Amisadai

Yes, I do work on a level 1 trauma center! I'll ask around and see if I can't find more information about each ICU we have here. Thank you so much for your knowledge!

Thank you for your response! I am looking into SICU and I do already got at a very large, tier 1 teaching hospital. Doesn't mean I'll get into the SICU, but that's what I'm leaning towards. I do hope to stay in SICU for at least 2 years, all depending if I can handle it. Another question, would I learn more in a SICU or CVICU? Thank you!

Duke takes NICU experience

Hi all I've read some of the threads and I got a ton of questions answered. However, I was wondering if there is someone out there with a story similar to mine. I have 5 years of nursing experience in a pediatric intermediate/stepdown unit at a large, well known, tier 1 trauma center. I recently started contemplating pursuing CRNA. I have no ICU experience as I've always been afraid of it. Has anyone gone from a pediatric intermediate floor to adult ICU and done well, despite their fears? I plan to apply for an ICU job in the next year (have to wait due to childcare issues and a husband that travels a lot). I'm just worried that I may sink. I will say, I've always enjoyed my picu floats.

If I am not mistaken, the nursing programs here do not have a wait list that long. They are usually just for the semester you applied for. There are lots of schools in NC. Just depends on what you are looking for (ADN vs BSN)

Hey Y'all! First I want to wish y'all good luck with the application. The wait is unbearable. I am not a BSN student, but I am an ABSN student. I just started in January and boy, its going to be a wild ride, even for the BSN. Just a hint for the letter, it should be in the size of a 5x7 envelope. That's how my cohort found out and it will be on MYunc eventually. I wish y'all the best and if any of you has any question after being accepted about compliance, housing, transportation, please do not hesitate to ask me. i wish I had someone who could've gave me the heads up. So feel free to message me here and I will be more than happy to give you feedback and answer any pressing questions you may have now or after acceptance. Also, not all the letters got to everyone at the same time (that darn post office). Once again good luck and I hope to see all those new faces in the summer!

Its under carolina absn class of 2013

Have you joined the fb group

I hear a lot of people recommending working during your program, but what about doing an ABSN program where it is pretty much impossible to work. If you do work, you may be compromising your grades. I do plan to volunteer at the hospital that is attached to my school (UNC hospital) to get some type of experience. The only thing that I have right now is my bilingual skills and planning to take bilingual medical terminology courses and possibly a translation certificate course. I start school in January and reading posts where it is highly encouraged to work in health field scares me because I do not work in the health field and I will probably not be able to work during school. Any advice for an ABSN student?

I too was accepted to the UNC program for Jan 2012. I know some people who have graduated from UNC and I have not heard them mention anything about having problems with clinicals. I do believe (correct me if i am wrong), that BSN programs do focus a lot on theory, whereas ADN do it, but their focus is not 100% in theory. Even as a new grad student, everyone feels as if they did not learn enough during nursing school. Go look through the new grad forums and you'll see a lot of people feeling under prepared and such. A lot of hospitals have orientation for new grads to help them with the transition of student to professional nurse. I think at the end of the day, you should look at both programs and base your decision on what students say and most importantly on NCLEX pass rates. You are very blessed to have the choice to pick from 2 great institutions. As far as pass rates, Duke has a higher pass rate than UNC (99%vs 97%) Either way you'll attend a great program. Oh yeah, cost is important too :) I do can say, some of my future class mates seem very supportive and we are already supporting each other. I would guess Duke students may have something similar. Just browse around and even ask the admissions office to put you in contact with current students who can talk to you about their experience. I wish you the best of luck and if you choose Carolina, I hope to meet you soon. If you choose Duke, hopefully I'll get to work with you one day :)

ceb2784, keep in mind that you may be asked to join all the way up to the first day of school (thats what i've heard, not too sure though). I do hope you hear the good news soon!!!!

Congrats to all who have been accepted. We have a group on FB called Carolina ABSN Class of 2013. You are more than welcome to join. (There is also a page with the same name, we run that one too, but use the group more because its private). We have posted questions, found information and there are a person or two who is looking for a roommate. Join so we can help y'all with questions you may have that we can help you with. Congrats on getting in and best wishes to those wait listed. Keep the faith

I found out through mail, but then again my class was different since applied for one cohort and will not start until 2012. Just keep an eye on both the mail and myunc :) My online decision showed up after the letter.

