Choosing a CA CC ADN program

Nursing Students Pre-Nursing

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Specializes in PACU, Case Management.

Hello everyone,

I'm about a year away from apllying to ADN programs in California. I've been making a spreadsheet in Excel with college names,locations and NCLEX pass rates (ok, I'll admit I LOVE to make lists :D ).

I already know that I'd prefer a smaller school to a larger one, but are there other areas I should be looking at when deciding on which school to attend?

I am a "non-traditional" (read older) student, so I would prefer to live off-campus, by myself, or with an older student who is also going for their ADN.

Any suggestions on how to narrow down my search? My Excel spreadaheet includes about 30 CC's; help!

Lil Laura

Specializes in Medical/Surgical, L&D, Postpartum.

Hi there!! I am also in California. what part are you from? I am from the San Francisco Bay Area. Try looking on the Board of Registered Nursing website...it is www.rn.ca.gov they have a list of all the approved ADN programs along with all of their pass rates. I hope this helps...the website also has links to the different college's nursing departments.:wink2:

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but ...

To be honest ... all the schools have waiting lists. You don't have that much of a choice. Most people basically apply to all the programs that they can reasonably commute to, and go with the one that accepts them first. If you have a choice on where you live ... I would pick an area where there are as many schools as possible so you can apply to more than one and increase your chances of acceptance without, hopefully, too long of a wait. But it's very tough to get into nursing programs these days.

:cool:

Hello everyone,

I'm about a year away from apllying to ADN programs in California. I've been making a spreadsheet in Excel with college names,locations and NCLEX pass rates (ok, I'll admit I LOVE to make lists :D ).

I already know that I'd prefer a smaller school to a larger one, but are there other areas I should be looking at when deciding on which school to attend?

I am a "non-traditional" (read older) student, so I would prefer to live off-campus, by myself, or with an older student who is also going for their ADN.

Any suggestions on how to narrow down my search? My Excel spreadaheet includes about 30 CC's; help!

Lil Laura

:lol2: I am a real real older student :lol2:

Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

If you can get the information, you might want to include the total number of nursing students in their program and the total number of instructors to give you a kind of student/instructor ratio. You might also want to look at the kinds of degrees held by the faculty. The hospitals where they do their clinical experiences may be important to you as well. You also might want to compare the pre-requisites required to get into the actual nursing classes. Some schools will permit students into the nursing classes while still having to finish up their second semester of A&P and micro, and others won't.

To be quite honest with you, I'd go for a larger school that is having students doing clinicals in large teaching hospitals because you are going to be exposed to more state of the art nursing activities and medical care. I'm not putting down the community hospitals that smaller CC that many nursing programs use, but the large teaching hospitals is where things are really rockin'.

Specializes in PeriOp, ICU, PICU, NICU.

Good luck to you. The list is a great idea!

Specializes in L/D.

Where are you located? I am in Bakersfield and while I went to Cal. state Bakersfield to get my bachelor's degree(not nursing) I have chosen Bakersfield College(CC) for my ADN. It is a small school and we actually dont have a waiting list. They started a new system where they take your core science grades(anatomy, micro, and physio), all english grades, and your total GPA and compute it into a %. The top number of students get in.

Here is the website with more info.

http://www2.bakersfieldcollege.edu/alliedhealth/

Amber

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