deitiphobia

Oh and I forgot about the liability insurance. You will be required to purchase liability insurance that's about $25 per year.

Just a heads up as to what to expect once your accepted into a nursing program. 1. They will want you to provide proof of immunity to the following diseases Measles (Rubeola), Varicella, Rubella, Mumps, Hepatitis B. You will have to provide proof by having titers done. A titer is a blood test that checks to see if you have antibodies for a given disease. You will have to give several vials of blood (one for each disease), and it will be checked for actual antibodies. Hospitals will not just accept shot records, so neither will your school. If all the titers show that you have immunity, then you are good to go. If not, then you will have to go and get vaccinations. Titers are NOT cheap! You should shop around for the cheapest titers. Ask around your local county and city health departments. See if you can find as cheap of a place to do it. Some places offer care based on income. Be resourceful and try and find the least expensive means of having these done. If not, all of your titers will be around $300-400. 2. They will ask you to take 2 Tuberculosis skin test within 2 weeks of each other. Don't know why they want you to do it twice, but just be ready. Also note that TB test require that you return in 48 hrs to have the injection site observed for reaction. So plan on going back 2 days later for them to check for each test. 3. You will have to undergo a criminal background check and drug screening. Drug screening usually is just a simple pee in the cup deal. Background check will cost about $75 and will take up to two weeks to complete. 4. You will have to take a CPR course. Many schools offer a course for it's incoming students in the weeks before semester starts. 5. You will have to attend several mandatory meetings. As soon as your accepted, put all of the mandatory meetings on your calendar! Don't miss any of them as you may be dropped from the program and an alternate will be given your seat! 6. You will have to get a complete physical done by a physician. I highly recommend going to get your physical first, and showing your doctor the schools physical checklist that the doctor will have to complete. Your doctor can and will order up bloodwork for you as part of the physical. Your doctor can also order up the titers that you will need, but just make sure you know how much they will cost, again find the cheapest place to do your titers as it can get expensive. 7. You will be required to do a "Fire Training." As I understand it, this training is a day long training session that involves learning how to evacuate a hospital in the event of a fire or emergency. This will be one of your mandatory meetings. 8. Your class schedule will be assigned to you. No more freaking out about class registration...your schedule is pre-prepared for you by your nursing counsellor. That's the basic gist of it. Get started right away on all of these things once accepted. It will take a while to get it all done. Don't leave any of it till the last minute. Cheers!

You really should take your time with those more difficult classes. Try not to schedule more than one a semester. It will take you longer to finish pre-reqs, but it would hurt you much more on the Cut Scores to have to retake a class. Trust me I know from first hand experience. There really is no rush except what you place on yourself. Relax, take your time. Do your pre-reqs as best as you can, NOT as quickly as you can. It will pay off in the near long term.

lacc she is referring to is los angeles city college, not county college as you have posted above. that being said, la city college is absolutely an accredited school! i don't know where this rumor is coming from that it's not. but it needs to stop as it is inaccurate misinformation. lacc is listed as a legit nursing school program on the california board of registered nursing website. any school that's on that site is a safe school to go to! they would not be on that site if they weren't accredited. also the ca brn site shows that lacc has a 89.7% nclex passrate for it's latest year on record! you would be silly to pass up on this school. one students experience is not good enough to discount a program all together. there may be just as many other students that enjoyed the program and are happy. be smart, learn more about the program and talk to more students if you need to. don't pass up on a good opportunity based on poor information from limited sources.

When a school tells you you are an officially accepted alternate, what that means is that you are an alternate, you are not in until a primary student drops and a slot opens up for you. But, you must act just like students who are officially accepted and go ahead and take care of your titers and immunizations and attend all of the mandatory meetings just as if your on the primary list. The reason for this is that the schools don't have time, and neither will you, to begin this process only after a primary accepted student drops somewhere along the way. They need you to be ready to go as an alternate to step in immediately if a primary student should drop at any time in those first weeks before school starts or in the first week or two of classes.

