What I want to know is which CRNA schools are the

the ease of being accepted into a school probably shouldn't be the primary determinant in everyones criteria for choosing a school. On the other hand once you graduate you are still a certified CRNA (assuming you pass required board tests) no matter WHERE you go to school (we are only considering mainstream accredited schools in this discussion).

I have been to many CRNA schools websites and been a little frustrated at the relative paucity of information with regard to "average" class parameters. With medical, dental, pharmacy, and most other professional schools this information is widely availible and largely standardized. One can usually quickly determine (for those institutions) information such as average standardized test scores, GPA's and even typical majors of their "50th percentile" student.

I have always felt that just because a school has high admisstion standards it doesn't necessarily follow that the QUALITY of education is equally impressive. What does it really prove after all if Harvard or MIT can do a good job of educating people who have average SAT scores over 1400 and IQ's over 160. Even a poor teacher and deficient curriculum might look impressive educating geniuses! I think a much better test would be quantifying how much a school can IMPROVE the abilities of their typical student from matriculation to graduation (making allowances of course for the fact that it is more difficult to improve upon what are already very high levels of performance).

Making this information easily availible benefits both the student and the institution. Students don't waste their time (or the schools) applying to institutions for which they are clearly not qualified. A student with a 1300 SAT (or 1900 combined GRE) might represent a 90th percentile applicant at one school, but only a 25th at another.

Even with what little I DO know about CRNA schools I can make SOME observations:

It seems that those institutions located "on the coasts" have more competition than those which are more "land locked". Furthermore, I would imagine that 27 month programs elicit more interest than longer programs. As Kevin pointed out in a different post time is money and the higher your potential income the greater the opportunity cost of staying in school. The observation about larger class sizes being favorable (for admission) also seems logical. Can we build on these observations further?

Thanks to all for the great input!

if God were to snap his cosmic fingers (not to offend any atheists out there) and give us all AT LEAST 160 point IQ's (but some people considerably more) and 2,000 GRE's it would simply be a matter of time before "slow" was redefined as todays genius! Indeed, it wouldn't surprise me to see (in such a world) Burger King demanding at least a masters degree to be considered for employment!

The point of course is that much of what we see with admissions has more to do with sorting, and the allocation of scarce resources rather than objective truth. Perhaps, thats why in cultures like Korea and Japan where educational resources are proportionately MUCH more scarce than here virtually your ENTIRE post secondary, academic life comes down to ONE test administered after high school.