sgthanzo

Katwab - It is true that schools with sustained higher NCLEX pass rates "generally" produce "sharper" nurses. BUT... at the end of the day, though... the only thing that matters is "Did you passed your NCLEX, or not?" Passing your NCLEX means licensure -- and a validation with your desired workplace that you've "earned" the right to work as a Nurse. Now all you have to do is "impress" them on interview day to land that job. "Talk the talk, then walk the walk." One note of caution, though -- be on the look out for schools with wide, varying pass rate patterns. Meaning... their score card looks spectacular on one year, then drops 6-10 points the year after. As long as your candidate school has a stable (and above passing) pass rate from one year to the next, the rest is really up to the student to ensure licensure. 'hope the above helps. Hanzo

Hi Amanda - This is going to be a bit long... I hope they're able to provide you with the answers you're looking for. Disclaimer: Please validate my statements with each of the schools mentioned below. They usually are the best source of information when it comes to their respective programs. 1. Do hospitals in Illinois still hire LPNs? It's not impossible to land jobs in hospitals as an LPN. However, it seems to be the exception rather than the rule now these days. As a matter of fact, hospitals and many critical-care oriented clinical sites are actually cutting back on PNs; and making sure only RNs get in the door. LPNs who are already in hospitals are being told to upgrade their skill-sets and become RNs. 2. If you and your sister live in the north side / suburb of Chicago, the closest RN programs are in the City Colleges (Wright/Truman). If you don't mind driving further west, Ambria is in Hoffman Estates (about 50min - 1.25hrs on I-90 depending on how far you live). Ambria has a fairly decent LPN-RN bridge. Their tuition is also at par (if not less) than most private degreed institutions. They also have a pretty good and stable NCLEX pass rate. 3. If you don't mind waiting a little, Northwestern Institute (NWIHT) is probably a year out from getting their RN program approved. Like Ambria, they, too, will have an LPN-to-RN bridge. Once approved by the Board of Nursing, you only need to pass their ATI TEAS V entrance exam and interview process to get in. You may have to take an "LPN-to-RN Step" course depending on how long ago you got licensed. 4. Northbrook College of Healthcare (NCOHC) is a good LPN school (based on the professionalism/level of experience of its founder/provost; the same can be said of their academic dean). It's a good candidate school for your sister to consider. As a newly approved LPN school, they're probably two to three years out before they are in the position to offer an RN (with an LPN bridge) program. They're also a few years out in terms of securing Federal Student Aid for their students (as Title IV requires a minimum of 2-solid years of operation) prior to a school being allowed to adminster FAFSA. 5. Another PN school that seems to be getting better is PCCTI. Their NCLEX pass rate last year went up to 83% (up from 77% in 2010). Make sure you get a list of clinical sites from them, though, before you have your sister sign the dotted line. Lack of decent clinical sites (and good instructors) seem to be the prevalent complaints of many of their existing students (and alums). They're doing their best, though, to offer a quality program. Read through their 'testimonial' page (and double-check for accuracy) so you can get a better feel of their program. 6. Lastly, try avoiding PN schools with: 1) no (or minimal) NCLEX pass rate history, 2) failing NCLEX pass rates, and 3) flat-out ground-level tuition fees (meaning they've pushed their tuition so low that no existing program in their right mind will dare match their prices). New PN schools push their matriculation down ONLY for one reason -- to survive the present year by getting desperate students from existing programs. They also usually attract students with less than satisfactory performance (those who'd been terminated from other schools). Hence, the school's quarterly and yearly NCLEX pass-rates swings wildly due to non-standard curriculum delivery and are below the accepted level of 75%. Let me know if you have any more questions. I'm no means an expert about Nursing programs in Illinois, but I've been watching the landscape change long enough to see which school is doing well, which ones are new to the scene and which ones are about to get yanked out. :) BTW, welcome to Chicago-land... Cheers. Hanzo

Congratz, Erika. As long as you do your job, I can guarantee you that they'll do theirs. Study hard, study smart, and you'll be an LPN faster than you know it. G'luck. Hanzo

NCOHC is ran by Mrs. Kim Hollowell... The former D.O.N of Northwestern Institute when NWIHT was just starting its LPN program (six years ago). There's no finer nurse-educator in the North-Suburbs than Mrs. Hollowell. Likewise, their Dean of Academics, Dr. Zafar, is a very educated, articulate, disciplined and respectable medical professional. Anyone who walks through their doors to get a Nursing (or Allied Health) education is sure to get their money's worth. If you guys/gals are closer to Northbrook than to any schools (private or public) in Chicagoland, NCOHC is your best choice towards becoming a healthcare professional. Disclaimer: I don't work for NCOHC. I just happened to have had the privilege of knowing them both from a prior workplace. hanzo

