NSS0147

If you're a lateral and going straight into DNP, working full time is feasible and many people in all the DNP programs worked full time or at minimum per diem as RNs. If you are going through MDE I do not recommend working full time, nor have I met anyone who found it to be feasible or possible.

Yes, if you're accepted into MDE/DNP you can defer DNP for a year to work. Some people even decided to lake a leave of absence in the middle of the second semester of the DNP program because they decided they want to get more experience first and then they came back the following year. They're always changing the rules though The AGACNP had actually dropped the gap year requirement for a bit but then in the Spring semester during MDE, a full year after people accepted their spots, they decided they were going to require people to do the gap year, so more than half the people in the cohort dropped the program and either applied to a different speciality or didn't pursue the DNP..since they based their acceptance on the fact that they wouldn't have to take a gap year.

Cohort usually ranges from 200-230. Your clinical groups were generally 7-8 students total. Except clinical groups for psych were generally smaller and were usually 6, so you might find yourself with new people if psych is your 1st rotation, or go on hiatus from your main clinical group when you eventually get to psych.

You can have a job, they just advise against it but many people worked in some capacity. You can TA starting your second Summer in MDE which is a good way to make money especially if you TA multiple courses. They also will start asking for people to proctor exams your second Summer for about $50-$100 per exam. A few years ago they changed the way it's distributed now, so instead of getting it deposited to your bank account, they just deduct it from your tuition.

So what I'm sharing with you is from years ago, but it is more expensive now. This was for our first 3 semesters of MDE and did not include the second Summer semester or the DNP portion. Another thing (which was quite annoying is that they shake you down for hundreds of dollars in various requirements that you need throughout the program. I have attached some here. It wouldn't have been so annoying had they told us about it in the beginning and just included it in our tuition. I also found out that starting a few years ago they started charging students a couple hundred dollars if they missed a clinical day (even if you were sick) because they would make you come in on the weekend to do simulations and that fee went toward paying the instructors.

I say this with all the compassion in the world no no no. The DNP-PMHNP makes MDE look like the most robustly organized program in history. I highly suggest that you talk to several PMHNP alum if the silver lining of doing this program is the psych DNP. There is only one faculty member there who is worth taking a course with and unfortunately they are are an adjunct you only spend 10 weeks with. The current program director did not even want the position but 2 years ago stepped in at the last minute because they couldn't find anyone else. She is a sweet woman but very absent and juggles too many things to give the program the attention it needs.

I obviously can only speak to the nursing school. When I've spoken to other interdisciplinary programs on the medical campus, they don't seem to have the same experience and were generally pretty shocked when they heard what was going on at the nursing school. I also spoke to people in engineering and law who had good experiences. It may be a particular problem that is particularly salient in accelerated nursing programs, as I have also heard similar things from those that attended Yale and Vanderbilt.

I'm not saying anyone should be ashamed of where they went to school. Unfortunately, the nursing school has not earned a positive reputation for themselves and it's been on students and alum to really try to change the narrative. The school also does not screen applicants appropriately, which is exacerbated by lack of in person interviews. There have been legitimate misconduct issues by students at clinical sites and there are things that are pretty apparent after you sit down in a room and talk to them that are red flags. Unfortunately the school is slow to address or does not address these concerns (they pick and choose who they decide to go after, as stated in earlier posts). This is something me and fellow faculty members have tried to broach with admin and push back against, but they are going to do what they want to do. I hope this offers a little more insight. We do our best to try to improve the image of the program, particularly in the NYP system...but there's a limit to what we can do when there's such deep rooted structural issues.

You are catching on! It's why many of us were embarrassed to mention where we went to school in the NYC nursing world. When you're out of state everyone goes "ohhhh". In NYC they go "ohhhh" for the wrong reasons LOL.

There were not. Just one day the acceptance came out. I also don't think it's worth it to continually reach out to the admin because year after year they just change the timeline and push it off and act as if it's a never before occurrence that they've had for the delay.

It does not go in order of application receipt. They sound them out in waves over the course of several days.

So, many of the students actually didn't do anything but were viewed as a "liability" because it was thought that they could negatively impact the relationship with clinical sites. Mind you, a lot of former clinical sites have actually refused to work with CUSON because they took issue with our admins and the disorganization and poor communication. So I think coming into our year there was already heightened sensitivity about clinical relationships. There were a number of preceptors who had long standing histories of being emotionally abusive to students. While it didn't occur to me directly, stories I heard and events I witnessed were pretty disturbing and repugnant. When students complained it was turned around to them as being viewed as unfit or having some character flaw and the school always took the side of the preceptor and pushed disciplinary action against the student in some shape or form. There was a lot of retaliation (ex: a student confided in the school social worker and the admin caught wind of it and said "now I have to clean up this mess you made". There was one preceptor who had years of documented emotional abuse (some students actually developed mental health disorders after rotations with her), and it wasn't until a professor doing a site visit heard her call a student "a stupid ****" that she was finally terminated (this professor was awesome btw). That's kind of the general gist. Most of the professors were awesome but the admin is a major issue and gaslight a lot. Many of the professors are former alum and in not so many words will regularly try to empathize with students that they understand what they're going through with the admin. I think there's gunners in every cohort but honestly I think they are usually in the minority. With the exception of the cohort that just graduated, I have seen and heard that most cohorts were largely collaborative and tried to support one another. In my own experience, I found my cohort to be very supportive, collaborative and resourceful. MDE and DNP do not have interviews. Only CRNA and PhD does.

The top 2 reasons were mostly either failing out or being kicked out for disciplinary reasons (some for very legitimate reasons, others for extremely unfair reasons as some students definitely had a target on their back from admin...largely to do with issues at clinicals where the admin prioritized reputation and relationship with the clinical site over student welfare. This didn't happen directly to me but I witnessed it many times). Of course, some people might leave for personal reasons like illness etc. I can't say I have much advice on staying stress free as for me that was personally not possible LOL. I think finding an approach that works for you is the most important thing. Don't focus on how others are doing things, focus on what methods work best for you and also realize that how you may have studied best in the past may not work for you as well in this program. Ex: I personally did not find TA review sessions to be helpful so I stopped going to them and I did fine. I don't find flashcards helpful, so I don't make them. Definitely have a good support system in place between friends, family, therapist etc. I think most people would agree that your friends in the cohort are what keep you going. Many people found the program to be traumatic in some shape or form (I say this to just be pragmatic and transparent) but having other people with the same shared experience really validated whatever frustration or difficulties one might have been facing. Definitely don't try to be a gunner and try to collaborate well...you never know when you are going to need to call in a favor. Try to carve out whatever small pockets of time for yourself for some form of self care, whatever that might look like for you. The program also moves extremely quickly so making sure you stay on top of deadlines and establishing how much time you personally need to study is important. Always happy to help. As I said, it's a tough experience and I always appreciated the transparency alum and the cohort ahead of me had when discussing the program because there was a great degree of misleading from the school itself.

It was not reserved just for admissions and basically defined our experience from MDE through DNP. It was highly frustrating but you reach a certain point where you have to radically accept it and just view it as a means to an end, keep your head down and do what you need to do. On average the MDE cohort is about 200-230 students. The number decreases as the program progresses and I think by the end of MDE we had lost maybe 40-50 students? The FNP cohort is usually around 50-60 students.

Ours was around the same time as yours (I think ours was 11/15). Most cohorts before me and after me heard back end of January or early February. CUSON really marches to the beat of their own drum and many people had to decide whether or not to give up their seats in other programs while they waited for CUSON.