Drexel...what you should know before deciding to go here.

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Hello and sorry for the wait. First off good luck with the exam. You get 3hrs for 135 questions. Hopefully you took the practice exams as they helped tremendously.
What else? Lets see... Be confident and dont panic. Take time to read through the questions and take a break if you need one.
Well good luck and come tell us how well you did

I attended a community college in Pittsburgh, PA. The program's rules are similar. 75% was bare minimum for passing. Clinicals were on a pass/fail basis. Not only was our math exams 2 tries then fail, but so were ALL of our nursing skills exams and we performed them in a separate skills lab! Fail any one component (lecture, skills lab, assessment lab, clinical), and you failed the entire semester. You couldn't retake only the protion you failed, you had to retake the ENTIRE semester! Our finals are comprehensive too, except we had 100 questions, some semesters were split between diff disciplines such our semester where we had peds, maternity, AND med/surg (all in 15 wks!). Get a 74% and you're doomed! I believe the final was 30% of our grade. We didn't take the HESI but we had these ATI exams which are similar. If we didn't pass we had to remediate and pass it again with 90%. Then our final semester, we took the ATI RN Predictor. If you didn't pass the predictor with a 90% predicted NCLEX pass rate, you had to do 3000 NCLEX questions, one-on-one counseling sessions, etc..all in 4 weeks, WHILE doing your mentorship and attending other classes. Then 2 days before graduation, you'd have to retake that ATI and if you don't pass a 2nd time, you fail the class! Ergo, no graduation from you. And this was only a 2yr ADN program! Maybe that's why it's so respected out there...they have high standards. (some ppl. leave the prog and go to university progs cuz they're easier!)

I guess what I'm saying is that I hear and feel your pain, but it is not a song that I haven't sang or heard from peers in my school and surrounding universities.

P.S. Many schools, even PITT, and Duquesne have complaints regarding poor organization, so good luck with that!

Oh and did I mention that in my comm. college prog. if you failed a course twice, you had to start the nursing program over from the beginning! Someone failed the 2nd to last semester twice and had to reapply to the program and take ALL the courses over! From Nursing 101!

I applied to their '09 ACE program, weeks after the deadline. While gathering everything I needed for the application, I e-mailed (Oct. 30) the Office of Admissions with a couple of questions and guess what - the reply took A WHOLE MONTH (Dec. 1)! That experience to me, was a red flag. It just didn't feel right that someone (who I thought was given the task to answer inquiries) would take such a long time to answer a few questions (nothing complicated or needed any research). It felt so IMPERSONAL. Well, I received their rejection letter early this January and couldn't care less. Good thing, now that I'm reading the threads about Drexel and also because I got a phone call from The Johns Hopkins University this Monday and was given a slot in their 2010 ABSN program. A Drexel reject, now a Hopkins chosen one, go figure!

By the way, to those who are going into Nursing, more because of "a calling" than of money (unless money is the only thing calling you), please look into programs that have a comprehensive admissions process (like JHU-SON). They do not care so much for your sky-high GPAs (but of course, they wouldn't hurt), but also your essays, recommendations, and resume. This gives them a wholistic picture of what you are as a person, what you've accomplished, and what you will be able to accomplish in the future, not just for your self, but for others.

Peace

I actually really liked the fact that Drexel's application was so spartan. I ended up not applying to UPenn because they wanted all sorts of detailed information about my parents' education (degrees, schools, etc) which just struck me as ultra fussy. I'm 28, married, financially independent, have a Bachelor's Degree... My parents shouldn't (from an admissions standpoint) matter. Plus, I'll admit, I'm lazy when it comes to applications. Getting in to Drexel means I don't have to worry about essays, interviews, recommendations, etc for other schools.

I recently graduated from Drexel but I was in the BSN-coop program. The BSN-coop program was amazing, in my honest opinion. I can't blame you for your angry sentiment against Drexel because from my viewpoint, the ACE program looked like hell. I mean... think about it, it takes years for people to become amazing, keen, astute nurses. Think about all the knowledge and information you have to cram in your head for less than a year and then expect to be fully functional after that. Without the co-op program, most ACE students have no experience on the floor except for clinicals and maybe if they have a side-job as an extern (but with the ACE program, I don't really see that spare time happening).

So, please don't completely backlash against Drexel. Yes, Drexel has a very specific program that makes it difficult to transfer to other schools (but it has happened, I had classmates who transferred) and yes the passing grades are extremely high. However, I have to stand my ground as a Drexel graduate. The co-op program was absolutely beneficial to me. I received a job offer the very day I found out I passed my NCLEX exam from my co-op employer. Against the tsunami of spring/summer graduates, I feel like I stood out in the crowd because of the experience I gained working as a full time extern. The high grade expectancy was hell when I was trying to get through it but in hindsight, it worked to my advantage. I did AWESOME on my NCLEX exam after all those HESIs!

I don't know if this post is read still, but I've applied to Drexel well before reading the large amount of negative feedback on here. I'll continue with the application process (mainly because it is so inexpensive- sending my transcripts), but I'm thinking less and less that it sounds appealing to me. I'm leaning toward Columbia- not for the name, and certainly not for the price (uff! $13,000 more than Drexel, plus the cost of living difference in NYC), but because I have a very good friend that did it. Aside from the price and the general frustrations regarding disorganization, she speaks highly of the professors and found that they treated you like in grad school- they WANT you to do well and they really encourage students. She said there were a few in her class that dropped out, but only a few in the first semester.

Anybody know the retention rate at Drexel?