Hi Everyone: The 2011 NCLEX Pass Rates for Illinois has been released by the Board of Nursing. If you are in an existing program, you probably already know where your school stands. If not, feel free to browse through from the link below. LINK: http://nursing.illinois.gov/PDF/IlApNursingEdProgPassRates01292010.PDF If you're a "prospective" student looking for a school, make sure you carefully consider the NCLEX pass rate of your target school. Scores with 75% and above are pretty much solid institutions. Schools with75% and below... well... they're probably still trying to iron-out the kinks from their programs. Or, it could also be indicative that they have some serious programmatic issues. Use your better judgment, do your research, ask questions (lots of it). :) Hanzo

amoltie - take an inventory of all the classes that you need to take and arrange them in the order that you need to take them. If the school that you're applying to has their 'stuff' together, they should be able to give you a "roadmap" of where you are today, where you're going to be a semester from now, and when you should be graduating (approximately). Once you have your 'inventory,' plan on how you can get each one of them classes done (i.e. cash-on-hand, or pell grant to pay for it; baby sitter for kid). Make sure you have "backups" -- meaning if you've only have one sitter on-hand, see if you can arrange for another sitter in case your first sitter is unable to care for your 2-yr old. Once you have your T's and I's crossed and dotted, take your course(s) as planned, pass one quiz at a time, go to one clinical at a time, and study plenty in between. Bottom line... take the challenge one day, one class, one quiz at a time. Plan up to 2-3 wks out, or 2-3 classes out but don't get stuck in the "future." Focus on the here and now and get on a good rhythm. Pretty soon, you'll complete what you've set out for, time would fly by so fast, and next thing you know, your loved ones are pinning you that RN pin. Goodluck. YOU CAN DO IT! :)

It looks like a "classroom extension" of the ATS Institute of Technology out of Cleveland, OH. Their program will begin its first class on Oct 24 (according to their website). Tuition is set at $20,352 (using their Net Price calculator). There's not much curriculum information on their website but I'm sure you can find out more if you give them a call. Here's a link to their website. LINK: http://www.atsinstitute.edu/nursing-programs.html?#practical+nursing+program Goodluck. Hanzo

You must have a really big gripe towards NWIHT. My best bet is that you're probably one of the students of the school who failed one or more of their core courses -- after pleading the instructors/school to give you a passing grade. I have some pretty good inside scoop on the school's management organization and the caliber of their instructors/program so if you will allow me, let me provide the "real facts" about Northwestern Institute of Health and Technology (NWIHT). Fact #1. The School's LPN program is 1100 contact hours for $16.25 per contact hour. This translates to $17,875 from Fundamentals of Nursing all the way to the NCLEX preparation. They do charge minimal registration fees per course to cover the administrative cost of scheduling. Aside from the community colleges around, please do your research and post up here who amongst the private LPN providers can beat NWIHT's very low LPN program price point. BTW, NWIHT is the only school that I know of that actually give tuition DISCOUNTS for students that fail a course but had opted to stay with their chosen program. Fact #2. During an application interview, NWIHT's primary mission is to provide the prospective ALL the data that s/he needs to make an informative decision -- even to the point of directing the said prospective to another accredited school -- if that's what it would take for the student to be successful. Fact #3. All of NWIHT's instructors have been approved by both the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulations, Board of Nursing. These two State agencies put any institution applying for an educational permit through a magnifying glass. They scrutinize each and every instructor's curriculum vitae as well as their qualification to teach their subject-matter-expertise. The school is also accredited by the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. All of these approvals and accreditations take years upon years to attain due to the rigors of the requirements and the inspections that take place during a candidacy period. Fact #4. The school DOES NOT sell grades. Students MUST EARN them down to the last tenth of a point. So if you're one of those students who just can't hack it because you have way too many alibis except to study hard, then you don't belong at NWIHT. There's no one else to blame for your woes but yourself. Feel free to bring your transcripts somewhere else. Fact #5. NWIHT's NCLEX pass-rate for the past three years has averaged at 90% plus! The school has graduated 17 batches of students with each batch having a minimum of 15 to 25 students. That's a 90% passing rate across a minimum of 250-plus students over the period of 3-years! Now again, do your homework and see if you can find a private/public LPN school that has the same success rate. You'll find a very small percentage of them out there. NWIHT is now servicing approximately 6-7 batches (half in the evening, half in the morning), and most of them are doing well on their chosen program. Check my figures above against the Board of Nursing's NCLEX pass rate website and tell the audience here how correct my facts are. Fact #6. The school has recently signed a 10yr lease of a 40,000 square feet facility in Skokie, Illinois where their Skokie campus is now located. The cost of the physical build-out and the infrastructure / laboratory expenses alone in equipping the facility don't even come close to break-even point (for 2-years!) in terms of the school's tuition-to-expenses ratio. This will show you that the income the school generates through tuitions and fees ONLY go to the improvement of the school -- and nowhere else. Fact #7. The president's car (new cadillac purchase?) is a leased vehicle -- Its primary use is to shuttle important VIPs and potential grant donors who visit the school quite often; and whom the executive management team relies on for ADDITIONAL SCHOLARSHIPS FOR LOW INCOME STUDENTS. The president son's car? It's not a 2011 Nissan Nismo but an earlier 2010 Nissan 370Z model. It was purchased in late 2009 when he was still an I.T. and management consultant working for a Fortune 100 company; and way prior to him joining the institution full-time as the school's senior vice president. The senior vice president has been the primary driving force behind the school getting its State agency approvals, accreditations, legal compliance, the current PN program, and the school's upcoming LPN to AAS-RN bridge program. How do I know all of this? Feel free to PM me directly and I'll tell you who I really am. Too often, individuals who think ONLY of their own selfish interests would rather destroy than build. They would rather complain than look within and see if the real problem is them. They would rather vent in public forums (such as this one) in the hopes of "getting even" instead of taking accountability for their own inactions. They would rather put blame on an institution whose sole mission is 'educational and service excellence for all,' instead of hitting the books smartly so that they can really EARN their way through becoming safe and competent professionals. For those of you, true seekers of the Nursing profession, I have only one request -- and that is "do your homework." Do your homework with due diligence. Do your homework with integrity and honesty. Above all, do your homework with a burning passion that will carry you through many sleepless nights. For when you've asked all the questions that you can possibly ask, answered all the questions that need answering, and taken and passed all the tests worthy of the noblest of all professions (that is of service to others), you'll find out that true success can only come from true and honest hard-work that springs from within -- and never, ever from trying to destroy others. Respectfully, Hanzo

