Are C's really the new A's in nursing school?

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A few nursing students I have met told me this. Is this true? Seems kind of scary. Lol.

What was your programs nclex pass rate, It's 100% at my b/c program with b/c students.
97-100% depending on the year, and graduates of the program are highly regarded. So our B/C classmates pass along with the A students. I'm not sure why it's so hard to accept that some folks just do better grade wise than others. There's always gotta be some reason other than varying academic abilities: the A students must not be good clinically or they must go to an easy school with poor NCLEX results or it's just good guesswork on tests.
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Specializes in Cardiac/Neuro Stepdown.
If you talked to the B/C students in my program, they'd tell you the same thing. "No one gets As in this program, it's impossible, etc." But plenty of us had mid to high A averages. I graduated with a 3.82 from my program and was still only ranked 15th in the class. I'm pretty sure the highest GPA someone got in my program was a 4.0.

Clearly this is your program, if you plenty had A's, where other programs had zero A's. It speaks to the program, not academic ability. What I have a hard time accepting is people who went to "highly regarded", "prestigious" schools who look down their nose at others. Luckily for me, as hard as it was I graduated debt-free, without a highly regarded 50k student loan.

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A B- or lower is a fail in my program (84%) , you would fail the class with a C.

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Specializes in Hospice / Ambulatory Clinic.
Knowing 78% of anything is actually pretty darn good, relatively speaking. The best? No.

And that's why the passing grade needs to be 78% or something similar since EVERY graduate needs to know the majority of the knowledge. The rest is the icing of the cake or something you'll learn now rather than later.

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Clearly this is your program, if you plenty had A's, where other programs had zero A's. It speaks to the program, not academic ability. What I have a hard time accepting is people who went to "highly regarded", "prestigious" schools who look down their nose at others. Luckily for me, as hard as it was I graduated debt-free, without a highly regarded 50k student loan.

Oh, right, I forgot that one. Students who get As pay for their grades by going to private schools that make it easy for them.

Here's the thing: I find it really, really, extremely hard to believe that not only do you know the grades for everyone in your class, but that you also know the grades for the classes that graduated before and after you. I do not believe that students NEVER get As at your school, or any other school for that matter. I wouldn't be surprised if those students who were getting As kept their mouths shut about it, however.

I suppose this idea that everyone works hard for their grades in nursing school except A students would be more insulting if it didn't so clearly come from a place of such obvious insecurity. No one's looking down their nose at you.

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Specializes in Private Practice- wellness center.

The reason a lot of people have trouble getting straight A's in nursing school is because it is retraining your brain to think in a different way. As a nurse, you will have to consider the big picture when looking at a few small details. What effects one system will eventually effect the others, some more quickly than the others. I don't know about most people, but it took some time for me to learn that. Combine that with my hour commute, a husband who works strictly on-call, and usually got called to work in the middle of the night, then took a "temp" hire with his company in another state, a child, an acre of land to take care of, along with my parents and THEIR home, you have my GPA. Am I a "C" student? Nope, but neither am I an "A" student. We all have our reasons. If I weren't so insistent on getting in at least 6 hours of sleep a night and spending time playing with my son who will not be five/six forever, I probably could have achieved a better GPA. If I listen to what managers here tell me, an employer would rather have a happy, well-rounded new grad to hire. People who are happy outside of work tend to bring their happiness to work with them.

While I'm at it...as lucky as I was to NEVER witness the whole "nurses eat their young" thing, IMHO, this feeds into it. Who cares where you went to school? Can you perform your tasks? Are you SAFE? Do you have an understanding as to why you're doing what you're doing? These are the things we should be considering. There are nurses who got through school with a 3.9 GPA that I wouldn't let touch my goldfish and some that I would wait in line to receive treatment from. The same could be said with some that are in the 3.0 range. :D

Don't worry about everyone else and worry about yourself and what YOU need to do in order to be successful in your future- be it as a CNA, LPN/LVN, RN, or APN. To everyone still in school or getting ready to start- GOOD LUCK!!!!

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A B- or lower is a fail in my program (84%) , you would fail the class with a C.
Wow, that is pretty harsh.
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Specializes in ICU.

Not true. I get A's... I work very hard and still have a social life. Many of my classmates make As. Personally, I am VERY driven and passionate about critical care, so I have the mentality to be the best I can possibly be... Cs are not acceptable, and many of my classmates feel the same! Although, I can see a difference in some classmates.. some are OK with just passing, but most of us are neurotic A/high B achievers. Whenever we lose classmates due to failing grades, I believe wouldn't you want the nurse with the 3.8 taking care of your mother? (of course GPA isn't everything, I have seen SEVERAL honors students just not able to "click" in clinical). Harsh but true in a profession that handles people's lives.

A-neurotic-overachievers are alive and well!!! :-)

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I don't know if I would say a C are the new "A's". In the nursing program I am in, our grading scale is higher that that of the rest of the university (and at most universities). This means that a 90-91% is considered a B+, and it goes down from there. We are all also required to get a 76% or higher in each course, and in each portion of the course. For example, my Gerontology rotation consisted of a lecture, lab, and clinical portion. You are required to have a 76% test average, a 76% lab average, and a 76% clinical average in order to pass. If you get below a 76% in one of these areas, you fail the entire course. So quite literally, a 75% average is considered failing.

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It depends on where you are going.

I went to an ADN program where the professors were the laziest people on the planet. They would even argue conflicting rationale on exams just to prevent from giving points to students.

An A was an impossible goal where I went. Our professors didn't even read the textbooks and some taught there for so long that the medical terminology and treatments had changed...but they didn't change their pre-prepared lecture notes that they had been using for years...so we ended up getting taught one thing in class and forced to read something different.

Good luck figuring out what to use on an exam....if you argued, "But this is what you said in class", they would even ADMIT to it but would say, "Well, you should be doing your reading"...and if you drew their attention to the book, they would say, "Well, that isn't what I said in class."

YOU COULD NOT WIN NO MATTER WHAT YOU DID.

I got straight A's once I went to another program where the professors actually read the material and the book and lecture became the same thing.

Imagine that.

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In my program a "C" or 75% and below is failing. Even anything under a 93% is 3.7 pts instead of 4 pts....Needless to say i was ****** when i got a 92.8 in one of my classes and dropped my GPA from a 4.0 lol. Is anyone elses program this way? I'm not too upset, i will have to just work harder. Alot of ppl in my class complain about everything for instance if they did horrible on a test they blame the professor and want to report them for not "teaching" it but yet they didn't read all of the chapters.... This kills me, you can't be spoon fed in nursing school, you actually have to READ....I digress....needed somewhere to vent.

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Specializes in ED.

74% and above is passing in my program.

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