Associates & Bachelors....Advise Please

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OK, I am wondering what most of you would do if you were put into the situation that I am in right now.

This fall I will start with the prereqs for nursing for the ADN program. This college picks 80 students a year out of 140 (I believe) for their nursing program. In the area I have 3 other schools to apply to so in all I will be able to apply to 4 nursing programs or so I thought! Yesterday, after doing some research I found 2 out of these 4 schools do not offer the Associates Degree, but only Bachelor's. So that only leaves me with two schools to apply to, the one I am at now and a technical College. At this point the technical College will be probably not even work because their waiting list is a mile long. If I am able to apply in 2011, their waiting list will be around 2013 or later. On the other hand if I did go for my bachelor's I would have 4 nursing schools to apply to plus if you count the technical college that is 5 colleges total.

I have no idea what to do. I really wanted my ADN and with 4 kids I can only go part-time. If I go part-time for the ADN I will be able to apply in 2011, but if I go part-time for my Bachelor's it will be even longer. So what would you do....carry on and get the ADN and hope I get in right away or go for the Bachelor's?

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Specializes in Radiation Oncology.

I would go with the ADN. I dont know which state you are in but here in south Texas, no hospitals pay nurses more for a BSN than ADN. If I were you, I would get the RN, start working, then slowly progress to a BSN if you still feel the need to. I am doing pre-reqs for an ADN program here in Austin and it is pretty competitive, but not nearly as competitive as the BSN program at UT Austin.

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Go for the ADN, once you start working as an RN you can complete your BSN online :)

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I also wanted to go for my ADN, but after waiting 2 years to get into the program (pure lottery), I took the classes to apply for my local BSN while waiting to apply. Here I am after 4 years of applying to that ADN program and I did not get in again, but I got in my first time applying for the BSN program. So I am not waiting any longer. But I think I will keep applying to that ADN program just to see how long it takes to get in!!

Don't limit yourself to just a few schools, apply where you can, keep taking classes towards your BS, things always seem to work out for some reason. For me I had 4 more years as a stay at home mom.

Talk to the local hospitals or where you would like to work, see what they prefer, in my area I have been told a BSN is preferred over ADN, even though the pay is the same.

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I would apply to all if you have all the pre-reqs met and make my decision after acceptance. I'm in the same boat as you are.

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Look at the bright side - 80 out of 140 are GREAT odds. Here it's 30 out of 500+ applicants at each of the 3 schools.

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