Does School Really Matter?

Specialties NP

Published

  1. More Important: Certification or School

23 members have participated

Hello,

I am thinking about attending a school for FNP that might possibly be considered a online school that might possibly be considered a "dipolma mill" to some. My question is in your experience as a praticing NP did the question of which school you attended arise in interviews? Or is certification a equalizer? Just to be clear does the school attented for NP really matter to an employer if you ARE certified?

Easy to say, I just spent 20 thousand dollars at Walden already. In addition, no school is probably going to accept enough of my current credits to eliminate retaking classes, I have already taken. So far, I have completed all of the Core courses required by Walden.

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Seriously? Just take the flipping GRE. It is a fairly easy test and the standards in nursing are pretty low anyway, even CRNA schools let in people with very average scores. Just buy a prep book and study for 3-4 weeks. Why are nurses so terrified of the GRE?

Thank you!!!! I swear, the GRE fear mongering thing is insane. Almost every graduate school requires SOME sort of entrance examination to prove you're competent. The GRE establishes that you can at least read and write coherently, and do basic math. I studied for like one week and scored extremely well. It's honestly not that hard, yet future healthcare providers cannot be "bothered" to even do that.

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I took the MAT instead of the GRE - check with programs that you are considering, they may accept either test. And I am over the age of 50 ... it wasn't that bad :cheeky:

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Specializes in allergy and asthma, urgent care.
Seriously? Just take the flipping GRE. It is a fairly easy test and the standards in nursing are pretty low anyway, even CRNA schools let in people with very average scores. Just buy a prep book and study for 3-4 weeks. Why are nurses so terrified of the GRE?

Agreed! You took the NCLEX and will take boards when you finish school. Believe me, I thought the GRE was a piece of cake compared to NCLEX. No "choose all that apply". Your GRE score is only one part of your profile. Don't let fear of taking an exam hold you back from applying to a good program.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, ICU, ED.

The GRE is worthless and a money scam.

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Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
The GRE is worthless and a money scam.

Citation please.

As far as I know the largest study ever done regarding the GRE demonstrated positive predictive value in nearly every spectrum of graduate education.

Kuncel, N. R., Hezlett, S. A., & Ones, D. S. (2001). A comprehensive meta-analysis of the predictive validity of the graduate record examinations: implications for graduate student selection and performance. Psychological bulletin, 127(1), 162.

Chicago

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The GRE is worthless and a money scam.

I think a lot of testing is considered this, in spite of research. In fact most research is not worth the glossy paper it's published on. I barely passed the GRE yet made almost 4.0 during grad school. One of our psychiatrists just retook his boards which he said was the most expensive, antiquated worthless testing ever thought up by ivory tower physicians.

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The GRE is worthless and a money scam.

I think the GRE is worthless in some cases, i.e. top graduate schools where the self selection factor ensures the student body is quite intelligent to begin with.

With some lower tier schools, especially the for profit diploma mills, the GRE would be a wonderful to at least ensure applicants are minimally competent. Graduate level students should not be responsible for some of the posts I've seen on this website, full of misspelled words and incorrect grammar. There needs to be SOME sort of barrier set up to ensure entering graduate students are where they need to be with their previous education (English, math, science) before they move on.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, ICU, ED.

Don't have the time right now to find then but it talks about one of them here.

Study of Graduate Record Exam shows it does little to predict graduate school success | Cornell Chronicle

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Specializes in Mental Health.

That article is from 17 years ago, lol.

The GRE in and of itself may be useless, but I do think it has predictive validity of success since it's basically just a measure of whether or not you can study a given set of material, concentrate, handle stress, etc. Though I do hope that one day the AACN gets more serious about NP admission standards and maybe creates an MCAT equivalent for MSN/DNP programs.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, ICU, ED.

ProQuest Document View - An Exploratory Study of Predictors of Academic Success in a Graduate Nursing Program

Heres one. I'll find the others later this weekend and post.

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