@Adek - As with any CCC Nursing program, they'll actually tell you that having a good GPA and TEAS scores do not guarantee acceptance into the program. What they'll give you are the minimum criteria for acceptance. For the GPA, CCC (Wright included) requires applicants to have a GPA of 2.5 or higher. Yours is 3.5. :) With regards to your TEAS score -- TEAS is not a pass/fail test. Rather, it's given to individuals to measure their basic comprehension of English, Math, and Science. If you managed to get a GPA of 3.5 (which is pretty darn good), I think your TEAS score should be the least of your worries. Regarding the Admission requirements for Wright College -- I know as much as the next guy (as I don't work for them). However, I do know that they conduct regular "informational sessions" where Q&As between the administrator and the applicants take place. You may also want to visit their Admissions web page for more information. I've pasted the link below for your convenience. LINK: http://wright.ccc.edu/programs/practical_nursing.asp Bottom line... If you dream it, believe in it, and act on it, it'll never be a question of if you'll ever become a nurse... it'll be only a question of "when?" I hope my limited answers above are able to guide you to your exciting career choice. Work hard, play plenty, but study smarter. :) Hanzo.

@Adek - Wright College has one of the best NCLEX-PN pass rates in the Chicago-land area. Likewise, you might able to take advantage of their RN bridge once you complete their PN program. If you have the time to spare, I'd highly suggest that you apply for their program without delay. You never know how your luck holds until you try. :) With regards to NWIHT... There will be days when you will encounter people who are less than at their best. This holds true regardless of whereever you go and who you interact with. If your experience with said school is just with one individual, my (unsolicited) advice is to see if you can speak with someone who might be able to get you the information you need. You'll do yourself a disservice if you count your option(s) out just because the person you encountered was not at his/her best. However, if you encounter the same negative behavior from said institution regardless of who you approach, then at least you can tell yourself that you've done your homework when you crossed them off your list. Best of luck on your search... Hanzo

