questions from a student.

[Tom2T]

I'm currently taking pre reqs for my community colleges lpn program. However the college I'm currently enrolled in does not offer an LPN to RN program. I understand that it is difficult to get into a RN or even LPN program. And I was told over the weekend by a friend that it is even more difficult to go LPN to RN while hopping schools. Anyone know if this is true? My plan is to go, LPN to RN and possibly a BSN. Any advice?

Thanks

[classicdame, MSN, EdD]

Your best source of information would be the school to which you will go for your ultimate degree. A counselor can even help you create a degree plan for you to follow for the next few years. Also, they may offer suggestions about your success that your friends don't know about. One way to assure success is to make good grades. That puts you in competition with anyone else.

[tlc2u]

My advice would be to look at the schools in your area that you would want to transfer from LPN to RN. Read thoroughly their requirements to determine if their is a school that fits your needs. One of the RN schools in my area used to accept enrollments on a first come first serve basis and then they went to only accepting by grade point average so the students with higher GPA's got in first. They also changed their policy if you take a prerequisite class and get a D or F and you retake the class they used to drop the grade of the failed class and ony factor in the new grade for the class that was retaken. Now they factor in that D or F along with the grade for the class that was retaken and use the average of those towards the GPA. Each nursing school in my area has slightly diferent prerequisite requirements and different class schedule times etc. some are strictly 7-4 daytime hours and others have some clinicals from 3-11pm. You would have to choose a school with those factors in mind as well.

Where I live one of the schools used to accept transfer students but last year discontinued that policy and no longer accept any students to transfer from other programs. Also one program requires that you receive 36 credit hours through their program if you are a transfer student (does not make sense to me, because I would think a transfer student would already have some credit hours behind them and would not need 36 more credit hours).

Also some students have considered LPN to RN schools online only to find out that their state board of nursing does not accept degrees from those schools. As in the current controversy in Georgia over Excelsior college nursing degrees. Georgia is not the only state faced with that dillema.

If you want to consider an online nursing school I would suggest you check on the states Board of nursing website to determine which online nursing school degrees are accepted for whatever state you want to practice nursing in.

Best of Luck