Is it just me...or have you also noticed a significant drop in the number of applicants applying for these nursing schools, especially at the BSN levels...but including ADN's and LPN's?!
I ask this question because, I remember years ago on this very site, pre-nursing applicants would attend information meetings, and come back and post some astronomical numbers of applicants who had filed. Along with that, they would post some ridiculous numbers of years you had to sit on a wait-list pool of applicants. Numbers would be like, 600 to 1,580 potential applicants, but taking only 55-100, somewhere in that neighborhood...with a waiting list of 3-5 years away. Now you hear 200-300 applicants applied, maybe 58 taking... and sometimes no wait-list at all...maybe a roll over to the next application year's date!
However, recently you hear someone on this site (threads) being so sad on their school's threads, because they were put on a wait-list...and approximately three weeks later they are back on this site...yelling, Wow Yep Yay...I got in, they accepted me off the wait- list. Is applicants just getting smarter, and just applying at as many schools as possible...thereby decreasing that wait-list...and decreasing the numbers?
Do you think the demand is decreasing, so much so, because there has been so many nurses that have graduated within the period of 2002-2011, that the market has been so over saturated, and not been able to accommodate that much of an increase in numbers of applicants in our field?
Do you think the school are purposely attempting to make the requirements so competitive that it makes it easier to persuade the applicants to go elsewhere, thereby, discouraging and decreasing the numbers of applicants to apply. If this is so...I agree...we want the best of the best working on us...that is, if that is the schools true and actual reasoning. And...I would love that title of being 'A Great Nurse'.
I say this only because so many nurse instructors and educators on these threads, have indicated quite clearly, that most(some often) 4.0 GPA's nurses have great memory skills, but can not implement them to critical thinking modes. Which don't necessarily make them the best nurses. I guess they would know..they are the ones who are the educators who oversee their training.
What do you think is happening to the nursing field applicants numbers...or is it just the bottom line...Money, and the increase COST to attend nursing schools?