Just wanted to correct the wrong statement that LACC is not accredited. Dont know how or where that idea came from as LACC has been accredited for years! Like since the 70's or earlier. As of today, they have 89% NCLEX pass rate. That's pretty damn good and better than Mt. St. Mary's and most schools in the state. I was talking to an LACC nursing student who told me that LACC shares clinical sites with Mt. St. Mary's. Apparently the nurses are relieved when they find out your a student from LACC and NOT Mt. St. Mary's. The nurses would tell them that often times students from Mt. St. Mary's were unable to perform task in their 2nd year of school that they should have mastered in their first semester! Also, in 5 years when your graduated, you will wish you took the cheapest route and incurred the least amount of debt you can manage while in school. Loans aren't magical, you have to pay them back someday. I have 30k from my undergrad still! And it's been 10 years!

I have applied to WGU and am also in much need of feedback on the program. I've searched for their NCLEX pass rates as well, but it looks like their program is so new in California and the first batch of students is just now graduating, so it will be a while before NCLEX pass rates are posted. I will be asking the school about NCLEX pass rates in a month or two. I think that's a critical indicator as to the success of their program. If your currently with WGU or have graduated, please share your experience. Would love to hear more about their strengths and weaknesses.

Question for those who have taken the TEAS already, did you get the results right away? I guess since it's computer you can potentially get your score right away. How does that work? Do they mail you score? or give it to you right away?

I'm in the Los Angeles area attempting to get into several nursing schools having just finished my pre-reqs. In school, one of our instructors gave us a spreadsheet that was made available on one schools website. It's what's known as the Chancellor's formula. You have to punch in your overall GPA, core sciences GPA (Anatomy, Physo, Chemistry only), and your English 101 GPA. It also ask you for how many repetitions you may have of any of the core sciences. We were told by this instructor that most schools in the area require a cut score of 75%. If you pass that benchmark, then you are allowed to take the TEAS test. If you pass that with a 67% or higher score, then you are placed into the lottery pool and students are chosen at random from the lottery. For at least two schools in the area, Glendale Community College and Pasadena City College, they get about 550-600 applicants. Both schools report that about 250-350 applicants will actually be accepted into the lottery pool. Out of those only 50-60 students are then chosen. In every class they have a considerable amount of students who never make it to completion. I've looked at the Nursing school graduation photos at PCC and there are never more than 25 students in the photo. That says to me that there is high rate of students not graduating outright, or falling behind and graduating late. Or maybe they just didn't show up for the photo :) This is baffling to me considering that it takes a good year to complete all of the pre-reqs. You would think students that make it through the pre-reqs would be prepared to survive Nursing school, but clearly this is not the case. So the odds in the Los Angeles area are pretty nuts. I have a 3.1 overall GPA, a 3.4 GPA in core science, and I had a B in English from undergrad years ago. I retook English 101 to get an A just this fall to improve my cutscore. I can tell you with a B in English 101 (I'm still awaiting my grade for retaking it....hoping to get an A but as of right now I have a B in English 101)...the Chancelors formula returned a 73% on the cutscore. It would have been a 78% but I had to withdraw from Micro the first time. I of course found out I was taking Micro with one of the hardest instructors (******** ****** at GCC...avoid her class it will kill your GPA. She gave out 11 Fs and 7 Ds on the first exam). I retook again that summer and got a B in Chemistry with Dr. ******. So everyone should note, that if you withdraw from any core science course, you will be deducted a whole 5% points in the Chancellors formula (State of California). For me it was critical. I dropped from a 78% to a 73% which was just shy of the 75% cutscore needed. If I had gotten an A in Micro the second time...it would have negated retaking the course. In terms of the cut score, it appears that you get knocked less if you get a C the first time, than having to withdraw and then getting a B. In any case, most school only allow you to retake only 1 core science. Since I already retook Micro, my only options to raise my cutscore above 75% are to retake English 101 and get an A. Or to take enough classes to raise my overal GPA from a 3.1 to a 3.35. This is no small feat when I have over 100 credit hours. Raising GPA is slow going when you have so many classes. So of course I'm doing the English 101 retake route. It is nuts, but when I played with the Chancelors formula...it is clear that English 101 GPA is weighed equally with the Core Science GPA. That seems nuts to me. I would think it would be way more important that someone did well in Core sciences than if they got an A in English 101. But don't underestimate it's impact on your chances of getting accepted in the State of California. It is certainly a stressful, mind numbing experience to get accepted somewhere in the Los Angeles area. I only hope that the fact that I am a Hispanic male will help me tremendously. I'm quite certain a female with the same grades would have a uphill battle to wage in Los Angeles. Good luck to you all.