May give up my dream of being a nurse

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I may have to give up my dream of being a nurse. I recently got put on the waitlist for my nursing program, and the way things are, I just don't see anyone giving up a spot so that I can fill their seat.

I looked into other colleges and it gets even more challenging. While the pre requisites are similar, each college has an additional pre req that is different from the last school--classes that are required for their program that you can only take at their school or classes that are not even offered at the college I am currently attending. There is no universal pre requisites for a nursing program, all of them are slightly different which means even if I wanted to apply for more than one program it would be hard to do. It would be easy to apply to two or three different schools if all the pre reqs are the same but colleges are making it hard by adding these additonal & unnecessary classes that I have never even heard of so you can get into their program. And not only that but you only have 5 yrs for a lot of schools before your pre reqs expire, which means I need to hurry up so I wont have to retake classes over again

I have been crying all day long, sad, upset, frustrated. Maybe I need to pick another field because this is just becoming too competitive.

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You must be in a major city somewhere. You may have to make a sacrifice and move to a smaller sub-city that really doesn't have a waiting list. I had to do that. Im 2 hours outside of the metropolitan area I came from and would have still be on a waiting list now and Im in my second semester. So you may have to do that. Don't just apply to schools in the city or subject yourself to one area. EXPAND! Expand, expand. Apply in different, smaller locations because at this school I didn't wait at all I got right in and not only that I applied for the ADN program and they called and told me my grades qualified enough for the BSN program. So you can get in but it's nursing school and its all about sacrifices and you may have to do just that.

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That's what I did. I moved out of state and I am still on a waiting list. The community college nearby lost their accreditation which caused an increase of students applying this semester. If it were last year I could have gotten in

I am just sick and tired really. Everybody wants to be a nurse and its getting too competitive just to get into a school. I am not about to take over classes just because I got a B in it. Its so hard that I can barely find a job to make a nice life for myself.

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Where do you live?

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I am in Toledo Ohio. I am a student living on campus so I am not from here. Going to a community college in Ohio is out of the question because I have no place to live unless its another university

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if you got waitlisted doesnt that mean you are accepted to start the following year there? thats how it works here...

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Nope, it means that if a student gives up their seat then I may get in but that is only for this year. If no one gives up their seat by August 1st 2011, then I have to reapply again in December 2011 so I can start in August 2012. I cannot afford to sit around several more semesters because I am taking out loans and this is putting me in even more debt

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wow...how unfair! here they will only waitlist about 10 people or so, usually a percentage of what they accept each year. and if you dont get to start the fall for which you applied you are in for the following. im so sorry! it is so hard! i finally stopped trying to get classes for all the different schools because they all have more or less or different ones. i just focused on the one i wanted. i did notice though, that if you apply in a bigger city it is way harder to get in!

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Yep, Mrs. Waddle. It's true that its hard trying to expand your options because every school has one or a few different pre requisites for their own programs. I really don't know what to do. I dont want to retake classes like Micro which I got a "B" in just to get an "A". I worked so hard for that "B" and I dont see why an "A" is even necessary.

I have no idea what I am going to do. Its so bad out here that going to school and getting good grades is not enough anymore. I am poor and dont have a lot of money

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I started looking into a few things for you and I found that Kent State University offers an ADN program at several of their campuses. While only the Kent campus offers student housing, the Tuscarawas campus offers some off-campus housing resources. You can look into it more here .. http://www.tusc.kent.edu/student-life/housing.cfm

I wouldn't rule out attending a community college or a regional campus of a college just because of the living situation. There are usually apartments/houses available to rent around the school. Contact the school to see if they have resources (like I mentioned above) or if they could direct you to someone whom could provide you with those resources. If all else fails .. google it.

Regional campuses sometimes offer the best of both worlds - you get the well known school name on your diploma, but you get the small-private school experiences in the classroom. I go to a regional campus of Ohio University and I feel that I am getting a more personalized education because of the smaller class sizes.

If you are wanting to stay in Ohio, reference the Ohio Board of Nursing website for a list of schools/programs within the state. http://www.nursing.ohio.gov/PDFS/education/RNprogramlistJan2011.pdf

And if you get nothing else out of my post, please take this to heart. DO NOT give up on your dreams!!! You CAN and WILL achieve anything you set your mind to. I don't know you, but I believe that if you WANT this then you can achieve it. Nursing school is tough, anyone who says it's not is lying to you. BUT nursing school is also very rewarding. I have met some amazing people - classmates, nurses, instructors and patients. Sometimes that is enough to teach you much more than a textbook ever could. Someone very special to me once told me, "Failure is not an option, failure is only found in ourselves when we are looking for someone else's purpose." What he meant by this is that you will only fail if you are not following your heart. These are your dreams, so go get them (:

I wish you the best of luck. If I can help you in any way, even just listen to you vent then please let me know.

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

I applied for the Spring 2010 program for my favorite school...got put on the waiting list. I made calls to the nursing office for weeks for weeks, right up until the semester started, but never made it close enough to the top of the list to get into the program. I cried buckets and stressed over a B that I killed myself to get in Physiology, wondering if I should take it again. For Fall 2010 I applied again, and again got put on the waiting list. It was looking bad. The requirements had changed for the program, and you needed to take the TEAS, so I took the TEAS. This was while I was working NOC shift in Assisted Living, so I worked all night, then took the test in the am. When I went to turn in my test, I saw the person ahead of me had a higher score than me and I thought "Why am I working so hard for this? Maybe nursing is not for me." The nursing school called me that afternoon to offer me a position! Just like that I had gone from the bottom of the barrel to IN!

So if possible I would not give up yet. You never know what is going to be right around the corner, and now that I am in the program, I am that much more determined to make it because I worked so hard to get my foot in the door. I know things are really, really discouraging right now, but the only certainty is that if you give up, you will definitely not get in.

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Addison would you ever consider student housing? Are you over 25 years old? There are places that will take students and qualify you for housing.

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