Nevada State College vs National University

[dreamsound]

Hi, I'm new here, I've been researching the 2nd Degree Accelerated Nursing programs for a few hours now.

This site has been great, a lot of in-depth information I would not find somewhere else. I'm in California looking to make a career change from Marketing and get in a 12 or 15 month accelerated Nursing program.

I am in Southern California, I have a 2.95 GPA and I have taken many of the prereqs but still missing some.

So, with that in mind, after going through a lot of the available option I have narrowed down to two schools: Nevada State College and National University. NSC accelerated program requeriments are only a 2.5 minimum gpa and the tuition and fees are 1/5 of NU.

However, I read here that NSC does not really prepare you for the RN exam and they have made some bad changes with their teachers. Moreover, it is NOW apparently hard to get to the accelerated program with a 3.2 minimum gpa *even though their site states 2.5 minimum?

NU on the other hand is expensive with some $1,400.00 orientation class (wow), and the program is apparently around 22 months which is too long for me. On the other hand it seems that people are happy with it and it does give you a solid background/respect in hospitals.

This is the best I've been able to find besides OSU and Sharp Hospital but they are cancelling that program next year anyway.

I'm not sure if i should just apply to both schools and hope for the best or where to go from here. Any comments or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[dreamsound]

Anyone?

[Pianoman223]

Hey Dreamsound!

I don't have any new information for you, but I did want to say that I'm in nearly EXACTLY the same position as you are. Close in age, career-change, similar GPA, just a few pre-reqs remaining, looking at schools in LV to do an accelerated BSN/RN. (I'm located in MA now).

So far it's a tossup between Touro and Nevada State College for me. Touro seems to be way more expensive though, unfortunately. And the negative chatter about NSC's teacher's has gotten me alarmed too. Sigh. Why can't this be more simple!

Have you considered Touro's Accelerated BSN/RN?

Keep us updated. Best of luck to you!

[dreamsound]

Hey there Pianoman, yes, this whole career change has been a lot 'more' than I expected. I have not looked at Touro yet, but I will now that you mentioned it.

The one thing that 'turned me off' about this whole career change is that I found out a lot of new nurse grads are having a hard time finding a job nowadays. There are a lot of posts written about it around here. Just keep that in mind before and do some research in the area you want to live in before you make the change. I always thought nursing was a guaranteed job and after borrowing all that money the last thing I want is be stuck with 50k in debt and no job.

I also wanted to just apply for nursing school and see if I could make it in to begin with, consider it as an option but you now have to take the TEAS test that apparently has a challenging Science portion and needs some studying. Right now I don't have the time to prepare for it and take it but I certainly will consider it in the future.