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I have a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area for approx. 20 years. I left a couple of years ago and recently got my BSN. I left engineering because I had other interests and hobbies and got tired of the long hours. Don't get me wrong, engineering was my passion ever since I was a teenager and throughout most of my engineering career. As I got older, I realized there was more to life than work and since I have a family history of diabetes and heart disease I wanted to learn more about health. I talked to some nurses at Stanford Hospital when I was participating in some clinical trials and that's what led me to go into nursing. My advise is to find what you're passionate about and go that route. I've met too many people in both engineering and nursing who just go through the motions every day to get that paycheck. Spending 40 hrs/week at something one doesn't enjoy doing is not a good way to spend the rest of one's life in my humble opinion.

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Fantastic!! I'll send you an email.

It would be really interesting and greatly appreciated if I could read a goal statement from someone who got invited to interview or is already in the program. I realize it wouldn't be applicable to me but I could at least get a flavor of what a good goal statement looks like. Anyone in the NP track with interest in research willing to volunteering their goal statement to help a potential student? I'd be willing to drive to the UCSF campus to meet for coffee or something? If it makes any difference, I'm male and over 40.

So sorry to hear you also got the dreaded thin envelope. I feel your pain.

Thanks, I might take you up on that. For now I'm planning to continue with the A&P series at De Anza college followed by Microbiology. It's kind of ironic because I actually enjoyed A&P. Another possibility is to look into various ADN/BSN programs in the Bay Area in addition to reapplying to UCSF next year. Anyway, didn't someone say it's all those detours that makes life more interesting.

Thanks for the words of encouragement. The letter provided a phone number to call between February 1, 2007 and March 1, 2007 to discuss my application with a member of the faculty. I have a month or two to regroup and figure out where to go from here.

Well, I got the thin envelope. Time to think about plan B. :uhoh21: Here's an excerpt from the letter "...While you clearly met the minimum criteria for admission to graduate standing at UCSF, the pool of applicants this year was enormous and highly competitive. Only 150 of approximately 600 applicants were selected to interview for 90 finalist spots and, unfortunately, you were not among those..." Good luck to everyone.

Nope, no Santa Claus delivery today. Nice to know the letters have gone out though. Congratulations!!!

Not a peep. According to the confirmation letter local folks should start receiving their notifications via snail mail sometime next week. I'm assuming small letter envelope means rejection. So here's hoping for a big fat envelope for everyone.

3 - To get an idea of rental rates check craigslist.org. It's generally more expensive the closer you get to Palo Alto, Los Alto or Cupertino. Areas to stay area from are East Palo Alto, parts of East San Jose. It should be pretty obvious if drive through the neighborhood. 5 - The NP schools in the greater Bay Area are UCSF, and Meritt College unless you do an online program 6 - Public transportation for the most part is pretty bad. There are several mass transit systems in the Bay Area. If your work and residence is along the same mass transit system (meaning you don't have to transfer) it may be workable. BART is probably the best system but it doesn't cover Silicon Valley. The light rain in San Jose is ok but the coverage isn't very good.

I applied to the FNP track. Good luck!

All eggs in one basket here too. Plan B is to reapply to UCSF next year. At least the odds of getting in went up with the additional openings.

I received a letter today stating "Thank you again for your interest...At this time we have all the materials necessary for your application to be reviewed. We expect this initial phase of the review process to be completed during the first week of December and we anticipate sending out notification of whether or not you will be invited to interview by mid-December..."

ABC news earlier today reported the crime rate in Sacramento was up 45% from a year ago. My guess is most of the crime occurs within a small geographic area. Similary, a few years back East Palo Alto was the crime capital in the US but it was limited to a small geographic region. The bottom line is there are advantages and disadvantages to each area. Sacramento's main pros are housing prices and proximity to Sierras and Lake Tahoe region. The cons are weather - much hotter in the summer and colder in the winter. The Bay Area has better weather, closer to the ocean, closer to San Francisco if you like the city and is much more diverse. Also, in many cases a person can easily change jobs without having to pack up and move since there are many more opportunities in the Bay Area than in Sacramento. Main disadvantage is housing prices. Many Bay Area residents have relocated to Sacramento area for that reason alone. Hope that helps. :typing

I came across an interesting document on UCSF's website http://www.ucsf.edu/senate/2005-2006/son-2005-06-annualreport.pdf#search=%22ucsf%20nursing%20gre%20statistics%22 The table on page 27 (UCSF School of Nursing Faculty Council Strategic Plan) under column labeled "Progress to Date" A lot of other interesting information in the document. Good luck to everyone that applied.

The section of highway 580 that runs through Fremont is one of the worst in the bay area because it's same route for those commuting from the East Bay (Pleasonton, Dublin, Livermore) and also from the central valley (Manteca, Stockton) into San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale where a lot of the jobs are located. The traffic lightens up progressively once you get past route 237 and further away from downtown San Jose and Santa Clara. Don't know how much rent is but you should be able to get an idea from craigslist.org and also from the online classified ads for the San Jose Mercury News. There was an incident not long ago where the Mission school district in Fremont redrew the district lines and upset a lot of people who moved into the area thinking they were sending their kids to schools in that district. Check with the schools before signing any lease agreement.

I grew up in south San Jose and currently live in Redwood City which is just north of Palo Alto (much cheaper). There are several nursing programs at various local community colleges including De Anza community college in Cupertino, Evergreen college in San Jose, Chabot college in Hayward, College of San Mateo in San Mateo and Canada college in Redwood City has an accelerated program in conjunction with SFSU and local hospitals. Palo Alto is a very nice area but is also very expensive. Some areas of San Jose are very nice while other areas such as parts of the east side are not as desirable. You definitely want to take into consideration commute time. Depending on where you live the commute can be pretty bad. The commute from South San Jose heading north is generally pretty bad. The commute from Palo Alto to other local communities is generally pretty good. The weather in Redwood City is generally better than San Jose, not as warm in summer and not quite as cool in winter because of the proximity of the marine layer but the commute is a little bit worse (15 min) heading into Santa Clara, Sunnyvale or San Jose. By the way, Redwood City was voted by the national weather service to have the best climate in the continental US. Fremont is also a nice area but commute can be bad depending on which way you're headed. Chabot college and Cal. State Easy Bay are both nearby which may be a plus. The most sought after neighborhoods because of the quality of the k-12 public school system are Palo Alto, Cupertino, and parts of Fremont (ie, Mission school district). The State of California publishes test scores for each school. I believe it's called the STAR report. I hope this helps.

A couple of other notes. Since UCSF is a California public school, my understanding is preference is given to California residents (your profile suggests you are a CA resident). There were some comments made at the info session that a high GPA may offset not so great GRE scores and knowledge of a second language was also a definite plus. Good Luck.

Quote: I just got my scores - 500v, 730q, 4w. It looks like other perspective applicants have posted their scores on different threads within the MSN/FNP/PhD forum. When I attended UCSF's MEPN information session, a person from the admissions office responded to a question on GRE scores and stated that a competitive score is 500 on each section. Not quite sure how to interpret the "competitive" statement. He also emphasized that GRE scores are just one criteria. The two faculty members who presented at the information session emphasized "congruency between goal statement and chosen specialty" and also volunteer work. Good Luck!