How hard are the nursing programs at state schools?

Nursing Students General Students

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Hey everyone,

I will be a full-time student in the BSN program at USC Upstate in January. This is a public, state university in South Carolina. I was wondering what the workload is like--during the first semester and semesters after that? I have a part-time job (working between 20-30 hours/week) and an 8 month old baby boy so I would just like to prepare myself for the workload ahead and make any necessary arrangements before school starts. I know that different nursing programs will vary in workload and difficulty, but I'd just like to gain a general idea of how hard the nursing programs are at state schools. I posted the same thread in 'SC Nursing Programs', but I doubt I'll get much response there so I figured I would try here too. How many hours a week do you need to study/review outside of class to make straight A's? I'm planning to go to grad school, and I need scholarships to finance any advanced education so I really, really need to make straight As.

Just to give you a better idea of what our courseload is like...:

Junior year, first semester:

  • Nutrition (2 credit hrs)

  • Intro to Professional Nursing (4)

  • Health Assessment (3)

  • Foundations of Nursing Practicum (3)

  • Integrated Nursing Practicum (3)

  • Total credit hrs: 15

Junior year, Second semester:

  • Health Alteration I (3)

  • Health Alterations I Practicum (3)

  • Nursing of Childbearing Families (3)

  • Nursing of Childbearing Families Practicum (2)

  • Child Health Nursing (3)

  • Child Health Nursing Practicum (2)

  • Pharmacology (2)

  • Total credit hrs: 18

Senior year, First semester:

  • Health Alterations II (3)

  • Health Alterations II Practicum (3)

  • Nursing Research (3)

  • Leadership in Nursing Practice (3)

  • Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing (3)

  • Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing Practicum (3)

  • Total credit hrs: 18

Senior year, Second semester:

  • Health Alterations III (3)

  • Health Alterations III Practicum (2)

  • Community & Public Health Nursing (3)

  • Community & Public Health Nursing Practicum (3)

  • Issues in Professional Nursing (2)

  • Senior Practicum in Professional Nursing (3)

  • Total credit hrs: 16

I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks for your time!

Specializes in L&D.
I just apply for the Fall 2013 semester. If you don't mind, can you tell us what was your gpa when you apply ? I just want to know what are my chances of getting in.

Sure. I had a 3.7.

Nursing school hasn't been crazy hard. You do need to study, though. I have A's and B's. If I put more effort into making note cards and really studying, then I'd probably have more A's than I do now. I choose to have a life outside of college, since I am married and have a family. I really enjoy nursing school. It's definitely not the stress fest I thought it was going to be. It depends on the school. My poor husband was insanely stressed out when he went through nursing school (he was in a different school than me). :( I felt bad for him.

I'm in a ABSN program and there seems little correlation between number of hours people study and grades or understanding. Some people work 20+hrs a week and take care of kids. Some people do nothing but study. If your job isn't in health care now, look into what it would take to get loans just in case. It's busy but how busy depends mostly on your style and on your program's expectation.

And for the GPA question, most of us have above a 3.5 but I know many people with higher grades didn't get in. Essays and experience were more important. Depends on your program.

I guess it really depends on the person. I personally don't find nursing school to be that difficult. Although I did bomb my first exam, but that was my first nursing test ever. After that I have been getting high Bs or As. You just need to know how to that nursing style tests. I usually don't study for my midterms until 2 days or 3 days before the test (not the best advise.) But I see some of my classmates suffer and having a very difficult time, yet spending more time on studying than I do.

I will say however, nursing school is very time consuming. You will be reading a lot, preparing for class more than you ever had with your "normal classes," you have to be diligent and most importantly you will need to manage your time well in order to succeed in nursing school.

When I first started my journey in decided to pursue nursing, I found a lot of YouTube videos pertaining to this exact question.

Specializes in Emergency Department.

How hard is nursing school? From a knowledge perspective, not all that hard. From a volume standpoint: it's like trying to sip from a firehose with it going straight into your face. Then you add in the application of what you're learning and that's where things get hard. I had an OK GPA throughout my undergrad career. Yes, I have a BS degree in Sports Med. It's helped a LOT with certain aspects of nursing school. My post-grad studies to prepare for nursing school has been a solid 4.0 and I'm currently holding a B average. That's about right for how the general trend goes. A students get B's and B students get C's... C students might pass...

Like one of the other posters, I have to work full-time while in school and I wouldn't be able to do it without being able to study while at work. My employers don't mind as long as my studies don't impact my work. The hardest part of all this is making sure that I have at least some time to spend with my family, but it's not anywhere near what it was. I was able to get them to "buy in" to this journey and they know that I know that it's going to be as difficult for them as it is for me. In a way, while I'm home, I might as well (at times) not really be home. At times it's almost like I'm visiting my family in my own home.

They also know that I've got just another 6 weeks or so until I reach the summer break and then 2 more semesters of busy time and I'll be done with school. After that, it's on to the NCLEX and finding a job. While that will be tough, I'll be home more than I will have been!

Specializes in General Surgery.

When all was said and done, I actually found nursing school to be exciting, life changing and dare I say, fun! Yes, it was horridly time consuming and yes, there were times I wanted to tear my hair out (nearly did after endless hours working on careplans) but it is totally doable.

I worked as a CNA on-call about 3-4 days every two weeks (8 hr shifts), which worked out to be almost every weekend. Whenever I had an exam coming up, I wouldn't work the weekend before so I could cram lol Not the best way to study but I got an A first semester (med/surg, geri), B in second semester (maternal newborn, peds and med/surg), a B in third semester (psych and med/surg) and an A in fourth semester (med/surg + preceptorship). I'm sure if I didn't cram so much, I probably could've earned A's in 2nd and 3rd semester, although my heart wasn't into maternal newborn as much.

I studied with one other person. It worked out well because I found with big study groups, they just ended up turning into social hour and time is precious. It is nice to bounce things off of someone though. I used flash cards, used my hand dandy voice recorder and I would try to "talk it out" to myself as if I was teaching someone else about the content. There's that saying that goes, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it enough." I was one of those students who didn't do all of the reading. I felt like it was just too much. If I could answer the unit obectives confidently, then I moved on. If not, that's what I concentrated most of my studying on. I mainly used by textbooks as a reference. Our program made us purchase ATI, which is sort of akin to Kaplan books. I would do ATI questions that pertained to whatever content we were going to be tested on and I would do online practice tests from each text book on evolve.elsevier.com.

As someone earlier explain, the exams you get in nursing school are a whole 'nother animal. All the answers appear to be right but there is one that is more correct than the others. You must learn that almighty nursing judgment and how to answer NCLEX-style questions.

A lot of my classmates had kids, young children, infants even and still managed to make it. It's all up to you. Just put your head down, don't make too many waves and just get through it. When I finished nursing school, it was such a significant experience, it literally felt like I was closing a chapter in my life. Best of luck to you, you can do it!

Specializes in CVICU.

Im so stressed out, idk wher to begin. Nsg school is stressful, this semester more than the last. I think it'll be less stressful if u just want to pass instead of getting a certain grade; however if you have to keep like a 3.3 avg or something like that for scholarship and NT job, its very stressful, especially if your are borderline

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