Nursing Application Essay

With a total score of 358/360 on that part of the application, perhaps the other parts of the application are the problem?

It breaks it down for us... class grades worth 310 and an essay worth 50. I had gotten a 48 on the essay portion and 310 for grades.

I see, I thought grades and essay make up one part and there were other parts. My bad.

I wish you well but I don't think there is much I could do to polish a really good essay into a perfect essay in a post or even several posts. Even if I saw your essay, this is close enough that I'm sure it is more about what exactly the admissions committe is specifically looking for in their candidates rather than anything universal.

There is the basics, of course, make very sure you have everything spelled correctly (read it word by word from the end to the beginning to help avoid seeing what you meant to say rather than what you actually said). Either try to find some naturally good spellers who would read it over for you or spend a few hours with a dictionary and/or English usage website, looking every up everything you are remotely uncertain about. Same for grammar and punctuation. And write it early so you can finish it, then set it aside for a few days or weeks and then go back to it.

Is this for a 2 year nursing program or university? I'm applying to a 2 year program and I definately don't have to write an essay as part of my application. Just curious.

It is a 2 yr program

What's you gpa?

I have a 4.0 for all pre nursing classes. They don't count other classes, but my cumulative gpa is 3.76

You grades are good, and sound like the essay portion was close to perfect. There has to be other factors on the admitting side. I wonder if something like Kaplan or some other learning center would be able to help you polish off the essay. Or, there must have been a lot of people who had both portions with full points.

Yes. Our nursing advisor said everyone who was accepted had a perfect score on both portions. She said there were 320 applicants for 48 spots! It is so discouraging to miss 2 pts and it still is not good enough. Hopefully this year I will have that little something extra they are looking for. Thank you for your comments.

Hmm - as someone who has been on the receiving end (having to review the essays) I may be able to provide insight. Although there may be a set of criteria that are used to rank each entry, it all comes down to the subjective opinions of the reviewers. It is a multi-stage process, gradually weeding out until the top entries are selected - and you ended up in that top group. Afterward, they sort out the "top of the top". Chances are, the majority of them will have exactly the same subjective score (after all, there were 320 of them to begin with) ... so the reviewers re-rate them. At this point, the original criteria are a moot point. You probably received that "very close to perfect" score because they didn't like yours as much as some of the others. It's pretty much a crap shoot - at any other time, yours may have made the top pile also.

So - don't feel bad. You could have submitted War and Peace and it wouldn't have made any difference if the raters didn't "like" it as much as the others. This year, maybe you should include verbiage about how many times you have submitted applications.. persistence is always an admirable quality. Keep on trying, I am sure your luck will improve .

Thank you very much! I have not had the opportunity to talk to any of the people who rated our essays. I think you are probably dead on about the way it was done. I will be trying again next month and thank you again for your advice.