need advice: ADN, BSN or entry-level MSN?

[goldenbear23]

Hi Everyone, I want to be a FNP and I am considering my options and wondering which path is right for me. Ideally, I would really love to go straight into an entry-level MSN, but I am wondering if my stats are good enough to get me into an FNP program, seeing as most of them are offered by stellar universities. I have a 3.9 in 100 units from a top 5 community college, and I have a 3.4 in medical/biological anthropology from U.C. Berkeley. I have a hearing impairment which impedes my ability to hear in large classroom settings and so I spent my first year at Cal trying to access the correct accommodations (the deaf and hard of hearing specialist at Cal is not a very nice/caring person and denied me access to real-time captioning). Also many teachers were just plain unhelpful, if not hostile. I am worried because my junior GPA is weak (3.0). In my last year, after I had fought for proper accommodations, my GPA was about a 3.8, which averages to a what I am thinking is a so-so GPA of a 3.4. In my pre-reqs I have earned mostly A's: anatomy (A), phsyio (A), micro (A), developmental psych (A), and my only B so far has been in stats. I volunteer weekly in the ER of a local hospital (so far I have volunteered about 80 hours worth of time, and hopefully this number will be more like 150-200 hrs by the time I apply to schools). I will also have great recommendations letters. My teachers that wrote my letters for one application that's already submitted said that I was the top 2% (microbiology) and top 5% (bio-archaeology & skeletal biology) of their classes. I have yet to take the GRE, but I figure my scores will sit somewhere between 1100 and 1300. I am wondering if I should go ahead and invest my hard earned resources (money) in applying to graduate schools. If I do apply to graduate programs, should I limit myself to schools that are easier to get into? or should I also toss applications into more competitive piles, such as UCSF, Yale, Vanderbilt, U of Boston, etc.? I have a seat at my local junior college, which is very competitive, but this route will take more time. I am also scared that I may graduate from the ADN program only to find that I cannot find a job. As well, I am also considering accelerated BSN programs as a possibility....although my BA excludes me from financial aid and most of these programs are at expensive private schools. Any help/thoughts/shared experiences from those of you who went through this process with similar stats are much appreciated. Thanks and good luck to everyone who is waiting to hear back from schools!

[leenak]

As someone on a similar path, i wouldn't suggest doing the ADN. I know there are some programs that allow you to do a second degree BSN and MSN in the same program, Yale does it, Johns Hopkins does it (kind of) but there don't seem to be a lot of programs that allow you to go to FNP from having no nursing degree. (MS CNL seems more common)

What seems cheapest to me is to do a second degree BSN at state school, then work as an RN and pursue a MSN part time while working. While you may need to pursue private loans due to having a BA, the difference between government loans and private loans doesn't seem that much different to me.

I also plan to apply to private schools, apply for scholarships and see what happens. I'm lucky in that I have a decent sized savings where I can pay for a state school out of pocket, a private school would be a different story.