No waitlist at Pima CC

arcticfox · Jan 12, 2018

Pima has been making fairly large changes and it's been stressful to many students. I know when they stopped accepting applications for the wait-list, students who didn't do so well in their prerequisites were disappointed, but students who did well (acing most of their classes) were excited. For a little while, the competitive program required nine or so classes and three exam scores. It honestly wasn't too bad, but the recent change in June of 2017, has a lot of students frustrated, especially those who were already taking classes. Now, the competitive program only counts two or three classes and two or three exam scores. (It is either Bio 201 and 202, along with the Hesi, Reading Accuplacer, and placing into MAT 151 on the math placement exam. Or Bio 201 and 202, MAT 097, with the Hesi and Reading Accuplacer). As you might already know, there's a certain amount of seats available every semester and it's divided among students applying into the competitive program, the CEP program, and the wait-list. The majority of the seats are reserved for the students on the wait-list because Pima wants to be done with it. I'm not exactly sure how many seats are available, but from what I've gathered from talking to multiple people, I'm going to spit out numbers that I believe might be true. I think there's about 100 seats every semester. 20 goes to the CEP students, 25 goes to the competitive students, and 55 to the wait-list.

Since the requirements for the competitive is much shorter, students who were following the old requirements, had both a disadvantage and advantage. The disadvantage was that they had less prerequisites counted, so if you didn't do so well in Bio 201 and/or 202, and were relying on the other six classes to boost your points, you're screwed. Since the prerequisite classes are shorter, the seven other classes that used to be a requirement (WRT 101 and 202, PSY 101, PSY 240 or ECE 107, BIO 205, and humanities/social science) are now co-requisites (aka support classes), meaning you can now take them while you're in nursing school. This change is beneficial to new students and any student in general, because technically, now you're able to get your associate's degree faster, but the workload during nursing school increases. And of course, if you've already taken any of the co-requisites in the past and earned a C or higher, you don't have to retake them. The issue that I saw, was that students who followed the old path with the nine or so classes, had a difficult time getting in because they were putting their effort into nine classes, instead of the two/three that Pima now only looks at. On the bright side, I do know a few students who didn't make it into the competitive program right off the bat and made in after they were put on a 'wait-list'. There's a formal term for it, but I don't know remember what it is called. But it was a list of students who scored high points, but not enough to be the top 25 (so like the student who had the 26th highest score) and could potentially be offered a seat if any of the 55 wait-list students do not qualify to be admitted. This 'wait-list' ends the first day of nursing school and if you didn't get in by then, you have to reapply.

And of course with all the changes, the point system has changed as well. For example, the Hesi is now worth 58% of the total points and I recall it being much less before the new change occurred in June. I've attached a link with the grading rubric. You can get up to a total of 67 points.

HESI A2 Scores - 39 points possible (worth 58% of overall points)

Accuplacer Reading Assesment - 10 points possible (15%)

Preparatory Courses (Bio 201, 202, and MAT 097/math placement) - 12 possible points (18%)

Previous degree - 1 point for each degree (percent varies)

Work experience - 3 possible points (4%)

Volunteer experience - 3 possible points (4%)

https://www.pima.edu/programs-courses/credit-programs-degrees/health-professions/nursing/docs/adn-selective-admissions-point-rubric.pdf