Are you trying to figure out your plans for nursing school? Choosing a nursing school takes more effort than just deciding to go. It takes research. It takes knowing your goals. It takes deciding on your priorities, and accepting that some things come with consequences no matter what you decide.
As you consider beginning the journey into nursing, it is very important that you pave the way to success early. There are a lot of choices to be made, and it doesn't matter if you are a fresh new high school graduate or a 45-year old parent considering a second career - you need to consider some things up front. It's frustrating and sad to see, here on allnurses, posts from grads who can't seem to beat the NCLEX, or who have sent out hundreds of resumes, only to get no responses. If all of this time and money is being spent to begin a successful career, how can you increase your chances of meeting that success?
Here are some questions that might be helpful when you start to consider your options for school. This isn't a guaranteed map to success, but if you do take the time to consider all of these things and act on them, you will know that you have put your best effort in.
It's possible this will seem obvious to you, but for some, it comes as a big surprise to some after graduation when they can't find a job. The higher the degree, the better your job options, but the more time and money you have to invest. If you get a diploma RN, you are less likely to get the job of your dreams than an ADN, and an ADN is less likely than a BSN. It's a trade-off - do you spend more time in school to get a better shot at more jobs, or do you spend less time and money, but limit your options?
After you ask yourself these questions, and decide what is more important to you, be prepared to accept the consequences of your choice. You don't want to finish school and enter the job market feeling like it's unfair that others have had experiences you wish you did.
While accreditation is obviously something you need to look for in a school, you also need a school with a great reputation. You need to figure this out before you start applying. If you are able to move to a different area for a better school, you may decide to broaden your search and inquiry. If you can't move, this limitation might be a problem.
That said, find a school and find out: what is the school's reputation? Don't ask your neighbors. Don't ask your parents. Don't ask a guy who you know goes to the hospital a lot. None of those people will be looking at your resume in a few years. Ask the nurses. Ask the doctors. Ask the human resources people at hospitals you like. Ask the people who actually will be looking at your resume.
When someone says to you, "We love grads from XYZ school," that's the school you want to put on your list of places to apply. You should never just apply to a school that is easy to get into. Perhaps the school with the best reputation is the hardest to get into, with a year-long wait list. Would you rather wait a year to get into the program you want? Or would you rather wait a year to get a job after you graduate?
Your potential school's NCLEX pass rate is made public and probably is easy to find on the state board of nursing's website. Look this up!!! If you go to a school with a 50% pass rate, things are not necessarily looking good for your chances when it's your turn to sit for the boards. I know, I know.... "That won't happen to me!" Right? But it can. It is very possible you could be on the wrong side of that statistic.
There are people on allnurses who post that they passed the NCLEX years after they have graduated. If you get through all of school and then you can't pass the NCLEX, that time you spent in school will be meaningless. You need to consider this before you apply to schools. Don't get surprised by this after the fact!
Does the school brag about job placements of their graduates? Ask! If graduates are getting snagged before they walk the stage, this is a school you want to attend.
My own graduation is a week from today. I can't tell you how many fellow graduates have announced they've been hired. They aren't getting terrible jobs, either. They're getting hired places that are top-rated in residency programs in critical care. They're getting placements in their preferred specialties. They're landing the jobs they went into nursing to get, and they're doing it before they graduate.
This is a sign of excellence. This is a sign of a top quality program. These jobs are announced on a bulletin board in the hallway of the building nursing is in. It is so awesome to see new cards get posted on it each day!
This is an important one for your own satisfaction - will you have access to experiences that you feel have really taught you a lot? The thing is, you can get through school just fine with clinical experiences that aren't fantastic. But if good clinical experiences are important to you, you may need to consider traveling. This is especially true in more rural areas. In larger cities, there is more access to facilities that handle higher acuity cases and more complex medical care is possible. In rural areas, your access to facilities in general will be limited, and you may not experience very much at all.
Point in case, where I live, anything complicated gets shipped off to hospitals 2 hours away. We didn't see much. If intense and complex clinical experiences are important to you, you need to determine what is available in your potential programs before you apply. Send an email to department heads or advisors asking where clinicals are for each specialty. Find out of you feel like you will get what you hope to gain from your experiences.
If you want your foot in a door before you graduate, this is the time to stick it in there. Be amazing. Impress the nurses, the charge nurses, the unit managers, your professors. Take challenges head on. Volunteer for any experience you can get. Seek opportunities for learning. Go above and beyond. NETWORK. This is your opportunity to impress people you could work with in the future. You miss this opportunity, you become a name on a list just like every other person sending in a resume.
Nursing school is hard. Don't let yourself get surprised by the lack of job opportunities after graduation. You are about to invest a lot of time and money into something that you want. Imagine all of the big things in life that you would never take on without research first - buying a car, moving to a new city, buying a house... You are choosing a career, and you need to set yourself up for success. I'm not saying the above considerations will guarantee success, but you will at least be improving your chances of it. There is so much more to this than deciding that you might apply to that community college down the road.
Consider your options, consider the consequences. Decide what consequences you are willing to accept, and which ones you are not. If you don't do this soul searching ahead of time, you may find yourself very frustrated in a few years.
With that, I say, best wishes, and good luck! I hope that you find success in all you do!
Thanks so much for this post. It really cleared things up for me. I was trying to rush into something just to earn the right to place those prestigious two letters behind my name. Being 32 and realizing that I should have had a degree a decade ago has had me trying to find the quick way out. This post has literally changed my life.
Thanks so much for this post. It really cleared things up for me. I was trying to rush into something just to earn the right to place those prestigious two letters behind my name. Being 32 and realizing that I should have had a degree a decade ago has had me trying to find the quick way out. This post has literally changed my life.
