Prairie View Fall 2011 Hopefuls

NAM123 · May 4, 2011

pvnursegrad,

did u stay at pvamu or did u transfer?

miami1981 · May 4, 2011

I stayed. I graduate in 1 week. Worst 5 semesters ever. Most hospitals love to recruit pv nurses because our program is the only dually accredited program in texas (both NLNAC and CCNE). They will even tell you they LOVE PV nurses. It's just the program is run so terribly bad. If you can make it through it will look good on your resume.

lovesunshine · May 4, 2011

Well your hard work paid off..!! right? will see ho wit goes for us

miami1981 · May 4, 2011

Lol. Have fun.

NAM123 · May 4, 2011

pvnursegrad

any advice about how to study for test since u said they are hard or confusing?

miami1981 · May 4, 2011

Read every chapter they tell you to. If the test is on cardio, read ALL the chapters on cardio, including all the charts and tables. You wont learn anything from their lectures and the test is based on the book not their lectures. If you rely on their lectures YOU WILL FAIL. Read the book and start early. You will find that a lot of the questions on the test will test your test taking skills, not your knowledge. Each question will have 2 correct answers. You have to figure out which one they want. I know it sounds crazy but thats honestly how it is. You'll see. Trying to work while at PV is a disaster too because they are ALWAYS changing the schedule. You'll be calling in every other day. They cant get organized worth nothing.

blackberrie_281 · May 5, 2011

"First the teachers are very unprofessional. They talk to you like you are an idiot and are late for almost every class (somewhat correct, depends on the teacher). Nothing starts on time and they are horribly unorganized (the teachers or the school, such as scheduling dates?). The tests are ridiculous (hell yea). The questions are terribly written (a few are badly written, some are dumb because its info ud only know if you were a LVN and most are just difficult because its application style questions, no knowlege based questions) and have numerous grammatical errors that make it hard to understand them (way true for my first basics test, after that it stopped and my teacher apologized to our class). Enter at your own risk."

"Read every chapter they tell you to. If the test is on cardio, read ALL the chapters on cardio, including all the charts and tables. You wont learn anything from their lectures (not true in my experience, but each teacher is different) and the test is based on the book not their lectures (In my experience of health assessment and basics, its 65% the teachers powerpoints, which is available to everyone via e courses, and 32% from the book. The other 3%? from those just off the wall questions. However for patho, READ HER POWERPOINTS, then READ OVER THOSE SECTIONS in the textbook. Study normals and abnormal, and do patho trees on the disease). If you rely on their lectures YOU WILL FAIL. Read the book and start early. You will find that a lot of the questions on the test will test your test taking skills, not your knowledge (agreed). Each question will have 2 correct answers (not alot of those questions are asked in 1st semester). You have to figure out which one they want. I know it sounds crazy but thats honestly how it is. You'll see. Trying to work while at PV is a disaster too because they are ALWAYS changing the schedule (Its a disaster anywhere really, but yea). You'll be calling in every other day. They cant get organized worth nothing."

My words are in italics. The bolded words are what I agree with. Any advice or tips you would like to share regarding semester 2, 3, 4, and 5? Also what are your plans after graduation?

miami1981 · May 5, 2011

Well everyone has their opinion but for anyone planning on going to pv you will save yourself a lot of frustration if you READ THE BOOK. Dont ever think you can get by just reading the ppts. You will be in for a rude awakening. The program is not like prerequisites where you could read the ppts and get by doing practically nothing. You'd do well to listen to me.

As far as advice on semesters, dont base everything on semester 1. Thats the easy part. Semester 2 will weed out all your classmates who dont understand this. Keep in mind that if you want to be successful in nursing school you have to make sacrifices. You dont have time to do many recreational activities. do that once you graduate. You MUST make time to study a lot during sem.2 b/c you have pharm and med-surg. either one can kill you.

bottom line is just pass the stupid classes. do whatever they tell you and whatever else you have to do b/c if you fail they may not have room for you the next semester. some of my classmates have learned that the hard way and been set back 2 semesters instead of 1. or you can be like the rest of the cheaters and buy the test bank of ebay. I wouldnt advise doing that but to each his own. i made it w/o it.