Good luck with decisions! I hope you get what you are waiting for. Hint, it should be an envelope, around the size of a 5x7 picture :)

Calling is better. I have heard from the grape vine that maybe up to 90 people maybe accepted in total to begin in january....thats what've heard....and yes from past cohort most people found out at the earlist end of october and normally november-ish. It is pretty fast and thats how it usually is, but we got this time because we were the first app group that was put in a cohort we did not apply. Its fast but doable. I just know for sure that there is sometime of orientation in november...so they kind of have to give y'all time...I assume.

It should be up there. I think the deadline is getting close.

I did it. To check emails you have to go to webmail.unc.edu

What did yall think about today? I spoke to Oceania today (so nice to meet ya!). I think after they see my scores they may question their decision of accepting me, lol! I am looking forward to send in as much of the paper work in, the earlier the better! One thing that wasn't clear to me was the background check, can we send that stuff in early or do we need to wait for an e-mail from them? I'm so excited...56 people in or cohort, but I have a feeling they may accept at least 20 more people...I heard somewhere around these boards that it is supposed to be 96 in each bsn and absn cohort, not sure how much is true, but we shall find out in January 2012!

You may want to call them. Decisions went out around the same time I posted this. We had our first orientation today. Call them and see whats going on.

Does anyone have any information about orientation? I am going to saturday's but I have no clue where it is going to be or where should we park. Any info is greatly appreciated :-)

Hello There! Well I know a little about each program. I am a graduate from a non-nursing program at ECU and I will be attending the UNC Chapel Hill ABSN program in January Having your CNA before transferring will not hurt and it will in fact look good. UNC doesn't require you to have it, but I bet it would look good on your resume, especially if you have worked as a CNA. ECU also does not require it, but it highly recommends it (Last time I applied to their program was last year so I do not know if the requirements have changed). If it is still in effect, they have a ranking system that uses points and having your CNA will give you one more proint (I think max points is 13 or 15? don't quote me). ECU also requires you to take a nursing pre-entrance exam and you must score above the 50th percentile (may or may not have changed). If you check their website all their requirements are there. You can get most points from just having a really high gpa, which is what killed me when I applied last year. their website is nursing.ecu.edu ( i used to live in their website). As far as chapel hill, they look at more than just grades. Granted, they will not accept you with a C in a prereq course. You have to write 2 mandatory essay and if you want (which is highly recommended) you can write a third optional essay. The first two are questions stated by UNC and the third is more of giving them a chance to know more about you and kind of explain yourself if you had some bad grades, or tell them what you have done as far as volunteer activities and the such. As far as best nursing progam, UNC is number 4 in the nation in nursing according to us news rankings. Both have very high NCLEX passing scores (which speaks highly of the education or maybe their students are just that good at taking stressful tests.) You can google the NC nclex pass rates and you will be able to see their past rates. When you graduate from a nursing program, you graduate as a general nurse, meaning you are trained to work in any nursing area be it ER, l&D, med surg, peds, etc. If I am not wrong, students begin to lean towards a certain specialty during their clinicals where they get to see so many nursing areas. Once you graduate and take your NCLEX, you can apply for jobs in a specific field that caught your interest. The cool thing about nursing, is that if you find you dislike that field, you can switch to another one. You can always start applying for jobs before your nclex and if you are lucky enough you can be hired pending your NCLEX scores. I know someone who did this. Hopefully I did not overload you with info. If you have any more questions and if I have the answers, i will be glad to answer them! Good luck!

Hey guys! This is for those who are willing to pull out a loan. I have heard that MEDCAP has been an alternative for those who have maxed out their stafford loans. This could be a way to cover whatever financial aid didn't cover. I really wish you guys the best. I will not be attending Emory anymore due to my acceptance to UNC Chapel Hill in NC (20k vs 72k). Hopefully one day we all can work together :-) Good luck to you all!!!!!!!!

