Please share your experience at Grand Canyon University(GCU).

[JulianaO.]

I have read previous posts about GCU but would like to hear from students who had finished the program just recently, say in 2012 or 2013. (The reason being is that I think over time there have been changes in the program and some improvement)

Please share your experience at the school and mention which program you entered-fast track or original

-How fast paced was the study? Where you able to work at the same time?

-How stressed were you? Is it really that hard as some say or does it depend on how well/much one studies and contributes time to school work?

-Did you like your instructors?

-Was it hard to keep your GPA above 2.7(which is minimum requirement I think)?

-Any words of advice?

Thank you so much guys in advance!

[jennaya]

Hi there! I am graduating next week from the GCU fast track program. I worked all throughout school. I ranged from about 10-30 hours per week depending on the level I was in and luckily I had a very flexible job. Sometimes the amount of tasks that you had to complete in a short time frame was daunting, but it was all very doable depending on your concentration level.

The instructors are sub-par at best. Most of them are very unorganized and you will end up teaching yourself the majority of the topics. It's actually pretty frustrating dealing with the professors at GCU, but you have to let a lot of things brush off your shoulder and you will hear from them all the time that you must be "flexible".

I am graduating school with a 3.5. It is not hard to get above that if you put your mind to it.

Depending on the level, you will probably spend at minimum doing 20 hours of outside class work. However, I was in the 7 week classes where we had a test almost every week requiring a lot of cramming. Most of the time you went to two 3 hour classes a week, but now the program has merged classes together so I'm assuming you will be at school more than that.

I know a lot of changes have been made to the program and they have supposedly made a lot of improvements. I was in their transition phase and many of the professors were not ready to handle so many students. I also had 7 week classes and from my understanding many of them have been changed to 15-16 weeks classes which I think will make the program a lot better. You can also now choose your clinical dates and your will actually get your class calendar a month before your new class starts which is a huge improvement (we got ours the day class started, talk about a scheduling nightmare). All in all I have learned a lot in my program and had some awesome clinical faculty who went above a beyond. The complaints that I have about GCU, I've heard other student have from their nursing programs as well.