apply for jobs early in semester 5. all your classmates will tell you they havent started applying yet. they're lying. they know that you are competition so dont listen to anything they say. there is no room for friends when the whole texas medical center is only hiring 30 new grads and there are 6 bsn schools competing for those jobs. if each class graduates with 70 (estimating low) thats 420 nurses not including adn programs. make your resume and get your letters of recommendation as soon as the last semester begins b/c hospitals will have hired all their new grads way before you get anywhere close to graduating. do not rely on just houston. apply everywhere. san antonio, dallas, austin. i'm telling you its tough to get a job.

the hospital i got hired at had 900 applicants total, 300 in the department i applied for. they only interviewed 15 people and i was fortunate to be one of them. i prepared for the interview for about a week as they only had 7 positions that needed to be filled. thank god i got hired. i can count on my fingers how many people in my class have jobs as of now. hospitals in the tmc will not hire you unless you either have experience or go through their internships.

i may sound negative but i'm just being real with you. i didnt have anyone to tell me these things. if you can make it through pv you can make it through anything. i dont mind answering your questions. i hope i'm being helpful.

blackberrie_281 · May 5, 2011

:) you are being very helpful, if kinda pessimistic. People actually get the test bank from ebay though :eek: OMG, that scares me. I dont ever wanna get that desperate to pass a test. Also I forgot to add im finishing up semester 1 so im sharing my semester 1 experience. So you could be right about alotta the things you say about further semesters, but i wouldnt know. And Congrats on getting hired right outta school! :yeah:

So, did you take summer school classes? Or have to repeat any courses? And, lol how was 4th semester? All i hear are horror stories.

NAM123 · May 5, 2011

WOW!!!

I really appreciate your honesty and opening my eyes. I know that nursing school is going to be hard but didnt realize that its going to be pain in the ***..lol...

I work hard in school but I rely on my teachers to explain things to me in the right way...i guess in nursing school you have to teach yourself everything?!?! right?

miami1981 · May 5, 2011

Blackberrie, Pessimistic? Lol. If you want fluff go read the pv website, i'm going to tell you exactly what to expect. I'm not saying it cant be done, i'm just saying its not the walk in the park that it used to be. As you'll see nursing is changing and is growing more and more competitive.

But just for you, let me describe semester 4 the way you want to hear it: Its great! Lots of fun! lol just kidding. semester 4 was not too bad for me. the classes are just a little more intense so you need to make every grade count. dont do bad on quizzes just because you didnt read before class. You need all the high quiz grades you can get.

As far as teaching yourself nam123, yeah thats basically how it is. but thats any higher level school. the thing is they expect for you to have read all the material they will cover before you come to class. so they do not technically try to "teach" you the info b/c you're already expected to know it (assuming you have read). in class they are mainly trying to clear up any problems understanding the info you have. regardless, they will not be teaching it to you. they feel like thats what the book is for.

and no i have not taken any summer classes or repeated any classes (thank god). and dont believe the horror stories. different ppl are good at different things. sem 4 might be hard for you or it may not. the hardest for me was semester 3 but thats just me.

rumwynnieRN · May 16, 2011

Read every chapter they tell you to. If the test is on cardio, read ALL the chapters on cardio, including all the charts and tables. You wont learn anything from their lectures and the test is based on the book not their lectures. If you rely on their lectures YOU WILL FAIL. Read the book and start early. You will find that a lot of the questions on the test will test your test taking skills, not your knowledge. Each question will have 2 correct answers. You have to figure out which one they want. I know it sounds crazy but thats honestly how it is. You'll see. Trying to work while at PV is a disaster too because they are ALWAYS changing the schedule. You'll be calling in every other day. They cant get organized worth nothing.

PV isn't that bad; I came from another nursing program that made PV look like the epitome of organization. If I had gone to PV first instead of Tech, I'd probably tell you to avoid PV also if you have the choice.

Everything else pvnursegrad said though is true. You have to read and just relying on their lectures will screw you over in the class or later on (when the material really matters like in Semester 4, or so I've heard). There are teachers who go off topic and you're left to teach yourself the material; I've had 2 who do that. As for the questions, even in semester 2, sometimes all the answers will be right, but then you have to pick which one you would do first or is appropriate or whatever.

Good luck with semester 1 when you start. I'd take a summer class if I were you. Get health assessment out of the way so you're not stressing over the focused assessment at the end of the semester with your finals.

@pvnursegrad: I heard from someone that during your last semester, they check to make sure you know how to do vitals and a bunch of other things. Is that true? I thought that's what health assessment and basics was for.