Im an entering level 4 (last semester) student at ECC City in Buffalo, NY, ........an RN program in upstate NY. I actually failed level 3 at the North campus, which is supposed to be the hardest by a mile, there were 30 of us of about 80 at the time
I noticed something about level 4 at my school and at both campuses, and how drastically smaller it is.....Talking to students who graduated at north level 4 went from 105 to around 50, and at city the class went from 75 to around 40.....
Was kind of wondering if other people's programs were similar in this aspect, because I think it seems like there is something up with this program if we start level 1 with 105 and graduate only 50-60 at the north campus and we start with about 75 at city and we only graduate around 40 according to the NYS department of education. ??
My class started with around 76 people. At the orientation ceremony, the Director of the program said: "Look to your left, and now look to your right. If you plan on being one of the people still here at graduation, don't get too friendly with them. They probably won't be here."
It was true.
We graduated 34 people. But, the catch is, 14 of them did not start with us, they transfered in. So, of the original 76, we graduated 20.
Sad part is, my program was hard for all the wrong reasons. rgodfrey described their program as "out of sync." That description fits my program like a glove. Chaotic, made up as you go along and disorganized, that was my nursing program. It wasn't passing the test/clinicals that was hard..........it was figuring out when the test actually was being given, where to go to for clinicals, what paperwork to have prepared for clinicals etc etc that was too much for many to overcome.
Even sadder: The Director (as I eluded to before) and many of the instructors were very proud of themselves for this. The mantra was "We only graduate the best students, the cream." Yes, some people who needed to leave were weeded out by the tests and clinicals, but most who left were not told to leave. They were great students who lost respect for the program and went looking for something better.
"Not saying nursing school should be easy, mind you, but some structure, organization, and support should be mandatory."
A school that has a low attrition rate and a high NCLEX pass rate definitely has its act together.
Our school's nursing program had a fairly high dropout rate before not only requiring the the TEAS a few years ago, but counting it as 60% of the competitive admission score (science prerequisites count for the other 40%). Our first-time NCLEX pass rate for the Dec. 2011 graduates plus the handful who graduated within a few months earlier is nearly 90% for the ADN program. I'm not sure what the attrition rate is.
Some high-priced diploma mills require passing an NCLEX-like exit examination. If you don't pass, you don't get your diploma, and you can't sit for the NCLEX, which makes their pass rate artificially high.
I'm from an ADN program in Arizona. We started at about 30-32 and ended up 28 at graduation including 4 repeaters. Around 85% of us has taken NCLEX-RN and so far, we have a 100% passing rate.
Our college really tried hard to retain as much students as possible and IMO, it paid off in the end since we feel we owe it to our instructors and our college.
Our school uses the HESI entrance exam for entrance requirements. We started with 87 and after the first semester were down to 49. The rest either failed or withdrew to avoid failing. We lost more the second semester, but I don't know how many- maybe another 12. There is a HESI exit exam that we need to have a minimum score on, one attempt, or we can not go on to our clinical transition. The school IS organized.
Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
Only about half of my original cohort are going to graduate on time.
Some have dropped completely for personal reasons, some have taken time off (like having a baby) and are restarting the program and will finish later, some have failed a course and are retaking that course and will finish later, and some have failed twice and are ineligible to rejoin the program.
alannah_smth
16 Posts
I graduated from a 4 year BSN program. My freshman year we started with just over 120 students and I graduated with 59 in my class in May.
I thought this was normal.