WestCoastRN

I just went UPenn web site and found out one year combined tuition and fee is $45,842, so the entire 24 month program costs $91K. That is really high, at least for me. I wonder if this may be the highest amount of cost of all nurse anesthesia programs. I thought a program is already considered costly at $40K.

Here is some information regarding LIBOR index and prime rate. LIBOR index is called London Interbank Offer Rate and the rate is set in London exchange market. It is considered the international interest rate on US Dollars. It is a floating (variable) interest rate in one, three or six months. I think for those student loans which are tied to LIBOR index, it uses 1 month rate, at least it is true in Bank of America. The 1 month LIBOR rate is 3.35% as of today. BoA graduate loan interest rate = 1 month LIBOR + margin of 4.65% to 7.25%. Assuming best credit, the borrowing interest rate is 3.35+4.65 = 8%. Prime rate is the interest rate a bank grants to the most creditworthy customers. It is normally 3% higher than the target fed fund rate set by Mr. Greenspan. Right now the primary rate is 6.25% and fed fund is 3.25%. I think federal Stafford loan is always the best choice, but it has a maximum one year loan amount of $18.5K. The interest rate was 1.25% + 1.7% = 2.95% 10 days ago, but now it is 3.25% + 1.7% = 4.95%. Alternative loans can be used only when Stafford loan is exhausted.

my suggestion is to keep the house for one more year and find 2 good roommates. here is my logic: you have owned the house for only one year and selling the house will trigger unwanted capital gain tax. you won't pay the tax if you own and stay in your primary home for 2 years. greenspan and the fed have raised short term interest rate many times through their control over fed fund rate. but the fed has no control over long term interest rates and it is totally up to the market to decide the rates. unlike floating arm rates, fixed mortgage rates (15 or 30 years) are normally tied to 10 year treasury note yield which is completely dependent on demand and supply. as soon as the japanese and chinese governments and u.s. retirees continue to purchase longer term u.s. fixed income assets, i don't see any big jump in 30 year fixed mortgage rate. my friend just refinanced her mortgage to 30 year fixed at 5.375%, which is still so low even after greenspan raised fed fund rates so many times. brand new homes are normally sold by builders in discount compared to existing homes of the same quality. new homes tend to outperform old homes in both up and down markets. condos/townhomes tend to hold the price better than single family homes. so there isn't really much to worry about. you may be a little bit short on payment, but remember some portion of your monthly payment is principal and you will get it back when you sell your home. plus your rental income will probably be subject to little or no tax as you have mortgage interest to deduct. i also live in a hot real estate market and i am going to crna school this coming august. my husband and i also own a home we bought 3 years ago and i don't worry about a price drop at all because there is no way it can drop back to my purchase price.

You can go to www.usnews.com to order a copy of 2006 version of graduate program ranking. You are given instant online access plus a paper copy of the magazine. I forgot how much it costed me when I ordered 2005 report, I guess it was about $19.95. Is it possible to share with us the CRNA program ranking if you want to purchase it and don't mind let us know the recent ranking? Also pay attention whether the ranking is updated to current year. The 2005 report I have still contains results of 2003.

Also TCU and TWU of Texas have clinical affiliation with Arrowhead Regional Medical Center of San Bernardino county. You attend classes in Texas and return to California for clinical part of the education. Somebody might know details about these 2 programs.

I think you are better off directly aiming at medical school than CRNA. You haven't even started your nursing education so far. It takes 2-3 years get an ADN degree. I assume you have a BS not related to nursing or life science, one year of RN experience is a little short to compete with other RNs with 3 or more years of experience. Let's assume you can get in a CRNA program with 2 years of experience. CRNA education takes another 2-3 years. Counting all years together, you won't become a CRNA until 7 years later. You can become a family doctor within the same time frame.

I would agree that it is the demand and supply equation that influences CRNA income. In west coast the demand for CRNA is relatively weaker, but the supply (CRNAs who want to work in the region) is strong because the good weather attracts people to move in. As a result CRNAs earn less in the west even with the high cost of living. Some experienced RNs could make $100K/yr in SF bay area, but I guess a starting CRNA probably just make $130K there (I don't know how much really it is). The extra $30K isn't worth all the effort to just go for the money as $130K isn't really considered high income in SF. Considering all the tuition and lost RN wages while attending NA school, the monetary benefit to become a CRNA is very small. The experienced high-tech engineers in Cisco, Intel, Google or other .com can make $120K plus a generous stock option package which could potentially translate to hundreds of thousand $ if not millions. Those CRNAs who work there must love their career first. I don't think becoming a M.D. is a way to get rich either. If somebody just wants to maximize the their financial benefits, start their own business, grow it and sell it to a Fortune 500 company for hundreds of millions when the company is large enough. CRNAs make a good living, never close to be rich.

i was invited for an interview in mtsa in later december and i declined it as i was accepted by another school. mtsa accepted a lot of people through early interview. the remaining 18 people are chosen early this year probably just happened recently. the program asks a large deposit of $3,500, so the chance is low for somebody who paid large sum but eventually choose not going. the early admitted students have probably paid the money already and they definitely don't want lose that large amount. i think your chance is more dependent on those people who were offered acceptance recently to decline it without paying the deposit. the next couple of weeks are what you should focus on and after the period the chance is much lower. just pray for good thing to happen in the next several weeks; otherwise get ready for plan b or c if nothing happens. good luck!

even though i don't know it for sure, i feel it will be awfully hard. my understanding on aana requirement is that a person must graduate from one of those 94 accredited programs to qualify for certification exam. a foreigner can definitely go to apply for a us crna program as i noticed a lot of crna program web sites claim they can accept international applicants. a valid us rn license is normally a prerequisite and i don't know how people can get around with that. if your friend is seriously consider that, you may consult with an immigration lawyer specialized in foreign nurses.

