Mercy College of Northwest Ohio

U.S.A. Ohio

Published

The nursing program looking rather short.

Has anyone attended this school? Is it good, bad, okay??

I'm at Mercy, currently finishing my prerequisites. As with other schools, there are some very, very good teachers, and some not so good. As far as I know, all of the science teachers are very good, and we are lucky to have tree great Anatomy and Physiology teachers. Since it is a catholic school, they are big on volunteering and charitable work, but I personally like that. What I'm not all that keen on is having to take at lest 3 different religion classes, but it is more boring than hard, and I'm done with most of it. I'm doing fast track BSN, and I will have good two years of nothing but clinicals (it is about seven semesters, but I'm doing it a bit faster). I have no idea will this be enough to get me prepared for the real life, but from what I heard, Mercy nursing students have a great reputation, better than other nursing schools in the region. Apparently, Mercy nurses know their procedures when they get done with school. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask, I'll try to help.

0 Votes

Hey VMSR!

Do you know how good Mercy is about transferring in credits? And is there a certain amount of credits you have to take there before you can actually start the nursing courses or could you begin the nursing courses right away if all of the pre reqs are already completed?

Thats kind of my case right now. I pretty much have all the pre reqs done except for the religion courses of course and I dont want to have to take a bunch of classes over again just to fulfill a requirement of taking a minimum number of credits there before I can begin the nursing classes.

Oh and how good are they of accepting people? One of the admissions rep told me that I had a good chance of getting in w/ my gpa of 3.37 but Im still a little nervous. I applied for the BSN track...

0 Votes

I see you are 21, so you have taken classes in the last few years, which is good, because Mercy will not accept any classes taken more than 7 years ago. I also think they have a limit on how many credits you can transfer, but I'm not certain, you have to talk with admissions people. You seem to have a good enough GPA to get accepted, and I believe it is definitely easier to get into BSN program, because most of the students actually go ADN route. School has had a large increase in students just this year, and there is waiting list to get into the program for the first time. I believe that waiting list is more competitive for the ADN program.

0 Votes

Thanks VMSR! I'll actually be graduating from Michigan State in may so I have plenty of classes that will transfer over if Im accepted. It was way too difficult to get into the nursing program at MSU so I just decided to major in health science there. Maybe having a BS in another health related field may help me out... Thanks

0 Votes

I just finished my first semester in the BSN program, and so far I really like Mercy.

0 Votes

I just finished first semester in the ADN nights/weekends program. I currently have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the school. ;)

It is the only school in the area offering an ADN program strictly nights/weekends. Because I work a full time day job that is a must for me!

As far as admissions, the person I worked with when applying was an absolute gem. She really worked with me and met w/ me more than once during the process to get all of the stuff on my application taken care of. Because of taking the PSEO option in highscool I had college credits from two different institutions ranging from brand new to 10 years old.

I also talked to people from the BG BSN program, Owens, Terra, & UT ADN program (at the time UT was offering an ADN program which it doesn't sound like they are going to keep doing much longer). I can say that as far as accepting classes from other schools Mercy & UT were the most demanding on what was acceptable mainly in the Math & Chem areas.

Owens & BG would have accepted all of my old stuff

Terra would have accepted everything except my Chem (which was funny

because it was THEIR Chem class I took lol)

Mercy took everything except my Chem and made me take a test for Comp I and I have to submit a writing sample for Comp II since I took those 10+ years ago

UT wanted new math and new chem

Things I like about Mercy:

Nights & weekends options

Everything you use on the clinical floor can be found in the lab. You don't have to worry much about using unfamiliar equipment on the clinical floor.

Their lab has evening hours for us that work

It's a smaller school that has a class limit of around 50 for the nursing courses so you get to know the people you're with and your instructors.

I found their financial aid department awesome to work with, especially after dealing w/ Terra & Owens which were a total PITA at best.

I feel like i'm learning a lot more at Mercy than I was at Owens & Terra. I could pass their science class half asleep and only showing up for half of the classes (I litterally did pass my A&P I & II w/ A's at Owens only showing up to half the classes). I don't think you'd get away w/ that at Mercy. I had pathophys this semester and pulled an A by the skin of my teeth, BUT I felt like I learned more in that one class about A&P then I did in both of my A&P classes at Owens put together and the patho class wasn't even focusing on normal A&P.

Things that annoy me about Mercy:

Our nursing class this semester was wayyyyy unorganized. We had two professors co-teaching the class and one never knew what the other was doing it seemed. We had eight different clinical groups and every instructor had different rules and different assignments.

Communication was quite poor at times. They expected you to know you had to do things because there was a one sentance blurp somewhere in the 20 page syllabus about it that gave you next to no information on what to exactly do.

The grading scale is a lot harder then at any of the other schools I looked at. You have to have an 80% to pass, anything less is failing. When you're filling out paperwork for internships and so on and they ask for a GPA and you have to put down a 2.0 C and someone from Owens who actually did worse than you grades wise can write down a 3.0 B it kind of sucks. The class that just graduated from the ADN days program had 18 of their original 50 make it to graduation. Of course not all of those failed, some quit, some decided to take a slower pace etc etc, but w/ that grading scale you do have a lot of people fail.

It's a lot more expensive then places like Owens & Terra, BUT there is also less of a wait for that reason. Even w/ a stellar GPA I was looking at a waiting list for Owens & Terra, where w/ Mercy I got in my first try. Although, this may change w/ all the stuff that went down at Owens recently. I know the admissions people at Mercy have said that they have had a ton of Owens students calling to see if they can transfer so I'm guessing a seat in the ADN program is going to get a little bit harder to get.

0 Votes

Thanks for writing all that information peytonsmom

0 Votes

Another question:

For those of you attending Mercy, how long after submitting your application did you get a decision? I know that they view "qualified" applicants in mid January and by their standards I am qualified. But Im just kind of wondering how long it will take for them to get back to me if anyone has any type of idea

0 Votes

Mercy is a fantastic school with a great reputation in the community. It was a VERY difficult program that many failed out of, but there was definitely support and caring if you wanted/needed it. I graduated with an ADN from Mercy in May 2009 and I am currently working here in NW Ohio at a great hospital benefitting from the wonderful education I gained at Mercy.

They are thorough and tough. That was a good thing in my book. Many (actually most) in our program failed out though, so don't start there unless you are truly committed to studying and eventually graduating. It's no picnic, but their pass rate for NCLEX is very high and they really have a great reputation with area hospitals so getting a job after graduation is a little bit easier.

Good luck picking a school!

0 Votes

Shanyone - I know at our orientation last fall I was told by one of the students that out of the original 50 of the ADN day's program 18 ended up graduating on time while the others either quit/failed/took a longer tract. Was that your group?

I'm in the nights/weekends program and we ended up losing right around 25% after our first semester. They told us that this semester is where we're probably lose the most after the F&E and ABG sections. Luckily I had Patho already, instructor who just LOVES his F&E! lol

0 Votes

I applied right before Christmas, and I received my acceptance letter on Jan. 18th to start in the Fall of 2010.....Now I'm starting to panic, but it'll be ok!!

0 Votes

Hey Sreed,

Will you be at the Toledo or the Youngstown campus? Im not from Ohio so just curious about the area...

0 Votes
+ Add a Comment