Duke ABSN Spring 2015

anixon · Jul 29, 2014

Yeah... I'm still waiting on the waiting list but I am also on the boat of not wanting this much debt. Not sure about you all but I still have my first student loan debt to pay on. I think I may just altogether skip out on nursing and use my current degree which is in health administration. I know for many of you nursing is your passion :) that's great! However I know it's not a "passion" for me. I know the realities of being a nurse as I see it day in and day out with my job. So I am seriously contemplating taking myself off the wait list as well. Maybe it will open up something great for someone else. I wish you all the best and hope you continue the passion that you so dearly want! :)

warriortac · Jul 30, 2014

Hello Everyone!

I am new to this site and live in Michigan. Not to be too personal, but what were some of your GPA's going into the program? Pre-req or undergrad? Did you have hospital experience too? I am currently evaluating different schools to apply to. At times I worry that my transcript won't be good enough, though I am sure many of us experience that paranoia. Congrats to all who were accepted! I want to attend a Accelerated Program VERY badly. If I give some of you a run down of what I have done, can you tell me your honest opinion if you think I have a good chance? Here it is:

I have job shadowed an RN for 15 hours +

Volunteered since 2009 for two different hospitals (one Children's on and off for three years and most recent a Cancer Hospital)

I have been a standardized patient since 2011

I work Full Time, but in a retail field as a Store Manager role.

I also just enrolled to start taking Medical Asst. classes at the community college.

My undergrad gpa was a 3.6. I appreciate any advice anyone has to offer!!! Again, congrats to everyone for working so hard to make their dream come true. I hope I am next!

Ladeebugchick · Jul 30, 2014

Nursing is my passion, but I am only really interested in certain subspecialties. I'm 95% sure that I want to become a neonatal NP, but I am also interested in general peds, pediatric oncology, labor and delivery, or in becoming a nurse anesthetist. I can only see myself regularly caring for adults in an anesthetist role. My passion is babies, young families and children. I recently told a friend, "I want to care for and save babies!" I know it's hard work and I imagine it's emotionally exhausting, but for the first time in my life, I get excited when I think about doing something for a living for the rest of my life.

To answer the other questions, my first undergrad degree was in business. My work experience was in retail management and property and casualty insurance where I spent many years as an underwriter. For the past five years, I've been a stay at home mom. I have children ranging in age from 14 to 22 months. My cumulative GPA is 3.6, however I got all A's in my prerequisites. I applied at Duke, of course, but I am finalizing my application for UNC as well. I had to retake several courses that I had previously passed with high grades as a result of UNC's policy of not accepting courses that had been taken more than ten years ago. All total, I took both A&P classes, psych, statistics, and micro over the course of a year. I am now enrolled in sociology in case I end up at Duke.

anixon · Jul 30, 2014

Nursing is my passion, but I am only really interested in certain subspecialties. I'm 95% sure that I want to become a neonatal NP, but I am also interested in general peds, pediatric oncology, labor and delivery, or in becoming a nurse anesthetist. I can only see myself regularly caring for adults in an anesthetist role. My passion is babies, young families and children. I recently told a friend, "I want to care for and save babies!" I know it's hard work and I imagine it's emotionally exhausting, but for the first time in my life, I get excited when I think about doing something for a living for the rest of my life.
I have the very same passions as you Ladee, the VERY same! LOL That being said, those are the only things I would do if I was to hit the nursing environment. But I also know that those fields are VERY hard to get into and odds are it wouldn't happen for years unless you landed an internship of some sort. I havent ruled it out completely but thats where I am headed.
To answer the other posters question I had a 3.75 GPA on my BA degree and all A's on my pre-reqs. My Essays weren't top notch in my opinion. I also have working as a Unit Secretary for the past 2 years at a long term acute care hospital. I was waitlisted. HTH

Ladeebugchick · Jul 30, 2014

You're right, I think it can be difficult to specialize exactly where you want to right off the bat. Luckily for me (I ho

Ladeebugchick · Jul 30, 2014

Ugh, I seem to constantly post accidentally with my thumb! I'm posting from my phone. As I was saying, hopefully I'll have a little "luck" on my side. I don't really believe in luck though, so take that for what it's worth! Anyway, my oldest son is 14 and the mother of a friend he's had since kindergarten worked as a nicu nurse at Duke for 20 years. She recently took a job in one of the clinics because she began to have back/neck issues as a result of the constant leaning over the babies, but she's assured me that it is possible to land these jobs and that she is more than willing to help me out when the time comes. She just has an ADN degree. Times have changed, most employers are really looking for that BSN nowadays. I also have a friend who works in peds at UNC hospitals and she's offered to help as well. One thing I learned from Duke Days was that getting jobs in certain markets (the entire state of CA, for example) or certain specialties can be difficult, but we also have a terrific network and that the alumni association at Duke can really open up doors you might think are locked quite tightly. Another thing I did was search job openings. I know I want to move on to the MSN level or possibly even the doctorate level, I have even considered applying to a PA program or two. I checked job openings at that level and found that there are some, but I might need to be willing to relocate. In my area, those opportunities seem to be quite limited, but I noticed there were many jobs that interested me, particularly in the upper midwest. I would think certain markets will be booms, especially North Dakota where unemployment is close to 0 and Texas because of the energy industry explosions and healthcare workers will be needed to care for all those people. That's just my line of thinking and not based on any solid facts. At any rate, I do have concerns about the debt load as it pertains to finding that job that I love as well, but I'm not getting any younger. I guess I just have to hope that my hard work and flexibility will pay off. It's so nice to meet someone who has the same interests I do!