Congratulations! I knew you had no problem being accepted by a school. You have all the elements needed: experience, GPA and GRE scores. Midwestern Univ is a statistical outlier as the program is too new so the application processing hasn't streamlined. Samuel Merritt values GRE heavily, so you should be a favorite there too. Pretty soon you begin to worry what school to go.

FYI, the average liability premium cost for MDA is $21K in 2003. See the following I copied from http://depts.washington.edu/asaccp/prof/asa67_6_6.pdf#search='Anesthesiologist%20liability%20insurance': This year, the ASA Committee on Professional Liability again conducted a telephone survey to a variety of medical liability insurance carriers to assess rate changes in various states in 2003. Premiums for anesthesiologists in 20025 increased an average of 28 percent from an average of $15,476 (range of $4,855 to $58,089) to an average of $21,351 (range of $7,216 to $124,598) in 2003. According to our informal survey, states with average premiums of more than $20,000 for anesthesiologists included Alaska, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, West Virginia, Wyoming and Washington, D.C. Florida had the highest premiums in the nation. States with the largest increases in premiums in 2003 (50-percent to 150-percent increases compared to 2002) included Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Rate increases have been particularly problematic for physicians when medical liability carriers in the state have withdrawn from the market.

Actually I just found I was rejected by Mayo. But it doesn't matter because I received an acceptance letter from another program in the same day. I though I had a good chance in Mayo as they interviewed 60 for 30 spots. But a large number of applications were from Mayo nurses and it is hard to beat them. During my date of interview, 11 out of 15 were Mayo own nurses and I was told there are only a few students with non Mayo background in the class started Sept 2004. I believe I have good experience, but probably lose to them in terms of quality of the experience as they are from a leading teaching hospital. My recommendation is also strong, probaly matches theirs. But they may have Mayo's own MD/anesthesiologists as source of reference and certainly the admission committee values those Mayo doctors more than other unfamiliar doctors/professors. I also have very decent GRE scores including a perfect 800 on Quantitative, but the scores are hardly considered there. When I was invited for question during the interview, I asked the program director if preference is given to their own nurses, I got a Yes answer but she said in a polite way: "The selection is mainly based on qualification, but when the qualification is the same, we choose them". I guess the program is under pressure to take Mayo's own people expecting that the SRNAs can work for Mayo after graduation and people from Rochester have a higher chance to stay there. My interview is generally OK and it is possible that some interview questions I didn't answer in a way they want to hear. As for the curriculum, I think it is still the same old story. The interview brochure says "Do Not Come" if you are upset with any of the following: 1) Lack of regional anesthesia. There is still no regional done in Rochester and students are required to go to AZ/FL for 8 weeks regional rotation. 2) Doesn't insert CVPs and Swans. 3) Never intubate using fiberoptic scope. Actually I don't know what this means. But I still have NA school to go as Franciscan Skemp accepted me. The competition appears more intense (at least on paper) in this program than Mayo as there were 80+ applications and 33 were invited for interview for 8 positions. I become one of the 8 students. I might come back to west coast and Kaiser is definitely the No. 1 potential employer in the west and the program curriculum matches well with Kaiser's need. Another plus side is the school starts in June 2005 and finish 27 months later, so graduation is 6 months ahead of Mayo.

Mayo Clinic is ranked 2nd best hospital in U.S. and its medical school is ranked 22nd (top 1/8) among 163 medical schools. Its CRNA program rank is much lower, tied at 30th (top 1/3) out of 92 accredited programs. Most of top medical schools ahead of Mayo have no CRNA program, I just naturally thought that Mayo CRNA should be the top 10% and it is not the case. This is also reflected in the application pools. There is extremely strong interest to Mayo Medical School as it has the lowest acceptance rate --2.7%, even lower than Harvard (4.7%) and John Hopkins(5.6%). But Mayo CRNA program isn't nearly close to that level of interest. It has normally 120 applicants a year and admits 30, so the acceptance rate is about 25%. I feel the 25% rate in CRNA is above the average as a lot of programs accept only 5-10% of applicants. The 2 geographically closest programs, Minnesota VA and Franciscan Skemp, has attracted more interest per position wise as they all have about 10% acceptance rate. In my opinion Mayo has the teaching and clinical resources to make it one of the best CRNA programs in U.S. Is there anybody have any explanation for that? Is it because Mayo is not really interested in building a top-rated CRNA program as they are more interested in maintaining a strong MD/residence program?