@SkimKim - The community colleges, like Wright, Oakton, Harper and Truman offer the most affordable options for LPNs and AAS-RN programs. However, you may find yourself on a waiting list due to high demand (for low-cost federal and local-government subsidized education). Regarding Chamberlain... DeVry purchased them several years back; and DeVry-Chamberlain has a reputation for turning out solid graduates. One thing that will get you though is the cost of going there to get your BSN. I believe their per credit hour cost is somewhere around $2K. It is not uncommon for an undergraduate to rack up more than $60K of tuition for a bachelor's degree program. For people who have financial sponsors or money tucked away somewher, this may be the way to go. For students who are just scrounging by, they usually see themselves with 30-yr unsub loans if they decide to go this route. If you don't think the two options above aren't what you're looking for, your next option is to find a "Tier-2" private vocational school with a solid NCLEX-PN pass rate (at least 80% and above). They are called "Tier-2" because their tuition is somewhere between the Robert Morris / Chamberlains and the Community Colleges out there. Most private vocational schools with consistent and solid NCLEX pass rates generally have "reasonable" tuitions and have a variety of clinical site partners that enable the students to understand what "critical thinking" and the "Nursing process" are all about. Here's the link where you can find the NCLEX pass rates of all the Nursing schools approved by the Illinois Board of Nursing: http://nursing.illinois.gov/PDF/IlApNursingEdProgPassRates01292010.PDF Also, the more mature private vocational Nursing schools generally have Title-IV Financial Aid (Pell grants and government loans) already in place. They're also well on their way to having an AAS-RN program (if they don't already have one). Ambria (ambria.edu) on the Northwest suburbs is one school with a solid LPN program; and a new AAS-RN program. In Chicago, you'll find Northwestern Institute (nwiht.edu) as another good option. NWIHT has very solid morning and evening LPN programs; and they usually open a batch every two months (one will be this september). Their class sizes are also small-to-medium to ensure a good instructor-to-student ratio. There are probably 1 or 2 more private vocational schools out there that offer a good, "Bridgeable" PN program. Key is to find them amongst the herd. A word of caution on "some" private vocational schools: Though they may have been "approved" by the State Board of Nursing, there are many of them who have yet to establish consistent NCLEX pass-rates. They usually have only been in operation for the past 2-3 yrs max. Some of them may even be on "probations," meaning their pass-rates have been below 75% for the past two years. They generally drive their tuitions down to "attract" uninformed candidates. Likewise, their clinical partnerships are restricted mostly to home health agencies and sub-par nursing homes (if any). They also tend to have very "loose" course-transfer policies so they can entice candidates to registering on the same day. They tend to have different stories depending on who you talk to at the Admissions-level. Bottom line... Though you think you don't have much time to get into a program of your choice, one thing that I'd advise is that you take AS MUCH TIME AS NEEDED to do your research. Talk to as many schools as possible; but tell yourself NOT TO COMMIT until you have studied all the data in front of you. Ask each school where they see themselves 3-5 yrs from now. This will let you know if you'll have an opportunity to complete your "bridge" with them (or with their partner schools) as an AAS-RN or as a BSN, long-term. Likewise, don't allow yourself to get "sweet talked" into registering/enrolling right away. A good school will put your "needs" as a student first, before their "quota." They have a higher "mission" of making sure those who walk their hallways do indeed become competent and successful nurses (with affordability in mind). Feel free to post more if you have additional questions. Best of luck on your on-going search...

@SkimKim: Questions... 1.Do you plan on going to school full-time? 2. Do you plan on paying your way through school? 3. If your answer to question 2 is to get a "pell grant" subsidized by a loan(s), have you thought of doing "incremental" licensure (LPN track first, then bridge to an AAS-RN program) so you can get a job as soon as you're "licensed;" then pay your way through a "bridge" program? 4. What's more important to you? A school with a good NCLEX pass rate? Or a school that's close by and/or accessible to where you live? 5. Do you mind waiting 4 to 6 months for an AAS-RN program? Or, do you have a set timeline in your mind to complete your Nursing degree; all the way to getting a BSN? Have good solid answers for the five questions above and I think most of the graduates and/or school reps here will be able to give you a pretty good idea on which schools may provide you the right (not necessarily the best) options. Good luck!

Your question sounds very "program-specific." Ambria's RN program is very new. My bet is that their LPN-to-RN bridge program students are also wondering how this next phase of their education is going to be like. Ambria has one of the highest (if not the highest) NCLEX-PN pass rate for private institutions in 2010. I bet their first NCLEX-RN takers will go through a more rigorous academic/clinical experience (than the LPN students) to ensure they continue their high pass rate track.

All accreditation and approvals for NWIHT can be found at: LINK: http://www.nwiht.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82&Itemid=62 If it ain't there, it ain't official. :)

"On Probation" generally means the NCLEX passing rate of the institution has fallen below 75% for two consecutive years. For example: Year 1: School-A clears 30 of its students to take the NCLEX exam and only 22 of the 30 students pass (73%) Year 2: School-A clears 40 of its students to take the NCLEX exam and only 29 of 40 pass (72.5%) With the above scores, the IL Board of Nursing (BON) will have to put School-A "On Probation" for not meeting the minimum pass rate of 75% for two consecutive years. For more info, feel free to visit the IL Center for Nursing. :)