I don't want to sell myself short

[CCURN87]

Hi all! So I am facing a little dilemma as to when I should go into CRNA school. I live in TX so my optimal choices are to stay in the south (preferably in TX or Louisiana - i have relatives in or nearby these states). I managed to land my first job out of nursing school in an MICU in a pretty large, but not a teaching hospital. I've been working here for almost 6 months. My initial goal was to go into CRNA school for August 2010 hopefully. So that would give me about 1 year and 8 months of experience. But as I look at all the requirements, prerequisites, and COST to go to the schools I want to, I find that it's going to be very challenging to get everything done before application deadlines. I feel like if I applied for next year, I would only be really happy with one application versus the many others that i had sent out. And I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket. So I am thinking maybe apply for August 2011. HOWEVER, my dad has this plan for me to go for next year, but it seems impossible because there's no way i can raise at least $30K in that amount of time, not to mention I'd be rushing on trying to take my GRE, get my CCRN, follow a CRNA, and get my managers to write me a letter of recommendation. I don't know if I'd be pleased as a manager to write a letter of recommendation for someone who hasn't even been in the MICU for a year yet! I'm really young too instead of going into CRNA school at 23, I'd be going in at 24...........which is still very young IMO (I'm 22 right now). What do y'all think?

[CRNA, DNSc]

Don't rush, you have plenty of time- prepare yourself well by taking the extra year in the unit and getting the rest of your stuff together. It is better to be prepared and successful then rushed and scrambling!

[loveanesthesia]

Apply when you are ready, and the extra experience will only help you. Getting accepted is just the first step, then you need to complete a program. You don't want to get in over your head and be cut from a program, then it is very difficult to get back into one.