1/2 nursing class cut, WHY??

SunshineDaisy, ASN, RN · Jul 13, 2011

Our school offers tutoring, we also have to speak to our advisors, and they offer a lab you can go to to help in ways you think or your teachers think you need help in (like doing BP or whatever)

lillymom · Jul 13, 2011

We were not permitted to repeat any courses or terms. Fail a course and you were done. There also was no tutoring.
That was fine with me. I think there's far too much remediation and hand-holding provided in "higher" education. If half of the class DID make it then it's likely that the other half either COULD have made it or SHOULDN'T have made it.

It's the same where I go and they do let you know all of this when you go into the program if you listen. If you are going to have someone's life in your hands you should be held to a very high academic standard.

I don't think that most schools intentionally weed out students but I have actually had an instructor say "we're weeding out the first semester students now". I don't think they were doing anything different from what the students had already been informed of. I think she just meant that they were in the process of finding out who was serious about school and who wasn't.

PghRN30 · Jul 13, 2011

Well you always hear about everyone that doesn't pass by a point, or a couple points, but as heartbreaking as it is, it is not being cruel, it is what it is. Nursing programs have to draw a line somewhere, and with how many people tend to hover around failing, either just making it, or just missing it, no matter where they draw that line someone is bound to fail by one point. I know one of my good friends from first term did, and she is back retaking it and doing well.....and i do mean literally 1 point. a couple others were by only a few. And many only passed by a point or 2.

My school 75% is passing with a C. They round, so 74.45 is actually passing...that is where they draw a hard line.....so if someone has 74.44 yes they fail....but if they would say oh, thats only one point, then what about the person that has 74.40....then 74.36. If you bump that bar you are going to have to keep bumping that bar....that is when it would be cruel "well they rounded her/him up to passing, why not me, we were only a half a point different". If you have a line drawn, you know from the start where that line is.....so "failing by a point" is really on the person, you can't blame the school or teachers, nursing classes are mostly NCLEX style tests....you either get the points or you don't.....its not that the teachers "cut" or "weeded" out the class.

My class started with 36....we lost 2 within starting school, another 2 after about 3 weeks.....all were personal reasons. A couple more on the 4th and 5th test(grades were too poor to recover), and then 6 at the end of the term, all were close to passing, but didn't quite make it. 4 came back and are retaking, 1 switched to the LPN program, and 1 applied to a different school. We started this term with 24, and have already lost 2 more, for personal reasons.

Some people do find nursing is not for them, not what they expected, others find that the timing is bad for one reason or another, and may defer to a later time. You do lose a lot of people, but not all fail out, and even many that fail out come back the next term and are successful. Most schools seem to have a 1 term "do-over".

grpman · Jul 14, 2011

I think semantics can be a tricky game of verbal judo especially when typing short replies and not speaking face to face. "Weeding out" to me meant that people were removed from classes due to not being able to meet academic standards. These academic standards help keep only the students who can master the material in the program which in turn makes successful graduates. These graduates reflect well on the school which in turn means that their weeding out (high academic standards) was effective.

I apologize if any other meaning was taken, but it certainly was never intended. And I also never meant to imply that the school faculty was an indiscriminate evil gardener either...lol. But give me 6 months and I might change my mind.

whitn23 · Jul 14, 2011

We started with 33, lost 7 last semester and one already this semester. This semester is over in two weeks and I imagine that we will lose another one or two. All except two were due to failing.

BelleNscrubs04 · Jul 17, 2011

A friend (an RN that went to a different program than mine) recently asked me if we "were given the 'look around, half of you won't be here at the end of the program' speech at orientation. Thankfully, no. My program thoroughly vets everyone before admitting us. I was told by a faculty member that only a couple will drop out because of personal issues but that if you make it into our program then you are certainly capable of making it through. But it is difficult and they do advise you to have all or at least most of your non-nursing classes already completed and not to work, especially not full time. My friend's school did actively try to " weed out" people in the program before graduation in order to have great NCLEX pass rates and they didn't even pretend otherwise.

John--RN · Jul 17, 2011

We lost almost 50% of our class over the 18th months of the program. What I found was a lack of maturity from some of the younger students and a lack of commiment from some that were old enough to know better. Going out and partying till all hours of the morning instead of putting in the time studying for tests is not gonna get you through nursing school. For some of the older crowd trying to balance school a job and young kids at home it proved to be too much to juggle. Nursing school is tough in the sense of how fast they throw information at you, test you, and dump more material on you.

Out of the 50% that we lost I feel only one was somewhat unfair. The program guidelines and required grades to pass each section and move on to the next were clearly laid out before we joined. What is the sense in keeping a student in that can't or won't handle the material. We lost the majority in the first section / fundamentals. By setting the bar high up front you save people a lot of time and money. Would you rather see schools push everyone through continuing to take money semester after semester when you know they will never pass the NCLEX?

This may sound harsh but I really don't mean it as such. There were many people that I really liked that I hated to see go. If I could not have hacked it I would have much rather found out after only spending $1000 than $5000.

