Private vs Community College for LPN?

Nursing Students Pre-Nursing

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It appears there is only one accredited school in my area (Carrington) that has an LPN or associate's program in nursing, and it runs around $51k for the degree :***: Is that normal??

Does anyone have any cost/benefit input on this? I don't know if it's worth the extra year to get my pre-reqs + risk the lottery system at my local community college.

Specializes in ICU Stepdown.

Nooooo, that's ridiculous! My RN program is probably 12k max for pre-reqs+nursing courses. I would never spend that much on any degree tbh, let alone a 12 month program. I would rather spend another 3-4 years waiting than spend that much.

Specializes in NICU, RNC.

Risk the lottery system! $51k is way too much to pay for an LPN or even an ADN.

$51k is absolute robbery.

Specializes in Emergency Room, CEN, TCRN.

51k is higher than the tuition for my BSN program, which is considered to be the best in Oregon. That's a little steep for a certificate, it's about 5k here at the community college for their three quarter long LPN program.

The nursing program I am trying to get into at a community college cost 9K excluding the 5 prerequisite classes for a ADN. I would never pay 51K for an associates unless I was Bill Gates kid. If you are like the rest of us you want to keep your debt as low as possible.

Specializes in M/S, LTC, Corrections, PDN & drug rehab.

$51K??! :eek: Move or try the lottery system.

Specializes in Critical Care, Trauma.

A friend of mine went to a school similar to Carrington to get her LPN, now that she wants to get her RN, it's proving to be difficult. There aren't very many LPN to RN programs around and even then, she's having to retake classes in order to apply because her credits won't transfer. These are credits like English, general biology, microbiology, and statistics.

Go the community college route, shoot for your RN... Many RN programs offer a point in the coursework where you can apply to take your NCLEX-PN while you're still in school.

A friend of mine went to a school similar to Carrington to get her LPN, now that she wants to get her RN, it's proving to be difficult. There aren't very many LPN to RN programs around and even then, she's having to retake classes in order to apply because her credits won't transfer. These are credits like English, general biology, microbiology, and statistics.

Go the community college route, shoot for your RN... Many RN programs offer a point in the coursework where you can apply to take your NCLEX-PN while you're still in school.

I do not think that is true anymore,but it depends on the state.

Specializes in Emergency Department.

Under normal circumstances I would NEVER pay $51k for an RN or LVN/LPN program. Come to think of it, even under some seriously abnormal circumstances I would never pay that much...

I would rather spend a little money and make certain that I have all the prerequisite units done and the vast majority of courses required for graduation and bide my time while applying as often as I can to a program that runs on a lottery system. Eventually your number will come up and you'll be starting a program that won't look at you as a cash cow. If they're charging you $51k for that, you can bet that they're also going to try to have you apply for loans/scholarship programs that will take you YEARS to pay off and you'll actually pay much more than the 51k they're quoting you.

The worst part of most of those private colleges is that usually the units/coursework they have you take won't transfer to any other college or university. You'll effectively have to start all over again if you want to go for another degree in nursing. I'm not saying that the coursework you'd take is substandard, just that the colleges usually don't have a regional accreditation that allows for far easier transfer of coursework. I went to schools in California, all were "public" schools and all were WASC (a regional accreditation body) accredited. Almost ALL of my coursework from 4-5 colleges and universities transferred or were considered "done" when I began my nursing program. Since I'd already earned a Bachelors from a WASC accredited program, it was very easy for my college to basically look at the transcript and see that I was exempt from having to take ANY other coursework besides what was required for my nursing program. Had I gone to a university for a BSN instead (also WASC), it still would have been a 2 year program and I might have been required to take one or two university-specific courses to earn the BSN. Maybe.

I'll eventually "go back" and go for a BSN. Doing so would be fairly easy for me. I briefly looked at a private school for ADN and that would have cost me around $85k. If I'd decided to continue on to BSN after going to that program, I would have likely had to take many more classes as much of the units I'd taken wouldn't transfer from the private college. At least this way I can "transfer" my first Bachelors and my ADN coursework into the new school and get credit for all that work!

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