ADVICE NEEDED FOR A PRE-NURSING STUDENT

Shan, RN · Dec 16, 2019

What are the admission requirements for your program? Do they consider any combination of overall GPA, pre-req grades, science GPA, entrance exam score, etc?

I encourage you to talk to an advisor for the program you're going to apply for and ask for the stats of their last few admitted cohorts. They should be able to give you an idea of what the average pre-req grades and GPAs were. Then you'll be able to tell if you will be a competitive applicant or not. I did this and it gave me a lot of peace of mind when I applied, because I knew that I had competitive stats compared to the last few admitted groups from previous semesters.

JarheadMurse, BSN, RN · Dec 31, 2019

As someone who did adult learning in their 30s close to your age after being away from school for so long, I can sympathize, however when I started taking my prereqs I was very careful to load courses across different semesters and not to put too many heavy courses in one semester and I didn't take more than 3 courses, I also took advantage of winter sessions and summer classes. I was not the best student went I went to school over 10 years ago, so I had to do some "GPA Repair." if I was going to try to get into one of those accelerated programs. 90% of that was taking ownership of my study habits, and well, actually studying. At first, I thought I could have possibly had ADHD, but wasn't the case, got tested, and they told me I was "borderline." I had to agree with them, the drugs didn't really do anything to improve my focus concentration in my case, so I stopped using them, I just had been lazy in my earlier years.

The key was working smarter not harder in regards to where you sign up for courses. I have a sister who was in much the same place, where she needed to raise her GPA to be competitive to apply to dental school, and I had to do the same for nursing school. I was going to a community college outside of my county at times and chased the best "rate my professor" reviews. I did this after dropping an A&P course from some Ph.D. candidate who "failed me at my first test in my first prereq class, and condescendingly told me that perhaps I should consider another job field." I guess she was on the warpath, the people that I met who stuck it out got Cs and Bs and busted their hump for them. I didn't have time for that, went elsewhere to a JC and took the course from a professor who actually taught at our big state school as an adjunct along with the JC and did just fine. I got straight As on all of my prereqs but I did have to take it across 2 different schools. My sister took her dental prereqs I think across 5 different schools, and she now she is a dentist, so I guess the ends justify the means in this case. I was able to bring my GPA up to the point where I got into the program I was gunning for as well. Also be careful with "bombing" and thinking you can take it again next time. Don't know the policy of the school where you are at, but I know for the nursing programs around us they calculate every attempt of a class, pass or fail, it all gets thrown into your GPA. And I think in many JCs grade forgiveness/amnesty is not unlimited.

You can do anything you put your mind to, it's just a matter of what are you willing to give in exchange, and how much you want it. I truly believe that even more so now, sounds cheesy I know, but it really is the truth. My cohort had two 40s plus students, so its never too late.