Streamline2010 · Jul 17, 2011

I think I'd be leery of a program that loses half of its students. Question to those of you that attend programs with half the class failing out. Does the school offer any kind of help for struggling students? ... Do these schools with high failure rates offer any kind of help to struggling students?

Mine doesn't We literally have lectures 8AM to 11AM, then 12PM to 3PM-4PM, and that is consistent M/T/W. By the end of the day W, you can't walk from sitting in un-ergo fiberglass chairs for three solid days. Then, Th & F are all-day clinicals. This is a 24-month program, so I don't see why this hospital-based program is subjecting us to an entire summer term of 3-days-per-week sitting. It isn't healthy, it isn't practical, and people sure as heck are not learning, because after 6-7 hours of sitting and concentrating intensely, they are DONE SITTING. By the time we get to Th&F clinicals, it's like work release from jail: Whatever ya want me to do, Boss, I'll do, just don't put me back in that chair.

From what I can see, 18-20 hours per week of lecture is a little unusual to say the least. Might work for a 1-week course at the Holiday Inn for some technology subject (say advancements in gas chromatography), but definitely does not work over a summer nursing II course, to teach beginning students. Oh, how I wish I had never set foot in this program.

The only "help" they have offered is three 1/2-hour "test-taking strategies" classes, which they jammed into our lunch hour, so that mostly just ruined our lunch hours for three days, and subjected us to an additional 1.5 hours of sitting and listening to blather. The prob w/ this program is that it is giving us NO time to absorb or retain or use the lecture material before we are tested on it. It's nice to know that NCLEX style questions are not just puke-it-back, but hay, if you haven't been given the time to absorb the material and memorize the portions of it that you need to have in your head to test against, then you can't succeed. And they keep standing up there in front of the class saying "NO, NO, don't memorize! Understand that material... understand the concepts."

Yeah. Sorry, Doll, but if you are not going to let me look it up in the textbook, then I must memorize it. I have asked the instructors to coordinate their coursework and definitely to compare the workload and the paperwork requests/demands/requirements for the clinicals and the stupid little special projects that they randomly toss in there, to even see if the aggregate workload is achievable for us students to complete in the very limited time, during which we also need to study. Because I don't think it is. I have talked to previous grads and 2nd year students, and they said they resorted to "making stuff up" so that they had something to turn in, and not actually doing all of the work, or not actually doing the work themselves, in order to get time to study for tests. This program produces few As, and not many Bs, but a lot of Cs and below, which is not surprising to me now that I've seen how overloaded the students are in N2 and N3, in particular.

This nursing school itself: FAILS. The students are really trying, we are intelligent, hardworking, and have achieved As and Bs and career success in our previous lives, but the school is forcing us to cram and take shortcuts all the time. I am so disgusted.

grpman · Jul 17, 2011

Devil's Advocate here.... Using the term "weed out" implies that the school is actively engaged in removal of some students. This just isn't so. The criteria are all outlined in advance by the program & clearly communicated to incoming students. From that point on, the ball is in the student's court.

The title of the thread is "1/2 nursing class cut, WHY??" If you didn't like the terms "weed out" you probably don't like the term "cut." It also implies removal by someone else. My question is this, how would you like nursing students to refer to getting removed (oops, also implied active removal by staff) from school? I use sarcasm to make this point: pre-nursing students shouldn't have to use the exact idiomatic expressions when communicating with other students about a stressful event.

LuLutheClown · Jul 17, 2011

I feel so fortunate. I was very worried before my first semester.....mostly due to reading some of the posts here at allnurses. But, our instuctors were wonderful and encouraging. We only lost one student, who chose to drop.

RN_SummerSeas, MSN, APRN, NP · Jul 18, 2011

I start nursing school in one month, and have been hearing how half of the class before me has been weeded out!! That worries me, and I'm wondering for those of you in the program or just finished.....Why do you think most of those people get cut? Are we talking just like one point from passing....or are there really obvious things that people don't do, or do in error???

We started with 37 and by the end of year one were down to 28 and I hear we will lose more by the end of year 2 (starting in the fall) we lost people b/c of pharm calc quizzes with a must pass of 85% (people missed by ONE point and were dropped-BUT they changed the weights of the questions and people lost points after they thought they were ok-so so wrong!) and we lost more that didn't make the minimum grade cut at the end of 2nd sem. 77% is passing. They told us the same thing when we started and I was so nervous but I am still here, plugging away!

Good luck!

breezy7, BSN, RN · Jul 18, 2011

This makes sense to me. I feel solid starting out in pre-nursing now. I had four years in another major to help me find my true passion. Had my other degree had a clinical aspect to it that actually thrust me into what a future job might entail, I might have dipped out then, as well. As it stands, I feel completely prepared to start nursing school, having already experienced college. I think it can depend on where you are in life and what you expect from a job. When you first start college, it's easy to romanticize a future career. If you're really passionate and certain of yourself, I think you'll do fine!