I was hoping someone could give me some advice on what my next step should be in my whole journey to nursing.
I am a 22 year old student currently attending a 4 year university in Seattle. I have thought about nursing for awhile, and knew I wanted to do something in health care my whole life, but just recently decided to seriously pursue nursing. I just finished my CNA class and will be taking the test June 28th to get certified:nuke:. here is my dilemma:
I am not a nursing student at my current school,so i have 2 options: i will either be graduating in one year (hopefully) with BA in anthropology and then pursuing nursing at a local community college and then doing the extra year for a bsn afterwards. Possibly a masters later on. Or i will be dropping out of the university and just start the nusing degree. I have considered switching my major to nursing here at the university I attend, but they have one of the top nursing schools in the country, it is extremely hard to get into, and while I have done well in the prereqs i have taken, i know i can do better in an environment with smaller class sizes. plus, they just raised tuition here considerably and my parents wont pay tuition for me anymore after my fourth year of college. so at this point i'm on my own. the fafsa i found out will not make me eligible for any grants after i get my first BA, and this would have helped me because i will be 24 soon and can actually possibly qualify for them. so if i get this BA degree, i will just have the option of more loans and work study for the nursing degree.
My plan was the take the prereqs over this summer and next summer (while doing my current major during the school year) and then fall quarter of next year and then apply to nursing. I am seriously considering just dropping out of this school all together and just going into the nursing thing now so i can graduate faster. the thing that is stopping me is dropping out of this university, it is a good school, and i have spent 4 years on it already.
Does anyone have any thoughts? i know this is kind of long and confusing, but i could really use some guidance...
I would finish your degree while continuing to take as many prerequisites as you can get completed at this school. That will put you in a category where you can apply to Accelerated BSN programs as well as traditional programs.
Something to consider (since I am someone who has a previous BA before I went into nursing): if you finish your first bachelors before pursuing a nursing degree, you will be ineligible for all grants, and possibly will max out of undergraduate loans for your nursing degree. This was a HUGE obstacle for me in obtaining a second degree in nursing. So you may want to look into NOT finishing this first degree until you look into how you're going to pay for nursing school (unless of course your parents paid for your first degree, or you went to an incredibly inexpensive school, etc).
Specializes in Urgent Care NP, Emergency Nursing, Camp Nursing.
An option that hasn't been mentioned is what is called either a Graduate-Entry or Master's-Entry program. They're geared towards college grads, some will spit you out with an APN cert, and all of them do an end-run around the financial aid rules as you'll be completing a master's degree to get your RN and not an associate's or bachelor's. If this sounds like the way you might want to go, I'd go against 8flood8 said, finish your degree while knocking off the prerequisites for various schools (you're going for a bio-oriented degree already, either you've done most of them or the versions of classes required by most nursing schools will be a breeze for you). I'd suggest DePaul's program, but then again I'm biased as I'm currently a student there.
Also, to further contradict 8flood8, one should note that a lot of nurses working on med-surg floors and other places are baby boomers. They can't keep working forever (as much as they may want to now, what with people's 401ks being wiped out - thanks deregulation!) and they're going to create a huge void when they all finally retire. Just because the economy's putting the squeeze on hospital and other hiring does not mean that the underlying insufficiencies in the nursing supply/demand relationship have gone away. Hospitals need more nurses, they just can't afford what they need at the moment.
Specializes in Flight RN, Trauma1 CVICU STICU MICU CCU.
so how long do you think it will be until they start retiring? I completely respect your opinion, but i think you would get some pretty hard stares if you said that in front of my classmates, or the other unemployed GNs from the 3 other nursing schools in this city that graduated right at 33 days ago. Luckily, I did get a job, but as i said earlier, i am the proud owner of a 1 hour and 15 minute commute. Thankfully my family lives in San Antonio, so I actually have a place to stay and don't have to make that drive after being exhausted from working :)
This article underscores my idea about the "decline of the nursing shortage." To be fair, the article says that as the economy recovers the nursing shortage should be "on again;" however, when will the economy rebound?
I stand by my earlier suggestion: Get into nursing school now and finish your "other" degree later when you have time off from your 3 day work week as an RN. You can always do an RN bridge to MSN and not have to worry about that pesky BSN.
caliotter3
38,333 Posts
I would finish your degree while continuing to take as many prerequisites as you can get completed at this school. That will put you in a category where you can apply to Accelerated BSN programs as well as traditional programs.