That's EXACTLY what I was trying to do rush to get the letters behind my name because I am 27 and most of the people I know already have their BSN
That's EXACTLY what I was trying to do rush to get the letters behind my name because I am 27 and most of the people I know already have their BSN
Ikr. I have even considered going into a LPN program just to say that I am a nurse and bridge ASAP. It's extra frustrating because I am so close to being able to apply to almost any Bachelors program that I want. I have a 3.8 GPA, and would only need to take 1 chemistry course, micro, and Statistics. But that would put me at a Fall 2015 start. I could have my LPN come June next year . At this point ,I just want to feel that I have accomplished something.
I am not sure. I worked with two women who were RNs in their countries. When speaking with them I believe they were allowed to test here in the US as long as they could submit documentation of licensure and education. Neither of them passed the NCLEX, however, and were told they would have to attend school here. For the most accurate response, you should contact the Texas Board of Nursing directly. Rules and laws change daily, and are usually dependant upon each particular state's BON.
The TX BON can be contacted at:
333 Guadalupe, Suite 3-460 Austin, TX 78701-3944 | P: (512) 305-7400
Wow! These are good tips! I just applied to my first choice school for the Fall 2014 Nursing program and I wont find out if I got in until the end of next month. Honestly, it was my first choice because of location and I never even considered these tips before applying. When I looked on the Board of Nursing site it says so far this year the school I applied to has a 77% NCLEX pass rate and another school that is not too far away from me has a 95% NCLEX pass rate. If I dont make it into this school, then I will def be applying to the other one next semester. Thanks!
Why not apply to several schools at the same time so you have fallback options? I couldn't see putting all my eggs into one basket. Of course, you may have different considerations in regard to delays. I'm older and delays are very significant to me. I applied to three schools, any of which I would have felt good about attending.
Ikr. I have even considered going into a LPN program just to say that I am a nurse and bridge ASAP. It's extra frustrating because I am so close to being able to apply to almost any Bachelors program that I want. I have a 3.8 GPA, and would only need to take 1 chemistry course, micro, and Statistics. But that would put me at a Fall 2015 start. I could have my LPN come June next year . At this point ,I just want to feel that I have accomplished something.
I think a lot of people here sink into that thought process as well. If our local CC is turning out 50-100 new grad LPNs, and the hospital said no more LPNs (this area is fairly rural), where are all of these new nurses going to go? Sure you have LTC and home health, but again, you're all fighting for the very few job openings out there. Not only that, but if RN was your goal, you have to apply to THAT program, hope to get in against the other applicants, spend another year in school, and then find out that people are still fighting for jobs, only they all want grads from the university before they'll look at the ADNs. So now you have to go back and do all the gen eds for 3 semesters, then apply and hope you get accepted against the other applicants and then spend another year in school. Essentially, that route here makes that whole journey take one year longer than if you'd started with BSN from the beginning.
However - again, I say this is about knowing your area. Everything I have said is based on MY area and my own research, if you walk into a hospital and ask to speak with HR, you might ask them what school has the best new grads and they might say the CC you're looking at now for your LPN. Maybe then it would be worth it to start with that, and then go straight to RN afterward. You have to know your area. Everywhere is different, and everywhere has different best ways to gain an advantage above your competition.
The original and subsequent posts provide an excellent outline of what to consider when selecting a nursing school but I would add a caveat to the advice regarding NCLEX pass rates: The rate alone may not be a good indicator of the quality of the education and the level of preparedness of that school's grads. Schools have become aware that their pass rate is a big discriminator for prospective students and some have gone to great lengths to boost that rate, even to the point of what I would consider artificially inflating it.
While in general, a high NCLEX pass rate indicates a superior nursing program, there are ways to manipulate the rate. The first is of course in the admissions process - highly selective schools admit primarily high-quality students who of course tend to do better on all standardized tests like the NCLEX. You know this going in though and so would not expect that the first-time NCLEX pass rate for nursing grads from your local CC program would be the same as that of very selective programs such as Johns Hopkins or U Penn.
A more subtle way to ensure high NCLEX pass rates is to control who is allowed to take the test in the first place. This is done by allowing only some of the nursing grads to take the NCLEX and is simple to do: The school refuses to send the credentials required by the state BoN forward unless the grad also achieves what the school considers a satisfactory score on nursing review tests (e. g., HESI). In my view, schools that do this should highlight it when then they tout their high NCLEX pass rates. Since not all (and perhaps most) nursing programs don't follow the same post-graduate weeding out process and allow all of their grads to sit for the test, simply comparing the NCLEX pass rates may be misleading. In fairness, I should add that I do not know how widespread the practice is and am aware of only two colleges that do this. I should also add that this may not be a deal killer, since to a great extent the student is in control of her/his own destiny, but it is something prospective students should be aware of but is also something that schools generally don't highlight when they tout their excellent pass rates.
A small, ironic factoid: It is often the case that the highest overall NCLEX pass rates are achieved by grads from diploma, not degree-granting programs. As far as I'm aware, the diploma programs achieve this simply by providing excellent nursing training and not by manipulating who can take the NCLEX.
norlns24
94 Posts
The scary part is, those who fail the NCLEX coming out of these horrible, scam programs can still pass on a subsequent attempt if they do some review courses and apply themselves in some serious self-study. The NCLEX is not that difficult to pass in actuality. It's not an easy test, but it's definitely doable with some review courses and going over practice questions/ rationales. The fact is, the NCLEX is not going to weed out graduates from these for-profit scam programs by any means. Which means, as others have rightly pointed out, that the entire profession will be "dumbed down" and wages will stagnate, as has happened in so many other professions.