Anyone at CCAC (Community College of Allegheny County)?

I graduated from there last spring. They don't have a waiting list per se. If you want to get in to the evening/weekend program, you have to have your sciences done first. Then you apply to the actual nursing program. They'll let you use your chem and bio from hs or a previous college as long as they are less than ten years old. I just barely made it with Chemistry. That will leave A&P 1&2 and Micro. I think you have to have some of your English and Electives done too. If you are looking at the day program, they let you take your pre-req's alongside your nursing classes. Just to let you know, most people don't do this. They too take them ahead of time and try to take the nursing classes by themselves. I didn't find out until after I started the program and was one of the few taking A&P along with Nursing. It was brutal. I also took CLEP tests for my English and Psych classes and that helped. I knew I wouldn't have time to be writing a bunch of papers and working on group projects. You have until your last semester to get all of your CLEPs in.

Now . . . . here's the reason there's no waitlist. They weed out like crazy. My class started in Fall of 2003 with more than 600 students. My graduating class was 111. A lot of people dropped out the first semester after they found out what to expect. Many of them did not realize how hands-on it was going to be. Many thought they would get a easy ride b/c it was CCAC and not a four year university. Not! It kicked my butt. But I will tell you what. It got me ready for boards and working in the real world. I just took my NCLEX this Thursday and it was one of the easiest tests I have taken. It shut off at 75 questions and I was done in less than 25 minutes. The tests I took in my nursing classes were hard as heck. You got some gimme questions on the tests, but then the rest of them were brutal. On the NCLEX there were no gimmes, but none of the questions were really hard either. All but two of my fellow classmates passed the first time and nearly all of us shut off at 75 questions.

Of course, the info in the above paragraph varies from campus to campus. I am an alum of South Campus. Other campus sites have reputations for being "easy" or "easier", but I really don't think you learn as much. I work with alumni from other campuses and notice that there seem to be some gaps in what was covered in their education. Friends of mine who work at other hospitals have noticed this too. South Campus is a little stuck-up about their reputation, but it's not without reason.

Please feel free to PM me if you have any other questions or need more info. Hope this helped.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth,

Hi. I read one of your kind replies and figured I ll ask you a question. I m starting evening/weekend nursing at the allegheny in the fall of 09.

I wanted to ask you a question about NUR101. I have my class and lab on Monday and Tuesday nights and clinical all day Saturday. My clinic day seems to be the problem. I need to switch to weekdays because of my job and family. What are my options? I already talked to the Nursing dept, but they said nothing can be done. BTW I looked at the Fall schedule and some NUR101 are still open. Anyways, I m not sure what is going on. Do you think Kent is flexible? What if I could do few hours one day or started finised earlier on Satrudays? WHat are my options? Thanks in advance for any advise Elizabeth!

Hi Nurs 1 -

I'm a NRN102 student at CCAC Allegheny Campus, in the evening/weekend program. I saw your post about your clinical and wanted to respond. There is not really any flexibility with clinical. It is a component of your education that you can't miss. Honestly, you get 1 absence from clinical, any more than 1 and you fail the entire course. They are very SERIOUS about your clinical experience. I too need to have clinical during the week to keep things "normal" for my family, but they have had to adjust - CCAC Nursing owns my butt for another 16 months. I have clinical this fall on Sunday (yes, that's Sunday) from 7am-3pm. This means I will need to go to the clinical sites on Saturdays to pick up my information for the following day and give up Saturday evenings with my family in order to do clinical prep. I know that this can be difficult, but if you really want to be a nurse, this is what you have to do. When you are done and have that RN after your name, it will be worth it, if that is what you really want!

Hang in there....just try to take things 1 step at a time. Just an FYI - if you have not had orientation yet, they will scare the hell out of you! Basically it's several hours of them telling you all the things that will get you kicked out of the program and then at the end they say, "Ok, you can do this - have a good semester!"....but you really can do it!

Good Luck!

Thank you "mochabean'! Do you know any helpful advisors at Allegheny. So far I haven't had a good experince with the department. Please let me know if you wanna email instead. Thanks again!

Mochabean,

Your posts are very useful. Thank you!

I was considering applying to Shadyside, but some of their clinicals start at 6:00 a.m. I have a 12 y.o. and we have no other parent, no relatives in the area who could look after her in the wee hours of the a.m. and get her off to school. Can you give me an idea of what the clinical hours are like at CCAC -- i.e. how early they can start in the day, how late they can go? After school and weekend child care is so much easier to arrange, so this could be a big factor in my choosing where to apply.

Thank you so much.

The time when clinicals start depends on what the clinical instructor says and you won't find that out until orientation. Most of the clinicals go from 7am-3pm. I have clinical from 7am-3pm, but we must be there by 6:45AM. Some other clinical sites may go from 8am-4pm. Also, as you progress in the program, you will have to go to your hospital clinical site the day before and gather information on your patient.

Are all clinicals in the accelerated program on Saturdays?