layered over a work schedule. A fixed weekly pattern agreed with the preceptor, such as the same two long days each week, is usually easier to protect from your work schedule than shifts scattered week to week.

Two Clarkson rules give you some room. You can train at your own employer, in a department other than your own, with clinical hours recorded apart from paid hours; the workplace practicum guide explains the limits. And a course may use up to two preceptors without written faculty approval, which can cover weeks one preceptor cannot.

Classes pause for Fall Break (Oct. 12-16, 2026) and Spring Break (Mar. 1-5, 2027), though the college itself stays open. Ask your course faculty whether a preceptor shift during a break week counts before you plan around one.

Why students pace their terms with us

Pacing starts with the preceptor, not the calendar. We look for preceptors whose clinic schedules can carry your course's weekly load, and when one preceptor cannot, we find a second who fits within Clarkson's two-preceptor limit. Because we plan all five courses together, we know which heavy course will land in the short summer term and start that search first.

Our checks against Clarkson's rules happen before a name reaches you, and we collect the agreement details early so approval can land before week one. If a preceptor drops mid-term, we move straight to a replacement, with the midterm checkpoint in view. Tell us your course, your term and the hours you still owe through the form below, and we will plan the weeks around them.