Has anyone considered going all the way?

AtomicWoman · Aug 6, 2008

Generally, Stafford Loans are not awarded for subsequent bachelor's degrees. This is true for all courses of study. You are correct that Stafford Loans are available for advanced degrees, but not for multiples of bachelor's degrees.

Jasmine, someone has misinformed you. The only thing you cannot get for a second (or third) Bachelor's degree are GRANTS. You are still eligible for Stafford Loans, up to the maximum lifetime amount. (You'll need to look that up if you want to know how much it is, because I don't have the dollar figure handy.) I am going for a second bachelor's degree -- after completing a graduate degree -- and I have had no problem regarding Stafford Loans. Just remember that *subsidized* Stafford Loans are awarded based on financial need, so it depends on your Cost of Attendance whether you will get a subsidized Stafford. But there are also *unsubsidized* Stafford loans.

I just found the page with all the limits. It's a little confusing because of the dependent/independent student thing and subsidized/unsubsidized categories, but the numbers are all there:

http://www.finaid.org/loans/studentloan.phtml

Just to reiterate: both my school and my lender had no problem with the fact that I needed a Stafford Loan. I had taken out nowhere near the maximum as an undergrad, which was over 20 years ago.

blessedbsn · Aug 6, 2008

What do you mean by going all the way? I didn't become a nurse so that later in life I could go to medical school. I wanted to be a nurse. Nursing is not some sublevel of medicine. Nursing and medicine are two different fields so I don't understand what you mean by "all the way". If I'm gonna go all the way, I'm gonna to all the way to be an NP or CRNA, not a doctor. If you feel that you want to be a doctor, go for it.

This is true nursing is a totally different field from Medicine, I began college wanting to be a doctor, butonce I began my classes and learned more about doctors, I decided it wasn't for me. I wanted to care for the patient not the disease or conditions. Just information on the difference.

AlinaAnne · Aug 7, 2008

go girl!! I have to tell you I totally understand how you feel. Med school is my end goal as well and I have chosen to take the route of nursing to get there for many reasons.. personal as well as the clinical and patient experience it provides. What we are wanting to do is not quite as crazy and "stupid" as some people make it seem, however nurses do tend to become very territorial on the issue!!! I think it is a great route to go, and helps a person much better understand the system of health care and patient care overall.!! Good luck to you!

bijou214 · Aug 19, 2008

in aug i will be starting the nursing program at my local college and will be graduating in 2012 ( long time) with my rn. recently i have started to consider entering med school in 2014 at the ripe old age of 30. i was wondering if anyone has considered this and what your reasons may have been for not doing it, other than financial. or is anyone doing something similar and could share their experience.
also since most of you work in a hospital setting, what can you tell me about the doctors you work with? most of my experiences with doctors have not been good. that's one of my reasons for wanting to go all the way. i think if more nurses became doctors we might have happier hospitals.
thanks for any help you might have.
jennifer

so, i just re-read my post and realized it's incredibly long. i apologize in advance. anyway...

when i was little, my parents always encouraged me to be a doctor. i loved bio and chem in hs (i was a huge nerd) so i went to college thinking i would be a chem major and pre-med. once i got to college, and didn't have my parents nagging me all the time, i realized that i was way too cool (or lazy... whatever) to go to med school. i completely lost interest in studying science. i graduated with a ba in psych, worked in research for a year, hated it, and decided i needed to get back into healthcare like i originally planned. so i did the math.

as a second degree student, i would be able to finish nursing school in 2 years, take/pass the nclex, and depending on the specialty, have as little or as much work experience as i felt was necessary, then msn or dnp in 2 years. if fast tracked, i could be at the top of the nursing profession in 4-6 years.

for med school, i would have to take 2 years of pre-med classes (including calculus because med schools don't accept ap credit from hs) take the mcat (death), 4 years of med school and all the boards that go with it, 4-6 years in residency, i don't even know how many years as a fellow (1? 5? i have no clue), then maybe i'd become an attending physician. i'm not even sure if that's the path. all i know is just because i have an md after my name, doesn't mean i am any where close to being "all the way" in medicine. so that could be 12 to... who knows how many years before i was at the top of the medical profession... plus, what if i want to have a family within those 12 years? is that going to delay me? i can put off a family for 4 years... but 12?