A blog! I was thinking of writing one about my nursing school experiences and traveling experiences! I think I will too! I was even thinking of using celebrity names to ID interesting patients. Who knows. I will start it during the summer before I go to Panama to visit my family! @Oceania I had the pleasure to attend both UNC and Duke's info sessions. What's amazing about DUke are the grad credits you get and if you have a certain gpa (i think at least a 3.0) in you nursing classes, you have up to a year to sign up for master's classes without going through the grad program aplication process. You also get 15 hours worth of grad credits, you get the opportunity to go to another country and do service (of course you gotta pay for that on your own). One thing that got my attention but I think its part of most nursing program, its their last semester of nursing school. Although they have some classes (but not as many as the first semester), they get a chance to practice nursing one-on-one with a nurse. Most students get their "specialty choice" (if I am not mistaken) but the decision is up to the supervising faculty members. You also get the chance (if you want to and have time to) work with a professor doing research. From my response, I probably sound like I want to go to Duke, but I do not. I love Carolina's prestige. Come on its the 4th best nursing program in the US (Duke is 7th), Their faculty seem to be more focused on preparing you to be successful and their advisors were helpful and very honest with me from the beginning. Initially I was going to apply for entrance in January 2011 but because I had some C's in two of the pre reqs, they told (very nicely of course) that I wouldn't get in because of those two C's (and it was true, a friend of a friend was denied for a C in stats and when he retook it and made an B, he got in). I love honesty, so I am glad they told me what would've happened had I applied with those ugly grades. Of course I retook them and I made A's (hence why I got in yay!). Gosh, I was gonna write something very important but I totally forgot what it was.... :-( Oh wait I remember. Another wonderful thing about UNC ABSN is the ability to switch to the BSN if you feel too overwhemed with the speed of the ABSN. Things happen in life, so its nice to know that you have that option and don't need to drop out. At Duke, there is no such thing as slowing thing. I think you can probably redo a semester, but who wants to go through the same hassle twice. Like I posted before, the students who are in the program are happy with it. Like one of the girls that i met said to me in an e-mail: Despite all the horror stories, it is a great program and when it gets crazy, just remember how much earlier you're graduating! It is totally worth it and actually goes by fast, even though it won't feel like it at the beginning" Since I spent quite some time on here (not lately thanks to an anthro paper and upcoming test and a bad grad from last test), there are lots of advice and resources from people who have been through it. I love this post that I ran into one that. I hope you like it too https://allnurses.com/nursing-articles/how-survive-thrive-532725.html Oh one person in either this or another post mention using a medical pathology book as a supplement to the nursing patho to understand the diseases better. Myself, I am planning to start racking up on NCLEX books and probably visit barnes and nobles a few times a month to read as many nursing/medical related books just to get my brain thinking in that fashion, of course after I enjoy part of my summer. I figure doing this since we have 8 months before the real battle begins. Just some of the things I figure I shared :-) Sorry for the long post, that's what happens when I don't post frequently. Have a good night/day y'all!

I don't know any personally, but when I went to a meeting for the lady parts Monologues back in November I met two girls who are supposed to graduate this May. From the sound of things they sounded like they were very happy with the program. They said it is busy and time consuming but once you get the hang of it, you'll be fine. They said they rather the ABSN over the BSN bc they didnt have time to freak out about things because everything moves fast so you either do it and get it done or freak out and fall behind. They also told me even though its busy they still had time (how much not sure) to do other things like go out for a run, visit family ocassionally and their cohort would have get together every so many times to mark a milestone towards graduation (like "125 days until graduation" celebration). After talking to them, I was convinced the ABSN was a better choice for me than the BSN (not because I wont have a life but bc the whole second degree and everyone is pretty much in the same boat). They were amazing and I message one of them to thank her for encouraging me to apply to the ABSN. I haven't received a reply from her, but if I do I will try to squeeze as much info and tips from her. Oh yeah, she told me that buying the books were pointless because it seems that most (if not all) professor taught straight from the powerpoint and tested from it too. There is one girl on my FB who is in the program, so I will try to reach out to her and see if I can ask her for advice and such, especially because she will be graduating in may too. I wonder if they admissions people would put us in touch with some current students for advice and things like that...

I don't start until January, so I have a long ways to go but I like to know something about the area before I jump into signing a contract. Did that 3 times and I no longer want. i want to take my sweet ol' time