Cal State San Marcos ABSN summer 2018

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Hi Everyone! I just applied to CSUSM for the summer 2018 semester! Who else has applied?

@joanne1029lee You are so welcome! Ask as many questions as you need, I have a ton of time on my hands now that it is winter break :)

As for clinicals, unfortunately there is a HUGE distance that some people have to drive. One girl in my cohort lives in Escondido and got placed in Riverside last semester and got placed there AGAIN for the Spring. She was driving ~140 miles roundtrip.

For your very first semester, you will have no clinicals, it is just those three "gen ed" classes that need to be completed, it is good that you are a summer start because they are really easy. I would have hated to waste a full 16 week semester on such easy classes. Now for my cohort, 2 of the 3 summer courses were completely online and then 1 course was a hybrid where students only met once a week.

Then, when you move to semester 2, you have two clinicals: fundamentals and health education. Your fundamentals clinical will take place at a retirement facility starting ~week 7 (Your first 7 weeks will all be at the Temecula campus learning skills in the lab) and then your health education clinical is all on campus as well, just in the skills lab for the full semester. For each of these clinicals, you only go once a week. So for second semester your schedule will look something like this:

Arbitrary day 1: All lectures at the Temecula campus. For us, all lectures were in person on Mondays so it was a 12 hour lecture day.

Arbitrary day 2: Fundamentals clinical. The first 7 weeks will be at the skills lab in Temecula, the remaining weeks will be once a week at your assigned facility.

Arbitrary day 3: Health Education clinical. One day a week, all meetings will be in the skills lab at the Temecula campus.

I put arbitrary days because different clinical groups have different meeting days. But overall, you will be driving somewhere 3 days a week, whether it is class or clinical. The only other side note is that some clinical rotations require students to go to the facility the day before to get patient assignments, while some just require students to show up early on their assigned clinical day. It all just depends on the facility, but say you are placed in San Diego at a facility that requires you to go the day before, you are actually making that drive twice a week :/

Unfortunately they use an automated generator to place students in clinical groups, so someone living in Riverside may have to commute down to San Diego while someone in San Diego may commute all the way up to Riverside, which is really unfortunate, but you just have to cross your fingers and hope for the best with clinical assignments!

Sorry, that was a LOT of information, but I wish I had someone to answer these questions back when I was applying! Don't stress too much about clinicals just yet, you will have until the Fall to prepare, but it is definitely nice to have a heads up :)

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@picklerick WOW, thank you SO MUCH for all that info! Can I please buy you food if I get accepted?! We definitely need to meet up! This seriously helped SO MUCH because i couldn't find any information on clinical rotations on previous threads. It is really sad to hear that clinical locations are so far away from each other! I am for sure going to move to Temecula if I get accepted, so I guess I'll at least be in the middle of Riverside & SD county... So, does clinical rotation locations change each semester? For example, if I am placed in Riverside the 2nd semester, it may be different the following semester?

Also, I already completed 2 out of the 3 "gen ed" classes.. so I'm guessing I will be only taking one class during summer then :o ?

I feel like I'm getting so excited from just reading about what you said :) I can't get too ahead of myself but yea... Thank you so much for putting your time into this thread. You are the best!

Is it true that we don't hear about our assigned location until like a week before the semester starts? :(

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@joanne1029lee you are so so welcome!! I love helping, don't even worry about the food BUT we can definitely meet up :p

But yes, the clinical rotations change each semester, and I believe once you get into your final semesters you may go to clinical more than once a week...but I am going into semester 3 so don't quote me on that just yet! For semester 3, it is med/surg nursing and mental health, so you go to different clinical sites for both of those instead of the campus skills lab work. But then you continue to change clinicals each semester, thankfully :)

But yes, then you will only need to take one summer class, so you'll save a lot of money! The school automatically registers you in all the courses, even if they marked it as "complete" on your evaluation, so you would want to double check on your student portal that the transfer credit was accepted and then you can go manually drop the courses you've already taken. Don't worry, they will explain that at orientation and it's super easy, I was able to drop one myself! The only one that was a hybrid for us was nutrition and that's what I had previously completed, but im pretty sure they only met on campus once a week or maybe every other week, so that may help you plan your moving times accordingly!

