MountainRnEMT

I was already an EMT and decided to go to Paramedic school. All of the Medics I worked with told me if I had the option, to do nursing...more $$ and more options. I like working in clinical environments (ie. ED), I never liked working out of a rig. No one's body is designed to sit in a car for 12 hours. You can always stay busy in the hospital stocking, cleaning and learning new stuff. Also, everytime I looked in the classifieds, there were about 30 nurse jobs.

I do not date my classmates...that would be crapping where I eat. I like the above line better. I am in a 27 to 3 ratio in my class and the other classes are about the same at NAU. Our recent accelerated program has 12 guys in it...***? We just played kickball after Med/ Surg today and they kicked our asses. I would date other people in other classes and/ or nurses I work with, but I am too busy. I also have the additional problem of being much older than a lot of my classmates...'nuff said

I too would highly recommend BSN, but it depends on where you will work. ADN are RNs and can work in hospitals and it takes a little less time. the last year for me will be mostly theory. All my clinical skills will be gleaned from the first two years. The trend is indeed toward BSNs for many states and there are definetely more opportunities and higher pay differential, but in the near future, anyone who is an RN will be able to get hired as long as they pass boards and have clinical skills. I would just skip LPN. LPN are considered less and less in many places. Though they have many of the same understanding of skills as RNs, they cannot perform many of them and are not often considered when discussing patient ratios. If you are gonna spend the time on school, at least do RN. Just my two cents.

Organic required a science kit and software. Inorganic only required the software. You come into the lab and turn on the burner, mix cultures, etc...They even ding you for not turning off the light when you are done. The software was quite sophisticated. The home lab was about $90. I think the two software/ book kits were pretty close to that too.

I honestly do not know, but I can't imagine that an online nrsing program would deny nline pre-reqs. Be careful of Excelsior. More and more states are not accepting Excelsior grads for licensing because of the lack of clinicals hours.

Excelsior accepts all kinds of classes. It is nor very rigid at all. Even from LVN programs. You have to be an LVN or at least a Paramedic to apply to their program. Be careful. Some states are no accepting Excelisior including California.

I am finding that most schools are not scrutinizing the classes that much. As long as it is from an accredited college, it is ok. Some may need descriptions, but the descriptions do say lab included. I did do labs. Most schools simply do not have the time to scrutinize your classs. It is painful enough for them to wade through the hundreds of applicants. Also, much of this kind of scrutiny is done by administrators, rahter than the nursing pros. I spent a lot of time talking to nursing schools yesterday and they acted like they didn't care at all. I had several people tell me to find an online class and get the credits I needed. Seems like they just cared that I had the accurate amount of credits. This was even in regards to Chemistry. They didn;t seem to care what they specified on theor pre-req list. They just seemed to care if I had 6 credits in Chemistry. Also, most transcripts don't specify distance learning. They just show that you took the class from a particular school with a particular section designation. It is not marked on-line class on the transcript. Hope that helps. I applied to Hopkins, Yale, UCSF, etc... and no one had issue with any of my classes.

I took A&P I & II as well as Microbiology and I am about to take Chemistry. Other than the price, I think it is great. The labs in Microbiology were good. I am not so sure about the labs in A&P, as they were lind of stupid, but I guess I did learn the characteristics of looking at things under glass. I would recommend CCConline highly.

I took the TEAS last Friday. If you didn't get the manual from ATI...GET IT! And do it cover to cover. Alot of that material is stuff that I haven't covered since High School or at least early college. The manual gives you the tips you need and a lot of practice. I crammed it all in over only 3 days and got 98th percentile nationally. It is well worth the purchase and helps alot. The math is the most difficult only because of the amount of questons and short time limit, so be careful to budget your time. I did very well on math, but never got to go back and review as I finished it with 56 seconds to spare. My suggestion is get the ATI practice manual. It is exactly like the test except for the times limits. Good luck.

I am about over the nursing school waiting game. I have already been through one round of rejection having applied to Accelerated Master's Programs (an option avaialble because I have BA). When all of those came back rejected, I decided to apply to community schools here in the Bay area. Most of them are done by lottery, but there was one in Silicon Valley that took half by lottery and half by GPA. The way they calculate GPA, I had a 3.9. I was so excited. Finally, some redemption. Yesterday, I went in to take my TEAS exam, so as to guarantee I would be considered in the pool of applicants. Afterwards, I spoke to one of the Admissions people and she (without even a hesitaton) told me that 3.9 was not good enough this year and the cut off would be 4.0. I was defenetely in the bottom half and in the lottery. So now, regardless of how well I have been doing in all of my pre-reqs; I am subject to the "luck of the draw" entry rather than merit. I don't see how that is anymore fair and I have already gotten one rejrection based on lottery, so far. I really am losing faith !!!