Murse_Kyle

While I agree with chuckster, there are some things that I need to clear up. Yes, Temple has a hospital. But no, Temple is not regarded as highly as Drexel. And yes, UPenn may be regarded highly on a national level but that is because they have an Ivy league name to back them up. It is true that Upenn's graduate nursing programs are by far the best in the country. However, what determines the quality of an undergraduate nursing program is the pass rate of each graduation class on the NCLEX. Drexel has a 99.6% pass rate which means that only 1 student each year out of a class of about 150 students fails their boards. This pass rate is the highest pass rate on the NCLEX in the state of Pennsylvania (higher than Penn's, Temple's, and Villanova's). In addition, the hospitals around the greater Philadelphia area absolutely love Drexel nursing grads. That is because of Drexel's cooperative education program. Drexel nursing students go on co-op which is a 6 month full time paid position within nursing. They work as nursing assistants, techs, and nurse externs. Some students at Drexel nursing choose to do the 4 year program which allows for 1 co-op opportunity. Most however choose the 5 year program which allows for 3 co-op opportunities. Because Drexel nursing grads finish up nursing school with so much job experience before they even graduate, that gives them at a competitive edge and lessens the learning curve at their first job as an RN. Also, most of these co-op positions are in Philly hospitals so many students walk across stage at graduation with a job saved for them because they had so many networking opportunities while on co-op. Most nurse managers at Philly hospitals will tell you that they snatch up Drexel grads because they just "get it" more than other nursing schools. Also, nurses that you will work with on clinical rotations will tell you that the Drexel students come better prepared to clinical than Penn students. Keep in mind that all of these nursing schools in the Philly area pretty much use the same hospitals for their clinical rotations. All-in-all, Temple is a good school but Drexel really puts out excellent nurses that stand out from all the other schools.

I am currently in the BSN program at Drexel as well. The only nursing program that is offered online as far as undergraduate programs would be the RN-BSN completion program. For that program one must already have their associates as an RN. There are also online masters programs as well. But other than that all of the undergraduate nursing programs are "in-class" programs.