Need your Advice! Becoming a competitive candidate for nursing

[doulos1]

Hello everyone!

I'm fairly new to this forum and am looking for as much feedback as possible (of course I plan to also speak with various admissions and nursing friends I have, but since this is a new realm for me, I'm thinking the more feedback the better).

Bear with my long story here, I want to give as much context as possible:

I am originally a slightly unorthodox pre-med student. I graduated with a B.S. in Biology. But spent the majority of my time prioritizing student organizations and reforming policy work around that. Totally did not care about my grades until senior year when I decided to pursue healthcare. My undergraduate GPA stands around a 2.70 (and a science GPA of 2.5).

I completed an informal postbacc at Harvard Extension (since my GPA was so low, I wasn't accepted into any formal 1year masters programs). 2 years of taking courses like Neurobiology, Biochemistry, Bioinformatics, Medical Microbiology, and a few retakes from my general science days: Chemistry and Physics, I finished the 2 years with a GPA of 3.67

Originally I planned to apply only to Osteopathic Medical schools (DO) due to their philosophy of Patient centered care. DO schools removed their grade forgiveness policy which would have used my 2 years of postbacc work to bump up my overall GPA to a 3.0 and a science GPA of 3.3. Instead removal of the policy has me sitting at a overall 2.75 GPA and a 2.85 science GPA.

Now I know everyone is probably asking why nursing and why not reapply medical schools. I can go in depth if you like. But to be concise. I always preferred the whole patient approach to healthcare, vs the disease model approach taught in medical schools. The only reason I enjoyed science was because it better helped me understand, communicate, and build trust with patients. With that said, since my interests lie in Primary, Palliative, and Psychiatry. I know the career of a Nurse Practitioner will still fulfill my goals of challenging the status quo in these fields.

Some more context: I've shadowed over 100's of hours in primary care. Worked as a patient sitter (1:1 with patients) for 7 months in the hospital, floating over various units from neurology to pediatrics. And currently work as a Nursing assistant in the inpatient psychiatry unit.

I've taken my MCAT and scored a 504 (61 percentile)

I also still have an active GRE score of 155 Verbal, 157 Quantitative, 4 Analytical.

I have massive amounts of leadership and extracurricular experiences, including creating policy reform in college, a public health initiative for premed students at Harvard Extension school, video projects for letters of recommendation advice, and more.

Since nursing schools require alot of labs, I will be retaking a few courses like anatomy and physiology, microbiology, since I never took the lab portion before. Ah as well as the lifespan psychology course. Not trying to sound arrogant, but I do expect to excel in these classes.

I would like to ask for feedback on how I can become a competitive candidate for nursing schools, particularly direct entry MSN programs. I'm still doing research, but I would really like to get into the JHU Direct Entry MSN program.

[ThatBigGuy]

You need a higher GPA, because JHU requires at least a 3.0 and probably only accepts those with 4.0 GPAs due to the sheer number of applicants they receive. Just to get your GPA up to 3.0, you need another 50 hours of classes at a 4.0 GPA.

You have a great mix of extracurriculars, but your GPA is prohibitively low. You will need to cast a wider net and apply to many, many different programs in order to increase your odds of acceptance.

You also need to consider retaking the classes with the worst grades in order to improve your GPA.

[doulos1]

Thanks ThatBigGuy for the message! Sorry for responding back so late. I talked with some others as well as admissions over at JHU. For now I don't plan on taking additional courses besides some of the prerequisite courses for nursing programs. It would be hard for me to boost my GPA at this point simply because there aren't too many new courses I haven't taken yet. Luckily I found the program at Drexel to calculate GPA based on the past 60 credits in which case I would be seen as a 3.7. And JHU says the improvement from my undergrad to postbacc GPA would be highly favored. So my plan for this spring, summer, and fall is to finish prereqs and apply. If it doesnt' work out, I'll default to taking what courses I can to boost my GPA higher. And if time works out, I'll probably retake my GRE this summer as an added boost to be more competitive.

Thoughts?

*Some more context. The low GPA comes from doing poorly in some old science courses and random humanities (like ancient greek, orgo, computer science). I have since then retaken my science courses and achieved A's & B's. But since there is no grade replacement, those old C's and D's are still there. Sigh.. if only I took classes more seriously back then.

[allyjay13]

There are a lot of 2nd degree nursing programs that look at only your most recent 60ish credit hours. I don't know of any direct entry MSN that calculate GPA this way, but I'm sure they're out there. I would just look at as many programs as possible that calculate GPA that way, as you would be a very strong candidate for programs based that way.