ahoadley

Hello there, I am a current Industrial Engineering student at Purdue University and I am very interested in pursuing a career in nursing. Right now I am specializing in healthcare engineering, but I have realized that I would much rather be delivering patient care than working 'behind the scenes' and I feel that nursing would be a much more fulfilling and interesting career and engineering (in my opinion). I am currently a sophomore nearing the end of my 3rd semester in the program and I was wondering what your opinions were about switching to nursing as my undergrad degree, or if I should continue engineering and do an accelerated program. It seems that most nursing programs start in the Fall and a lot of my credits will not transfer. Also, I have to apply to the nursing schools at my university and it is limited space so there is a chance I do not get in. As far as transferring universities go, I fear that other colleges will not recognize that the classes I take as an engineer are very cut-throut and not many people get A's, and my GPA is 3.19 (they tell you in engineering that for the most part if you have a 3.0 you are pretty solid) and will accept other people who have taken more related classes and done well in them. *Note: I'm not trying to cause a frenzy by suggesting that nursing is easier at all, just trying to show how my GPA may seem low to those who are not aware that engineering GPAs are generally lower than most other majors. So, is it better to switch to nursing now and take about 4 more years to finish or do I do an accelerated program after college and take the prerequisites at some point while getting my engineering degree? Many thanks!