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Assist Website Instructions

The ASSIST website is used to find approved, equivalent courses at Community Colleges for our Nursing Major requirements and for other General Education and Graduation Requirements. 

Approved coursework can change periodically.  If you have already completed a course elsewhere, be sure to change the academic year at the top of your search.  We honor coursework that was approved for the academic year that you completed the course or for the Catalog year when you first began following the nursing major requirements.  For example, if a Child Development course was approved for our major in 2010-2011, and you either completed the course that year or you were following an ASSIST articulation agreement for our major for that year, we will honor that course.  If you are a matriculated CSUSM student and completed a course here, we will honor the courses listed on our Nursing Major Course Planner that we distributed to you at the time you attended the University new-student orientation.  If you haven't met a major requirement course yet, please be sure to follow the most current articulation agreement on the ASSIST web site for the nursing major.

There are three (3) ways to use this website to search for courses:

  1. To find acceptable GE (General Education) courses at a California Community College, such as GE A1 (Oral Communication) courses or GE A3 (Critical Thinking) courses, for example.
  2. To search for equivalent courses specific to the Nursing Major, such as our  BIOL 160 (Microbiology) course.
  3. To search for courses to meet any portion of the CSU American Institutions Requirement.

Because we accept more equivalent courses for our major than do other deparments at CSUSM, you must do your search according to the Instructions below, and NOT do any course-to-course articulation searches "By Department". 

  • How to search for approved courses to meet a specific CSU GE Area
    1. Open the ASSIST website.
    2. Select the Community College at which you would like to attend from the first drop-down menu.
    3. Click on the link titled, "CSU GE Breadth Certification Courses".
    4. In the area titled, "Select a CSU GE Breadth Area", click the drop down menu and select the GE requirement you are trying to fulfill, such as A1 or A3.
      This will produce a historical view of all certified courses to meet this CSU GE requirement at that Institution. You will see the columns to the right, which are labeled as "Date Approved (Apprvd)" and "Date Removed (Rmvd)".
    5. It is VERY IMPORTANT that you choose a course to take that has not been removed from the list.  The far right column of the list indicates when a particular course has been removed from the list.  Do not take a course which has been removed.  Any other course is acceptable from which to choose on the list.
  • How to search for approved equivalent courses specifically for the Nursing Major
    1. Open the ASSIST website.
    2. Select California University San Marcos from the first drop-down menu.
    3. Select the Community College at which you would like to attend from the second drop-down menu.
    4. Under "By Major", select "Nursing" from the drop-down menu of majors.
    5. This will produce a table which shows the Cal State San Marcos Nursing requirements on the left side, and the approved course equivalents for these courses on the right side, for the particular community college selected for the search.

    All courses listed for the Nursing major, which articulate for our BIOL 216 (Statistics course), will also meet the CSU Area B4 Math requirement within the Pre-Nursing Core.

  • How to search for courses to be used to meet the CSU American Institutions Requirement

    Do NOT search by Academic Department for a course to course articulation with our HIST 130/131 or our PSCI 100 courses!  If you do, you may not be taking the right course for meeting the American Institutions requirement.

    1. Open the ASSIST website.
    2. Select the Community College at which you would like to take such a course.
    3. Click on the "CSU US History, Constitution, and American Ideals Courses" link.
    4. You will  notice that you must meet three requirement areas to fulfill the CSU American Institutions requirement. These "requirement areas" are US-1, US-2 and US-3.  Be sure to read any footnotes, which may explain limitations on combining courses to meet these three requirement areas. These three requirement areas can be met by a single course at some institutions or through a combination of courses at other institutions.
    5. If you are meeting the entire American Institutions requirement at Community Colleges, you will need to make sure that the courses you select to take will, together, meet all three of these requirements areas.  For example, at Palomar College, if you took CS 101 and POSC 102, you would NOT have met the American Institutions requirement.  This is because at the bottom of the page, they state that only certain combinations of courses are acceptable to meet the requirement.
    6. At CSU San Marcos: 
      HIST 130 or HIST 131 meets the US-1 requirement;
      PSCI 100 meets the US-2 and US-3 requirements.

      So, for example, if you have already completed RS 102 or HIST 102 at Palomar College, and you want to complete the rest of the American Institution requirement at CSUSM, you would take PSCI 100 at CSUSM once attending here.
    7. IF QUESTIONS, schedule an appointment with your campus Counselor/Advisor.

** The ASSIST Website can be used effectively to search for optional courses at multiple community colleges, which is especially helpful if you are searching for: an ‘open' course with available seats; a late-start, online or accelerated course; or a course being offered on a particular day/time.