It's funny because I put a lot of time into my essays. The character limits were very restrictive in my opinion. I focused on really making my point while leaving out unnecessary details, but at the time I thought I'd have to interview, so I kept reminding myself that the essay was like a resume. I needed to sell myself enough to get the interview. Then they got rid of interviews and I wondered if I had used the right strategy. To be honest, I feel like what might have pushed me from waitlist to accepted was the fact that I clearly stated that my career goals don't stop at becoming an RN. At the end of the Duke Days presentation, a man spoke and his final statements were that if we were sitting in that room, it was because we had a hunger to do more and that the admissions committee saw that true potential to do more within us. I'm not really sure how much impact the question about long term goals had, but I do know there are plenty with a higher GPA than mine who applied.

0lecranon · Jul 30, 2014

Has anyone been able to locate the FB page link? Just trying to figure out this whole housing situation. Thanks.

homelife · Jul 30, 2014

I'm assuming the fb page won't be up and running and we won't be invited to it unti at least August 10 has hit and the cohort is pretty nailed down. They're not going to ask all admitted students to join the group, just those who submitted their deposit and accepted their offer of attendance.

I know that Ernie did say we were more or less the chosen ones because they saw more in us, they saw us as leaders but in crafting my essay about my future career goals an ABSN student specifically told me to NOT get ahead of myself in discussing a MSN or NP because the committee doesn't want you to get ahead of yourself, they want to know that nursing is your first stop, your first priority. I definitely do want to pursue an NP degree so I kept that essay pretty vague about just furthering my education wherever opportunity arose.

The average GPA (this means undergrad and pre-reqs taken after undergrad) is usually 3.5-3.7 for accepted students. I have experience as a CNA but I came across a lot of folks at Duke Days that had only majored in Biology and not furthered their nursing interest by seeking out work in the discipline. I, unfortunately, come from a background that is so far from nursing that I wanted to make clear in my resume and my essays that nursing didn't just come from nowhere or was a back-up.

disneyrunner · Jul 30, 2014

I have to say I was a bit surprised I got in as grades have never been my strongest suit. My undergraduate GPA was a 3.0 but in the time since my degree I have worked as a pharmacy tech and in a chemistry laboratory which gave me some work experience. Once I decided nursing was what I wanted to do I finished the prereqs and even re-took a couple I had a C in so that I could show them I could do better, I retook these courses and got A's. Out of all of the prereqs I had A's in all except 2 at the end and those were B and a B+. In my essays I stated clearly that in college I just didn't really know what I wanted to do and was a bit lost, though I knew I wanted to do something in science/healthcare and that my grades suffered because of this but once I really decided that nursing was it, I buckled down and got it done. I think this helped overcome how bad my original grades may have looked. I had a few friends who are in grad school who told me to just be honest and mention that my GPA wasn't the best (stupid chemistry...) so I could put it out there and take responsibility.

As far as healthcare experience, I didn't have much. I worked as a pharmacy tech for a little while and did a project in college that dealt with healthcare and nutrition. I think it is also fair to mention that I had great recommendations - this helps a LOT! I had a college professor who knows me VERY well in both a classroom and research setting, my current boss, and a nurse practitioner whom I've known for a long time and has been my "mentor" during this process.

I'm proof that you don't need a 3.7 to get in! My GRE's were okay - about a 50 percentile. I think that in order to have a lower GPA you need to have a stronger resume such as essays. I spoke to a PA and she said something really interesting. If they ask you "why do you want to be a nurse?" don't answer about how you love medicine and want to help people - because then why aren't you going to be a doctor? PA? Pharmacist? Why do you want to be a NURSE is the question and you have to hit on that. I also mentioned that I wanted to be a NP because of personal experiences.

So good recommendations and essays can really help offset lacking grades!

warriortac · Jul 30, 2014

Thanks to all who are responding! disneyrunner I really found some great insight on what you said. I also LOVE the part where you emphasized WHY a NURSE! Such good points you mentioned. I have a retail management background and have always been one to work very hard. I want this so bad! I hope to get into a college here in Michigan, but Duke is one the list and so is U of Penn. I love hearing from everyone about their past experience. Sometimes I worry that I needed a 4.0 in everything in order to get into a ABSN program. Many of you are proof you don't have to have perfect scores.

I have read before that many colleges will take students from the top GPA towards the bottom; that they know that some people test well, and some don't. Some people are hands on (I very much am) and know that I can and will succeed in a program. Now I just have to get in. Thank you all!!! Best of luck in your program and much success to your future!

anixon · Aug 2, 2014

Hey all. I was just wonder to those of you who accepted your seat or plan to if you were able to get financing?

homelife · Aug 2, 2014

Hey all. I was just wonder to those of you who accepted your seat or plan to if you were able to get financing?

Just federal loans - unsub and subsizided, the needbased scholarship, and the rest will be through private loans. If only I was a male or a minority student, I would have qualified for loads of assistance. :scrying: Fact of the matter is that as second-degree seeking students, whether someone's in-state or out-of-state we'll all be roughly taking out the same amount of money and it will ALL (aside from the nary scholarship) be in loans. I am looking into HRSA or the NC FELS forgivable loans.

Something no one has mentioned from Duke Days - the new curriculum overhaul. Anyone interested in details? They've done away with the 15 masters credit hours - which I know was one of the things that STRONGLY had me considering Duke. This might change things for some.