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SoWellRounded
5 Posts
Saw this thread get highlighted in one of those emails, and thought I'd chime in for the first time in forever.
What do you mean by trying to take pre-reqs? You can't get a seat in the class? Or you can't get a good grade? Is that associate's degree from the Navy's community college or your local one? The Navy one probably doesn't transfer as well as a local school.
As to the 2nd half of your post, ugh. As someone else basically said: man up (or woman up as appropriate).
If someone can't figure out how to apply to nursing school, they probably don't belong in nursing school.
Want to figure out if you still need a class? Or if a class you took will qualify? CALL THEM UP! Or go to an information session if they are close enough to you. It's impossible for anyone on here to definitively answer your questions as to whether you are good or not, you can only find that out by talking to the schools you are interested in.
I'll give some background on myself and school requirements, and perhaps that might offer some insight: I have a BS from years ago that the military already paid for (I was an officer, and because of this I was not eligible for the regular/Post 9-11 GI Bill) but is totally unrelated to nursing. The only specific class I ended up using to fulfill a nursing pre-req was a psychology class that I got an A in. However, having that degree did mean I did not have to take any of the General Ed requirements for my BSN.
I took my science pre-reqs at my local community college, along with retaking an English class (because I previously had a B), speech, debate, trig to fulfill the math requirement (last took that in HS), stats (barely got a B in that years ago), and maybe something else. We'll call this school A. School A, along with the other community colleges here in CA as best as I could tell, required Microbiology, Anatomy, and Physiology as the science requirements, but not Chemistry. However, the BSN programs all appear to require chemistry, so I took that while I was doing my others (this class was 1/2 general chem, 1/4 organic, 1/4 biochem, and pretty much only future nursing students were taking it).
Something I found out by going to information sessions and such, is that each school/program has slightly different admission requirements or ways of evaluating applicants. I applied for the ADN program at school A, along with the ADN program at school B, another community college not too far away. School A looks at your science GPA, throws your name into 1 of 3 hats based on that, and then draws out 40 names (20 from the highest group, 10 each from the other 2 groups). School B uses a points system, and unless you max it out (I was just shy of doing so), you don't get in right away, but instead have to wait on their waiting list... about a 5 year wait. I did not get into either program. But they were also not my preference. Instead, I got into the local Cal State program, where they used a 10 point system that took into account my science GPA (Anat, physio, chem, and micro), non-science pre-req GPA (English, math, psychology, etc), and TEAS score. And then they took the top 70 applicants. Because I do great on standardized tests I got in no problem there. They also have an accelerated track, which I was able to do, and so I finished in the same amount of time as if I had gone to an ADN program. I just graduated and several of my friends from taking pre-reqs who first got their ADN are now working on their BSN at the same school.
I did not apply to another Cal State school's program, but I know the others all differed slightly, just as the community colleges do, and I had also looked at UC Irvine, they were a little nuts and required something like 4 chemistry courses and a DNA class at the time, some of which were only available at UCI or the community college in Irvine. Lesson being: each school is different. You may not qualify for some, but as others have pointed out, that doesn't matter as long as you have a few that you do qualify for.
Also, here in CA there is a website that shows course equivalency between all of the UC, Cal State, and community colleges (and probably many of the private schools in the state). Classes at our community colleges are explicitly designed to transfer to the UC and Cal State systems. Perhaps there is a similar site for your state. Things get a lot more confusing, however, when you cross state lines (another reason I didn't try transferring much from my first degree)
GI Bill advice: like I said above, I couldn't qualify for the regular one, but as I have a rated disability I did qualify for Vocational Rehabilitation. If you also qualify for that, I had a friend who had both, and I think he first had to apply to use the traditional GI Bill, and THEN after that applied for Voc Rehab... by doing that he was able to get himself more money (though I forget how much). Basically, Voc Rehab covered all tuition, books, other school expenses (same for me), and then from the traditional GI he got a housing subsidy equivalent to BAH for an E-5, which where we live is very nice.
And I think this was pointed out: if a school requires something and you lack it, yes you will get rejected. If you leave anything blank on an application, even where you can legitimately put down "N/A", that too might get yours tossed. And some schools, such as the one I attended, only allow you to apply a limited number of times, twice in our case. So sending in an incomplete app will doubly hurt you.
Something else I remembered: there are pre-reqs that one needs to get INTO nursing school, then there are other classes one needs in order to graduate FROM nursing school. All 3 of the schools I applied to had classes such as this, and all 3 strongly encouraged applicants to have such classes completed before starting the nursing program because you'll be so busy, but if need be, you could take them while also taking nursing classes. The semester when applying, between finishing pre-reqs and beginning nursing school, was a great time to knock out any that one had left.