Golden West vs. Saddleback

[maddybee]

After waiting a year and a half to get into nursing school, I finally got accepted to both GWC and Saddleback for this fall. I've heard good things about both schools, especially now that GWC has the new nursing building, but I can't decide which to go to. I live closer to GWC so I'm leaning towards there. But I used to volunteer at Hoag Hospital, and the Saddleback nursing students all raved about how great the program was, and how the instructors actually motivated and helped them to pass. Does anyone have any thoughts on which school is better?

[maddybee]

Hi Cathering,

Congrats on getting accepted! I have not regretted my decision about choosing Saddleback since I started the program. I'm now in 3rd semester and love it!

And yes, I'm pretty sure every school allows recordings and smartphones these days. I record all of my lectures and they help me a lot when studying. And I also use my iPhone several times a day during clinicals to look up different diagnoses and what not. Most people don't bring a lot of their large nursing books to clinicals anyway so a smartphone is nice to have if you need to look something up real quick. Some other students have downloaded apps to use in place of their books, but most of them say they've hardly used the apps. I think you'll use a few of your books/apps in first semester during clinical until you get familiar with different diagnoses, but for the most part now I just bring my drug dosage book with me to clinical and use my phone to look stuff up if needed. But as far as being allowed to, yes you're allowed to use electronics as long as you're not using them in front of patients or anything. I just haven't seen very many people use those in place of their books unless they just need to look something up quickly. Everyone is different and you might find it works for you, but the people who were all excited in first semester because they could use their phones or other electronics instead of books ended up just using their books anyway.

Everyone I know in the program loves Saddleback and would definitely recommend it to future RN applicants. Hope this helps!

[cathering, ADN, BSN, MSN, APRN, NP]

Wow, thanks so much for all of that! I am so excited to start! Congratulations you're more than half way done (:

[nataliec79]

Hi everyone, I am applying in June for Spring 2014 semester. I am taking my last semester of prereqs right now (micro and physio). I was wondering about how many points people had when they were accepted? I have points for working as a PT aid, having a BA, taking some of the extra classes, and speaking another language but I haven't taken the TEAS yet and I don't have all A's in the science prereqs. I really want to get into Saddleback

[ashwomanctr]

does anyone know how many points you need to have a good chance of getting in at both golden west and saddleback? i have 70 points for saddleback and 71 for golden west? do i have a good chance of getting in at either one of these schools? i haven't applied yet but am planning on applying for saddleback for the spring. also, does goldenwest only accept applications once a year? that is the impression i was left with after looking at some of their stuff online.