Golden West vs. Saddleback college (2018)

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Hello,

I recently got accepted to both of these schools. I was wondering if anyone happened to know the pros and cons between these two schools.

I am definitely thankful for the acceptances, but I am unsure of which school to choose from. I volunteer at UCI Medical center and have heard great things about GWC nursing students. But, I've also heard good things about nursing students from Saddleback on "allnurses".

I saw a post about this exact topic back in 2011. However, things may have changed, and old professors may be gone. Thank you very much for your feedback!

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A few months ago, I saw a counselor at Golden West, and she told me that, if she were a nursing student, she would want to go to Saddleback because their program is much better than Golden West's.

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Did your counselor happen to specify why Saddleback's program is better? Thank you for the reply.

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The counselor said that Saddleback's higher quality is due to the type of funding that they receive (money equals more/better resources, I'm assuming). I was very surprised that someone who has built their career at Golden West would confirm that Saddleback has a superior and more desirable nursing program--something that my researched seemed to indicate already--and I greatly appreciated her honesty.

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Specializes in ICU.

Both are good programs...some numbers I looked at when comparing ABSN programs I applied to were retention rates and NCLEX pass rates. Golden West has slightly higher retention rates, but saddleback has a much higher first time NCLEX pass rate average.

Golden West - 81.7% retention rate, 90.51% average NCLEX pass rate (past 5 years)

Saddleback - 77.9% retention rate, 96.18% average NCLEX pass rate (past 5 years)

Also consider distance to the school, distance to clinical sites, costs, class sizes, total credit hours, total clinical hours, etc. Saddleback and Golden West are a decent distance from each other. Depending on where you're coming from, commuting to either or can be a huge hassle. I did my prerequisites at Golden West and moved to Dana Point shortly before I finished them and sometimes it'd take me over an hour to get from Dana Point to Golden West for classes.

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Thanks for the replies! I also applied to San Marcos but I'm waiting for the full evaluation following my last core prerequisite. I'm currently standing at about 38 pts if I calculated everything correctly.

However, I'm leaning towards the community colleges if I do get in to San Marcos. 48k + the move down there seems a bit for my current situation and that's not even counting my previous bachelor loans.

What do you all think? Thanks again, I appreciate the helpful responses

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