Stuck On Nursing

Ok, here I go...... I won't identify myself, but having spent 2 years in the Humber/UnB program and having left it, I can only speak about my own experience and if others have different ones, then please post them. First let me say that Humber takes in about 300 nursing students per/year and the logistical nightmares this creates seems to be one that Humber has problems with and it does not get better with time. Don't count on any schedule being firm until at least after the first 2 weeks or so. At least after the first semester you will get to choose usually 1 out of 5 or 6 different schedules but you will not always get your first choice of clinicals as there is a set time that everyone in the program tries to log into to get their favorite clinical locations and it usually crashes so some end up having to go all the way across the city becuase they could not get in fast enough to get a good location for them. Having said that classes normally can run from 8am to I believe 6pm and I even had classes up to 8pm becuase they had too many students to fit into the labs during the day. Not sure if this happens alot, just my experience. There are alot of new teachers coming and going at Humber for clinicals and some have very little experience in the actuall field they are teaching in becuase Humber has to hire many of their clincial instructors on a part time basis because the instructors work full time at the hospitals. Because of this I find they throw the new instructors in and see if they can survive with as little training as possible and although many are great at their jobs they are not all that great at being instructors. That being said, Humber has the reputation of graduating the best nursing students becasue it's in my belief that only the best students can make it through the program and the rest who might make great nurses, will not survive because they can't cope with all the stress of the course along with all the problems that the school creates for the students. Yes they have some really great teachers, but sadly they are few and far between in the nursing course. Great school for equipment, labs, but I am now looking at starting the whole thing over at another school just becuase I just could not deal with Humber anymore. BTW, there are many who crack in the program becuase they expect to get straight A's in the program....ROTFL. If you can't deal with not getting straight A's then maybe this is not the shcool for you. Some teachers just don't believe that you can get an A because as a nursing student you can't possibly know it all so how can you be graded as perfect. I had my share of A's but just as many B's in courses that I felt I should have had A's. Also, almost every course has group assignments so the chances of a group getting an A when there are always those who don't do their work is about zero. Get used to touching people quick. You will have to touch your classmates in clinicals with their shirts off ( you'll have some privacy behind curtains but you will work in groups of 2-4) so if that makes you uncomfortable then maybe nursing is not for you. Yes there are actually 2 cadav's usually one male/female, although you will not get much exposure to them. You will get to see the internals during a couple of lab periods. Now the fun stuff. When they say not to work more than 8 hours/week, take them seriously!!!!! If you have any sort of life outside of school you can tell them you'll see them in May when school is out. I know many in the program who survive on only 5-6 hours sleep a day because otherwise you will not get what needs to be done completed. I don't mean to come across as harsh on Humber, maybe it's the same everywhere else, but I just felt that Humber is more concerned about it's reputation for the best grad's rather then helping those who want to make it survive their gruelling system for it's students. I will gladly answer all your questions if you have others but please consider not everyones experience will be the same but I would say that 50% of nursing students at Humber would agree with my experiences. Good luck. Please excuse my long run on sentence structure and bad typing/grammer. Just trying to get the info out there for you.

My bad... you did mention your grades but when I saw cut offs I thought admission dates. I honestly would say that if you have around 75% average you stand a chance but of course it will depend on the applicant pool for that year and their averages compared to yours. I could be mistaken but since you have done University courses now they will look at them first over your high school marks as you are now applying as a transfer student and not a high school student. I could be wrong but give the admissions office a call to confirm. Good luck.

Not sure what the actual cut off dates are but I think for Jan intakes each school differs. Seneca and Sheridan for example are already closed which means they take first come first serve for Jan. intakes. Not sure about GB or CENT. You should call the school to see what their policy for Sep 2011 intake is but I believe for Sep the cut offs are the end of Feb for equal consideration. I would contact the admissions for the two you are interested in to confirm this. they fill really fast! HOpe this helps.

Sorry wrong box.

Hi: I stand corrected. I actually was thinking more about electives that one might take during nursing. I realize that even colleges might have larger numbers of students in "general" type courses, I assumed that they would still be much smaller than University courses of the same type. I hope this corrects my posting better, and please correct me if I'm still wrong. Thanks, Joe

I'm in! I just found out I'm starting Nursing at Humber this September! The BScN and the BN designations are considered the same. It just depends on the school you go to what designation you get. With a BScN if you wanted to do something else in science, medicine for example, you would not have the same courses done as if you did a BSc.program. I chose Humber because all 4 years are done there. Big bonus! The classes are smaller than going to York for example. At york some classes might have 300 people in a lecture and no chance of one on one help as with Humber. Also, I heard that with York they concentrate more on theory end of things where as Humber focuses on clinical more. I think that will make a better nurse. Let me know what you decide and we can talk further. Joe

Last year I attended an information session at Humber College and they said that they had about 2000 applicants for 200 seats.