Best college for veteran

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  1. Best school for me

    • 1
      Estrella Mountain Community College
    • 1
      Arizona State University
    • 0
      Chamberlain College of Nursing
    • 0
      GCU

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Hello,

I will be getting out of the Air Force in June 2019, and I currently live in Glendale. I would like to pursue nursing at ASU (Phoenix), Estrella Mountain Community College, or Chamberlain. I am really interested in ASU but the program seems to be extremely competitive and I've been out of school for 4 years. The money isn't an issue because my GI Bill will cover tuition costs but it is limited to 36 months or 8 semesters. I would like to be able to get my degree within that time or shorter with a quality education that will give best employment opportunities.

Estrella Community College has a Concurrent Enrollment Program so if you have any information on that please share. Or any other factors to help with my decision would be helpful

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I would also eventually like to become a psychiatric nurse practitioner but I hear that degree from a for-profit school like chamberlain can only be continued at another for profit school. Which would cost about $40,000 while public schools are half that.

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Specializes in Neuro.

If you are in Glendale why not try for Glendale Community College? Estrella is a good school too, but they only have 1 cohort (or about 30ish students) accepted to the program for each semester, GCC has 3 cohorts (or about 90ish spots) they fill a semester. Or apply to both if you can. All the Maricopa Community Colleges do CEP from my understanding so you can choose any of the schools. So, both EMCC & GCC offer the CEP program...which includes a partnership with an ASU CEP (also NAU, Ottawa, UIU, Franklin Pierce, I don't know if UofP is still around, may be a few others). GCU will also do a direct entry MSN CEP with those who have a previous bachelors degree-little more $$).

I am in block 3 right now with GCC/Ottawa CEP. Honestly, if you can, I'd suggest doing the CEP with one of the community colleges...you still earn your BSN in the same time if not the almost the same time as you would at university...and you get a BSN for cheaper. ASU is great, but competitive, GCU recently had some issues with their BSN program and got put on notice by the state board of nursing to fix things, which I'm sure they will, GCU will not risk losing accreditation, they are more expensive as well. And no offense to Chamberlain, but I'd stay away from them. Sure you're guaranteed acceptance, but they are $$$$ will your GI bill cover all of it? CEP has gotten more competative because it is much more affordable and a good program, so do well on your pre-reqs, if you have not started those, start them now & do good! You will also have to take the HESI entrance exam, you want to score high on that as well. They have a points system with the community colleges, the higher your points, the better chance you have getting in. I got in my first try.

Also have you looked online at the CEP programs with MCCCD? Here is link:

https://www.maricopa.edu/academics/healthcare/maricopa-nursing

Also consider the NCLEX-RN passage rates for each school, here is the link to look that up from the AZBON:

https://www.azbn.gov/media/2586/2011-2017-statewide-nclex-results.pdf

Good luck.

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