GPA for Psychiatric Nursing

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Hey everyone,

I am currently in the process of applying to a psychiatric nursing program and am wondering what GPA you roughly need to get in. I know it says the minimum to apply for the school I am applying to is 2.0, but i, sure that it is more competitive than that. The regular nursing programs in my area dont accept people with less than a 3.8 which is worrying me. I cant see psychiatric nursing being quite that cometitive, but I was wondering how the two compared in terms of GPA.

Thanks!

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Specializes in psych, addictions, hospice, education.

Is this graduate school? Are you in the US? The reason I ask is that in the US, to be a psych RN, you first have to be a nurse, and need education to become a generic nurse. Then you can work psych and become certified, yada yada...

If it's graduate school, that's another story. If the minimum is 2.0 and they have enough space, and you fit all the other requirements, you'll get in. If there's not enough space, though, they'll assign points to the requirements, and start from top, go down, and accept people until they run out of space. Since 2.0 is minimum, it's truly possible those people won't get in.

Why do you think psych nursing would be less competitive?

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Hi, thanks for the reply!

I am in Canada, so here you don't have to be a regular nurse, you just go to get your bachelor of science in psychiatric nursing, which is a four year degree. I still believe it will be competitive but the reason I believe it will be less competative is that it is still a really up and comming profression in my city. The program has not been around for too long, and regular nursing is by far the more common of the two for people to apply to get into.

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Specializes in psych, addictions, hospice, education.

Ah, so since it's up and coming, the number of people applying won't be as large as it might be otherwise. That makes sense.

I think you'll still have to get basic nursing skills as part of the psychiatric nurse training, because psych nurses do quite a bit of generic nursing too.

I think what I said before still holds true, about GPA.

Good luck to you!

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