Need opinions :)

Sour Lemon · Jun 20, 2018

How's everyone doing? My name is Jeff and I am a struggling wannabe nursing student. A couple questions for anyone that is willing to help me, and let me mention now I do appreciate the help. Allow me to break down the situation for you;
-I'm NOT in a nursing program
-I go to community college as a liberal arts degree, and have completed my prereqs (A-C range)
-I have a 2.0 GPA (from silly classes I shouldn't of goofed off in)
-I could graduate after 2 more semesters with an A.D in Liberal Arts
-I just applied to 7 nursing schools local to Long Island/NYC area.
-Got denied by 2 already, most likely not getting into any of them due to GPA.
-I have an excellent background (working in hospitals, volunteer work, first aid experience, etc)
-I do well in classes needed for nursing, anything medical I can kill in. Any other classes, horrible at.
Basically, I have 2 choices.
1) I can stay at community college and raise my GPA, but only God knows how long that would take to go from a 2.0 to a 3.5 at least?! Not saying its impossible, but it will take a very long time.
2) I can attend a trade school, pay more than community college. Get my ADN in 16 months, take my NCLEX, get my BSN while working.
What I'm worried about with my first option is how long it will take. I'm 19, sure I'm young but still, I'm only getting older!
In regards to the trade school, it's a little on the pricey side. But I do have a couple connections that could easily get my an RN job with an associates degree. And these hospitals will allow you to work part time while you earn your BSN (and some even pay for it!!!!) But I just want to be a nurse, why is it so hard? LOL.
Thanks for any type of comment, I appreciate all the information I can gain. Have a fantastic day and enjoy the nice weather!
-Jeff

I recommend that you look at specific nursing programs to see how they determine eligibility. My program looked at GPA of the hard sciences, only ...so spending time and money taking other classes to raise my GPA would have been a huge waste.

I'd hesitate to spend a huge amount of money on a private school. With a GPA that low from "goofing off", you have to wonder if you're in the state of mind to actually make it through and graduate. A lot of debt would be bad, but a lot of debt and nothing to show for it would be even worse.

Ldy76 · Jul 19, 2018

I suggest start taking some pre-reqs for a nursing program. Easy ones such as sociology, english, psychology, nutrition, etc. Do well on those and it'll boost up your GPA. There are some programs out there that only ask for 2.7 GPA. I attended Montefiore School of Nursing in Mt. Vernon. It's a 2 yr Associate's program (about $25k). I've got a few suggestions if you do decide to take up nursing there (you can email me). They only calculate the necessary pre-reqs to get a 2.7 GPA. So the rest of your "silly" classes won't matter. You can take the rest of the pre-reqs while doing the program, however, A&P 1 & 2 are recommended to be taken before the program because it'll be too hard to juggle the work. If you really want to become a nurse, don't even waste your time with any trade school. Good luck! By the way, I work at Jacobi :)

**NICU Guy, BSN, RN** · Jul 20, 2018

Go onto the state's BON website and look at all of the schools that you are considering. Avoid any of them that have a low pass rate. It doesn't do you any good spending a lot of money for an ASN and be unable to pass NCLEX.

Guest1029094 · Jul 20, 2018

Does your community college offer an RN two year program? Mine does and the GPA requirement it 2.0. You need C's.. just a thought, you could do that and save money then raise your GPA doing the RN classes and then go get your BSN while working. Also have you taken all your your pre reqs? Those could raise your GPA if you still need to take them. If you have taken them then maybe look into community college associate in applied science nursing degrees.. I'm in AZ so I'm not sure how it is where you are but every community college offered the RN program here for under 10k and a C is all that's required for everything.

Sour Lemon · Jul 20, 2018

Does your community college offer an RN two year program? Mine does and the GPA requirement it 2.0. You need C's.. just a thought, you could do that and save money then raise your GPA doing the RN classes and then go get your BSN while working. Also have you taken all your your pre reqs? Those could raise your GPA if you still need to take them. If you have taken them then maybe look into community college associate in applied science nursing degrees.. I'm in AZ so I'm not sure how it is where you are but every community college offered the RN program here for under 10k and a C is all that's required for everything.

My community college only required Cs to apply, as well. But since it was competitive entry, no one with Cs had a realistic chance of acceptance. I had a 3.7 and only skated by as an alternate.

Guest1029094 · Jul 21, 2018

My community college only required Cs to apply, as well. But since it was competitive entry, no one with Cs had a realistic chance of acceptance. I had a 3.7 and only skated by as an alternate.

The concurrent program AAS plus BSN is competitive but not the traditional AAS.. I have all B's and am doing the traditional anyway, it's not competitive at all so all this competition is foreign to me!