So far, my cohort has actually gotten pretty lucky with getting our clinical assignments in a decent amount of time, we got them in mid December and we don't start again until January 22nd, I think they release them as soon as they possibly can, but I have heard of them being pretty last minute with that :/ In their defense, a ton of programs in Riverside and San Diego county are all fighting for these clinical spots, so I imagine it is pretty tough to get everything sorted!

I am so excited for everyone, I am sending positive vibes your way, if you have any more questions or think of anymore, please don't hesitate to ask :)

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@picklerick thank you so much for the info!!! I'm getting excited just reading this!! I hope we all get in!! I'm currently sitting at 29 points, so hopefully I have a shot of getting in!!! Good Luck everyone!

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@picklerick THANK YOU SO MUCH for all that info! It's really nice knowing what I'll get into. :) Sorry for late reply, I didn't get a notification that you replied.. I am so so excited too! I just got my evaluation at 37 points.. fingers crossssssed!

@Jellybeans& Ahh, good luck! 29 points is still high! You got this :)

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Hi Everyone! I'll just jump on the bandwagon here and say a BIG THANK YOU to @picklerick for all of the useful info. I just finished my last pre-req last fall and CSUSM just received and processed my transcript this week. My advisor had my evaluation ready the very next day...37 points! Now it's just a waiting game...oh, the suspense!!! Good luck, everyone!

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@Cmonkey99 yay, congrats! good luck :)!

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Oh you all are SO SO welcome!! Your points are all looking great and I am so excited for you :) Just a little bit longer now!

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You too @joanne1029lee!

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Hello everyone! I'm planning to apply to the ABSN program at San Marcos for fall 2018, but I have a few questions I was hoping you might be able to help with.

1) Critical thinking and writing - What kind of course did you use to fulfill this requirement? I'm hoping to use something from my bachelor's, but I'm not sure what would work and assist.org isn't particularly helpful in this case as there's no articulation agreement available. I think I've seen that some people were able to use a freshman English composition class or something similar, so hopefully I can find something that will work!

2) TEAS - For submitting scores, did you just have to upload the score report you can access online through the ATI website? Or did you also have them sent to CSUSM? I need to register for the TEAS soon, so I'm trying to figure out when to take it, but I don't want to cut it too close to the application deadline in case it takes a while for them to receive scores. For reference, the priority deadline is 3/16, and the latest date for the TEAS test I'm considering is 3/2. Do you think this would be enough time, or should I try to take it earlier?

Thanks in advance, and good luck to you all! You're almost there! :)

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@cimarron Hi! For critical thinking, I took a philosophy class at a community college! It was called Logic & Critical Thinking class. I think I checked with another CSU Nursing program to see if it fulfilled the critical thinking class! I can't recall exactly which school but... if it works for one CSU Nursing program, it should work for CSUSM too! For WRITING, It's just any writing course! They counted my UCI's writing class but I also took English 100 from a community college (they said English 100 from any community college works).

They started a new type of application starting Fall 2018, I believe. For Summer 2018, they used their own application system through Extended Learning. However, starting Fall 2018, I believe they used Calstate Apply and Nursing CAS (correct me if I'm wrong!). But you DO have to send it directly to CSUSM through ATI website! It takes about ~1 week to receive the scores. :)

Summer 2018 apps were due 12/1/2017 but my chemistry class was still in progress so my finished application was... around 1/6/2018. I was about a month late from the priority deadline.. but for TEAS, I would consider taking it maybe around end of FEB to be on the safe side. If 3/2 is your only available date, I think it should be fine because they send the scores electronically. Sorry for the long post, hope this helped!

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@joanne1029lee That was incredibly helpful, thank you! :) I'll check with CSUSM to see if anything I've already taken will count. And I registered for the TEAS on February 22nd, to be safe. Thanks again for the advice!

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