[PeachPie]

Today, I was venting to my friend's mom (Pediatric nurse practitioner) about nursing school (I'm in my first semester, need I say more?). She reassured me that I'd get the hang of things and that nursing school will be over someday. She also said that she found grad school easier than her undergrad years for these reasons:

1) It's usually concentrated on a specialty, so it's easier to focus.
2) You've had experience working as a nurse.
3) You already know how nursing school, care plans, and clinicals work.
4) Enrollment competition is stiff, but not nearly as abysmal as undergrad acceptance rates (in Houston, 150 out of about 2000-3000 applicants may enter each school each accepting semester).
5) There are more options for taking classes, such as online.

Do you find this to be accurate? I would not repeat my years of trying to get into nursing school for a king's ransom, and I'm hoping that getting my bachelor's or master's will be easier than the aforementioned arduous process.

[Tweety]

I can't speak for grad school like your friend can, but I can say your pretty accurate about the RN to BSN portion.

The program I choose is 100% online and there was no competition to get in, basically, I just signed up. In fact I got accepted to two programs relatively easy, a local classroom one and the online one.

The focus of RN to BSN isn't NCLEX, so it's a whole different atmosphere. The "clinicals" are a bit different, (following a manager around for a day, teaching a community health topic, etc.) and NO CARE PLANS!! The only class that I even had to come up with a nursing diagnosis was an assessement class, where we would do an assessment on a system and have to come up with a ND).

Hang in there. Good luck!

[scribblerpnp]

1) It's usually concentrated on a specialty, so it's easier to focus.
2) You've had experience working as a nurse.
3) You already know how nursing school, care plans, and clinicals work.
4) Enrollment competition is stiff, but not nearly as abysmal as undergrad acceptance rates (in Houston, 150 out of about 2000-3000 applicants may enter each school each accepting semester).
5) There are more options for taking classes, such as online.

Do you find this to be accurate? I would not repeat my years of trying to get into nursing school for a king's ransom, and I'm hoping that getting my bachelor's or master's will be easier than the aforementioned arduous process.[/quote]

I too thought grad school was easier and a LOT less stressfull. You are treated more like an adult and an equal by the professors, there is a lot of paper writing (which I always found easier) and my classes were smaller at 8 students in my PNP classes. But the classes that all the Masters nurse took the combined all the programs were big at 100+ students. My program was very traditional and did not offer on-line classes. We went to school all day for two days a week. And when we did clinicals the second year it was M-F 8-5 for three quarters.

The main reason I found it easier was that I was actually interested in the material. I went through 4 years of nursing school for a BSN. And nursing school is very adult based, which I hated. I hated class and I hated clinicals because for the exception of an OB class everything was adult this and adult that. Our peds was incorporated into the med surg, so the peds stuff as few and far between. I was so scared that I had chosen the wrong field and was going to hate nursing. Then I realized I JUST HATED ADULT NURSING. Once I got to work as an RN in a peds hospital (no adults for MILES except for the staff) and began a PNP program I was in love. I actually got to learn stuff I was interested in!

The atmosphere in a Master's program is just so completely different. I found it to be more laid back, proffs more approachable, more trust between the student and teacher.

[CAPRN77]

I don't know about grad school but RN-BSN was definitely easier than obtaining my ADN. Basically the RN-BSN program there were essentially no tests, just a bunch of busy work like papers and projects. Also, clinical wasn't really clinical it was more busy work such as a community project or something like that. Bottom line.....if you did the work you were going to pass! It was a lot of work however.

[puggymae]

RN to BSN was way easier than my two year program. My graduate program was pretty intense but then I worked full time and went to grad school full time too.

[PeachPie]

Thanks for the advice!

[traumaRUs]

Definitely, the RN to BSN was easier. Like Tweety, zero competition, just sign up,. pay whatever and off you go. Even my MSN and post-MSN programs weren't competitive - I just signed up, paid the money and away I went. My post-MSN certificate though was more difficult because of the clinical competency and knowledge I was expected to absorb. Plus, there is a test at the end for certification.