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Hello, I am new to all nurses.com and love what I see already. There is so much information. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me their experience with nursing school and their pre-requisites. I am on the wait list to get into pima community college for the associates degree. Anyways, I have heard more than once from other people that the pre-reqs are just as hard if not harder than actual nursing school. If I passed chem, micro, a&p and everything else with good grades, is nursing school going to be comparable academically or is it 100 times harder? thanks, tmbb

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Specializes in CVICU, CCRN.

For me, nursing school is A LOT harder than the pre-req classes such as anatomy and chemistry.

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OK I'm only in my 4th week of my first semester so take this for what it's worth...For me, nursing is just DIFFERENT. The pre-reqs you have a test, you pretty much know what to study because there are clear cut answers, generally speaking, with A&P, Chem, micro, etc. With nursing..well like I said it's different....time to put on your critical thinking cap. I highly recommend getting an NCLEX practice book/program and begin practicing your critical thinking skills. There's really no "cramming" for nursing...you just have to use what you know and apply it to each individual scenario. :) hope this helps. Good luck!

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no thats awesome thank you. I just ordered the lippincott nclex manual to help me study. thats what i wanted to know, basically what should I study. A friend of mine said we review a lot of case studies. I had to take a ton of critical thinking pre-reqs so hopefully i'll be ok. thanks for your time and info and good luck to you too!

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Specializes in Med/Surg, OB/GYN, Informatics, Simulation.

If you're not in nursing classes yet I'd say don't freak yourself out by reading the NClex book. It has a lot of higher education type of questions that you haven't gotten yet. The biggest difference that makes nursing so much harder then pre-regs is the fact that every answer is right you have to pick the most right. That's where the critical thinking component plays such a huge part.

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Thank you so much, that makes sense, this is the info i'm looking for. Tmbbtmbb

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In my experience, prereqs were mostly rote memorization. Memorizing info in nursing school helps you to remember general information but it doesn't help when it comes to applying and prioritizing information. You'll have to adapt to a different way of thinking ("think like a nurse" is what they say). The other side of it is that because so many programs teach for the NCLEX, tests are more by the book and it may or may not seem like the correct application in life. You may have done something in clinical that was perfectly fine for that specific situation but if you were to answer a test question based on your experience, it may not be the "best" answer. There's a lot of subjectivity to it, IMO.

My school admits students based on points and most of my classmates were straight A students during prereqs. I've managed to maintain a 4.0 in nursing school but I can honestly say that I don't feel like I know more or am smarter than my classmates. We have people who are brilliant in clinical and they know the facts of the material we are studying. But when it comes to applying the material on a test, they struggle to pick the answer that is better than the others. I don't know what the magic combo is to do well in school, despite my ability to do it. Of course, there are the people who fail because they just can't keep up but some of the C students are not C students because of laziness or a lack of smarts. They work just as hard for their C. I tip my hat to them.

Finally, the amount of work expected to be done in a semester is ridiculous. If you fall behind, you have to climb mountains to catch up. There could be 300 pages of textbook material in just one week. So it's a lot of material in a short amount of time.

So is nursing school 100 times harder than prereqs? Hmm. It's just...different.

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thank you so much for your response, i'm really starting to understand HOW nursing school is difficult. just out of curiosity, did you do a bsn? or adn?

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Specializes in Urology, ENT.

Pre-reqs are easy compared to nursing school. You have to change how you think.

If it's possible, you might want to return the NCLEX book -- they're changing the test this April. I found that out before taking boards, which I got out of the way as soon as possible.

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If you don't mind me asking when is your start date? I applied in Aug. 2013 and got a letter stating that my start date would be in Aug. 2018..which is out of control to say the least.

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If you don't mind me asking when is your start date? I applied in Aug. 2013 and got a letter stating that my start date would be in Aug. 2018..which is out of control to say the least.

maars im so sorry havent replied sooner, life school ect. i applied dec 2012, got placed in fall 2017 and have so far been moved up 3 times and im now set to start fall 2015. i heard from s nursing student friend that she is less than impressed with the school for lack or organization, so-so faculty and less than 50 of the hundred students she started with this semester making in through to the next semester. crazy! i'm considering other options and will probably go else where.

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