Attn: All liu-brooklyn bsn students and recent grads

I am a current student of LIU who transferred in. I'm not in the nursing program yet but I'll let you know everything I do lol. First of all let me start out by saying that a 3.0 is good enough to get into the nursing program. The problem is that they look at two gpa's. First they look at your overall and then they look at your sciences. Both grades have to be a 2.75 or higher. While they prefer students to have a higher gpa you can get in with at least that in both gpa's. The GPA is exactly what it says it is which is one of the good things about LIU. Your seat isn't guaranteed, it's based on whether or not you pass the nursing entrance exam which isn't all that hard.

Also, your grades aren't as bad as you think. I transferred to LIU from a CUNY college and the way that they do your grades are a little different. Any grades that have + or -'s get rounded. So for example, the classes you got a C+ or C- turn out to be a C. They do use the + and - scale but not when you are transferring. LIU is not all that great when it comes to financial aid, I did thankfully get just enough to cover tuition. However, you did say you live below the poverty line so if your income is less than 15,000 you shouldn't worry much because I think that your tuition will mainly be almost fully covered. There are no set prices for tuition. It's based on how many credits you take so someone with 18 credits pays more than the student taking 13 a semester. They DO raise tuition every year though.

So time to answer your questions.

1) My transfer GPA was 2.2 but I had no science pre-reqs. I was accepted as just a regular liberal arts student and when I raised my GPA I changed my major to nursing. My current gpa is a 3.4.

3) I don't really think it's because the program is THAT bad like some people say it is. I think it's moreso because they let in more students than they probably should. As you know most nursing programs don't have 100+ students. The way that they do it is that you have exit hesi's and med calc tests nearly every semester and students that can't pass usually get dropped from the program. About 60-80 students do graduate every year though, so I guess it depends.

4) I'm not positive but they do have a nursing kit that you buy your first semester with supplies, I'm just not sure what is in them.

5) It's extremely easy, they don't count the science portions, just the reading, math, grammar and vocab. You need a 75 and above in each section to get in but if you get between a 70 and 75 they accept in the part time program.

6) If you get accepted into the nursing program, have passed the entrance exam and all, then you are guaranteed that spot. They never move students and usually the classes they make for the first semester are never full. I'll be starting Fall 2010 as well and they told me that once I finish my science pre-reqs and pass then I'm in. LIU doesn't have a seperate application like most schools, if you get in as a nursing student that is what you are. It stays pending till you finish everything but if you do they can't take away your seat no matter how many students there are.

7) I personally like the school throughout my pre-reqs. The nursing courses are much more difficult and require a lot more time. The books are EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE. Most of the math and science books are over 100 on average. For a lot of the science books they don't have used copies. The cheaper looseleaf copies can't be sold back to the store ect.

8) As far as my knowledge there isn't any. But the school has a lot of connections with hospitals and a lot of students had preceptorships during their final year/semester which allow you to look into a specific field.

Finally, as far as the other college requirements like English and History, I transferred in with all but three of those requirements. All of those classes must be finished before you can start nursing courses so you can't do philosophy or anything while you are doing nursing classes, they all have to be done before. If you want to take them at a CUNY school instead of LIU to cut costs then I suggest you do it. The English Lit classes and the History classes don't have to be an any particular subject. Whether it be American or European, Asian ect, you just need two of them. Take an intro to philosophy and ethics class for the two philosophy classes, speech is any intro to speech class. Sociology or Anthro have to the be intro courses. I transferred in with Gender Anthropology and it didn't count toward the requirement. Since you took college level statistics, they should wave the finite mathematics part.

I'm glad that you are excited. Even though there have been a lot of negative comments, I got into a nursing program and there was no way that I wasn't going to be completely thrilled. I like the school, some people don't and maybe it's because they didn't start out here or they went to a school that was different but I know that the people that transferred from the stressful CUNY schools DEFINETELY see an advantage to going there. There will probably be some recent grads or current students who will reply and say "DON'T COME HERE IT'S AWFUL" and that's alright too, but for me, since this was my only option, I'm just going to be optimistic about it all and graduate regardless of how many hurdles the school might through at me. Good luck though, who knows maybe we'll be in the same nursing orientation next year!

I'm basically getting my pre-req sciences because LIU requires you to take two basic science classes if you don't have a science college course so I had to do those. I'm taking Anatomy, Micro, stats and psych in the fall and then physiology, organic chem and sociology in the spring and I'll be done with all my classes thank god. Those general ed courses seem like they took forever.