LaSalle University

JustcallmeNurse · Jan 14, 2016

I went to La Salle for their evening and weekend program. I enjoyed it about as much as I think that you can enjoy nursing school. It certainly had its moments that I was fed up with it, but I would imagine that every program has its ups and downs. It's ~30k to attend the Achieve program (nights/weekends). All classes are on weekdays nights and clinicals are on weekends. Most are 8 hour clinicals but there is one semester when you have Peds/Psych and they are 12 hour clinicals. I know that recently their nclex pass rate has not been that great, but I can tell you in my graduating class out of about 75 of us, I was only aware of 3 people failing the first time for boards. I felt well-prepared for boards and I passed in ~90 questions without taking the Kaplan course.

Hope that this helps!

zephyr9 · Jan 17, 2016

They have a lot of good advanced degree nurses in the faculty. It's not cheap.

The pass rate was down and they were scrambling to implement ways to bring it up. I think my class turned around the downward trend in the pass rate. I myself passed with 75 questions.

The lectures are good for the most part. The class was about 150'ish first semester, quite a few students had withdrawn by the end. There was a lot of b****ing and moaning from students about various aspects of the program but most of them were young priveleged middle class brats. The work was hard but not unreasonable. They really try hard to help students who are in trouble academically.

Clinical assignments were in hospitals from Doylestown to downtown. They can't take your location into consideration when assigning them but they will try to accomodate groups of friends to stay together. You have to do a care plan for pretty much every clinical. It is time consuming. The instructors are a mixed bag, some are better than others, some are faculty and some are adjuncts who work only as clinical instructors.

The lab is beautiful and well equipped. The lab days for learning nursing skills were somewhat chaotic so it is smart to go there on your own time to practice. Like I said, there are a lot of good nurses there to help.

It is what you make of it, if you use the resources and study and do the work you can get what you need there. But again, it isn't cheap so if you're an adult student paying your own way, there's less expensive ways to go.

There are a few extra expenses that are asked of you for study resources, and a Kaplan NCLEX prep course at the end of the program that is about $400. At the beginning, they tell you to get a clicker for in class test activities as a group. I didn't buy the clicker. $50 and they used them about 3 times, everyone didn't have them. Nothing lost.

The library is nice, the campus is nice. The administration are ok. If you are transferring from a two year college, there is a generous scholarship available, it pays almost half the years tuition.

Good luck.

Janetking · May 1, 2016

The Nclex pass rate for first time test takers was 83% for 2015 . So far in 2016 it is 89%. I heard that they are in great shape now.

Spine_CRNA, BSN, RN · May 5, 2016

I graduated from their undergrad program in 2013 and started in 2011. At the time, the school was stressed about NCLEX pass scores being down. I wasn't worried because like anything in life, you get what you put in and I passed the first time. The teachers were fantastic, most notably Dillon, Hoerst, Bailey was such a cute teacher, and the now missing Altmilller. FWIW Altmiller was clearly the best they had, but she left after we graduated because I heard the school was undergoing significant changes due to passing rates, a new Dean, etc.

The facilities are fantastic on the main campus.

I paid about $32k a year.

My schedule was class Tuesday Thursday and 2 distinct 8 hour clinicals on two of the 3 remaining weekdays. By distinct I mean one was maternity and the other was M/S for example.

They were very accommodating in keeping me in city clinical sites because I was dependent on public transportation for everything. I knew people that had to drive an hour+ to get to other sites. They were pissy because the school didn't pay for their gas. Really, they could have just asked for a specific site like I did.

For clinicals, there were anywhere from 3-8 of us. We could choose who we wanted to be in clinicals with.

The current uniforms are ass ugly with navy scrub pants and a light blue collared shirt.

Overall it's a fantastic school with a lovely culture and I am currently trying to get back there and volunteer or work part time with the nursing program as I like to help my old communities.