i'm impatient.

i also knew a girl who majored in nursing as her traditional undergrad degree and then went to med school. she worked like crazy to get in all the nursing requirements plus the pre-med sciences. the content may overlap but many med schools don't accept the nursing science courses. she had to take a 5th year to graduate with her bsn. she thought that her nursing school experience gave her better bedside manner than a lot of her med school peers, but that's about it.

to sum up: if you start med school in 2014 at age 30, you will be well into your 40's before you are at the top of the medical field... assuming you don't run into any road blocks along the way. whereas you could definitely have your msn or maybe your dnp (depending on school and specialty) by 30.

and if nothing else, nursing school is tedious (6 hrs of lecture plus 16 hrs of clincal a week... for one class!) and very few courses will overlap with pre-med requirements. med school is even more tedious and the life of a resident makes me want to cry a little... so why would you put yourself through the extra torture?

as for my experience with doctors... i work in a teaching hospital. 90% of the attendings on my unit are awesome. they are mostly in their 50's-60's. their awesome-ness comes with experience. teaching hospitals also have residents. the first year residents (a.k.a. interns, a.k.a. i graduated from med school last week) rotate through my floor every month. if they are smart, they know that they are clueless. they ask questions. they work alongside the nurse. unfortunately, some of them are idiots and think they know everything. these docs put patients at risk. i have seen them do incredibly stupid things that could have killed the patient if the nurse hadn't stopped them/fixed the situation. the fellows can go either way. some are super knowledgeable and you know they will make great attendings. others ask me if they can place the iv on my patient because they need practice. :no:

you know who is really good in the hospital? nps. they know their stuff... at least in my specialty, the nicu, they do. and most of them love to teach and answer questions. :up: special props to nnps and future nnps!

bijou214 · Aug 19, 2008

Generally, Stafford Loans are not awarded for subsequent bachelor's degrees. This is true for all courses of study. You are correct that Stafford Loans are available for advanced degrees, but not for multiples of bachelor's degrees.
I do not consider myself expert in matters of student financial aid, but I do know that if I had actually completed my BSN (which I was working on when my husband died unexpectedly), I would have been disqualified from the Stafford Loans I needed to obtain my bachelor's degree in Biology. I expect that I will be utilizing more Stafford Loans when I start medical school in the next year (or two.)

Maybe this was just your school? I got a stafford loan my sophomore year of college, where I eventually graduated with BA. Then, 2 years later, I got even more stafford loans (larger amount offered to me) for my BSN.

2bNurseLaEnfermera · Aug 19, 2008

What does CNO stand for? Just curious, what does "all the way" mean for you? That is, do you plan on getting your MSN, PhD or DNP?

I haven't had time to read all the posts in this thread, but when I read the OP I was taken aback by the "go all the way" suggestion that MD was better than RN. The medical profession and the nursing profession are two separate trees growing in the same garden. And as trees, there are many paths and no defined "top" (with most trees, anyway). The branches go in all different directions and meet many other paths at intersections.
I want to be a nurse because I like providing care to people. As a nursing student, I have seen MDs come to the hospital to examine their patient. No doctor's examine that I have seen in the hospital has been as thorough as a nurse's. I once saw a doctor come in, put the stethescope on the patient for two seconds, felt her belly and then left the room. Didn't ask her a single question. What kind of exam was that?
So going all the way to me is getting to the top of your specialty in nursing. Be that education (dean of a nursing school), nurse practitioner (owning a practice), or management (CNO). There are so many paths in nursing that no one is on "top." And a doctor is definitely not the end all and be all.

Hands and Heart · Aug 19, 2008

CNO--Chief nursing officer, oversees everything dealing with nursing in the hospital.

I am starting my MSN as an Adult Nurse Practitioner in the fall and plan to do the DNP when my school works out the program kinks. How about you?