Mandi Mae

I passed! I found out first thing this morning when I looked at my state's license search page! I'm officially a registered nurse!

Thank you, Belle! I saw on your thread that you just passed! Congratulations!

I know nothing is certain until it's, well, certain! LOL! But I'm cautiously optimistic! I took the NCLEX this morning and it shut off at 75. It felt like quite a few fairly complex questions with tons of SATA, so hopefully that means I was doing okay if it was throwing lots of "application" questions at me. I don't think I'll be able to relax until I find out for sure. I'm too nervous to do the PVT. I just got my ATT yesterday and when I went to schedule it, the only available dates were today, or December 4th, so I figured why not just get it over with ASAP? I did the Virtual ATI Green Light program while I was waiting for my ATT.

If you'd like to get a head start on practicing critical thinking, I'd highly recommend the NCLEX-RN Mastery app, and maybe just do the fundamentals questions. I love that all of the practice questions give you rationales after you've answered. I feel like in addition to being exposed to nursing information, it also helps you understand other critical thinking concepts through the questions, like prioritization, delegation, the nursing process, etc. I bought it when I was still doing my general ed. classes. I think it was $19.99, but it was totally worth every penny! I'm in my last term of nursing school now, and I still use it to practice NCLEX-style questions when I have a few minutes to kill throughout the day. :-)

Hi! I attend WCU. As far as the schedule, you usually get two or three days/times to pick from when you're scheduling your next term, but each term's times may be completely different from the last set of classes. For example, I'm in my last term and I have a class Tuesday 1-6, and another Friday 5-8p. I'll be working out my clinical schedule this week because I'm in preceptorship, but in other terms you know at least a few weeks in advance what your clinical schedule will look like. But in other terms I've had early morning classes, late night classes, and even some weekend classes. So while you do get some ability to pick from the options presented each term, you pretty much have to be able to have a flexible schedule. You definitely wouldn't be able to do it if, for example, you had a M-F 8-5 job that you absolutely couldn't miss. It hasn't been bad, though. And I just see the limited schedule options as a small price to pay to be able to go straight through a BSN program with no delays. Hope this helps! :-)

In my experience, it's all been very interactive, with a lot of different modalities of learning. The lectures have tended to be very participatory, with PowerPoints and activities that coordinate with the topic, and videos and practice quizzes at home. Then for clinicals you have skills labs, simulations, and of course the actual clinical experience each term, so there's a lot of hands-on, real-life learning. You definitely don't read the entire book! The professor may assign some reading before class so you're ready for the lecture, but relatively little of the learning is straight from the book. It's been definitely more from the lectures and interactions during class, and then put into hands-on practice in clinicals to really cement it.

Hi, and welcome to WCU! I can't help you with the roommate situation because I live way more inland and go to the Ontario campus, but I wanted to stop in and say that I have absolutely loved going to WCU! I'm in my last term, and I feel that this school prepares you very well for the NCLEX and transitioning into new grad clinical practice. It's also totally possible to keep up a high GPA as long as you're studying. It's an intense program, but I've been able to keep mine at 3.98. :-) The instructors have been amazing, and they really go above and beyond to make sure you have the tools to succeed. They even have international programs that honors students can apply for, and the school pays the expenses! I just participated in the Oxford program this summer, and it was awesome (and will look good on a resume, too!). I'm now only about 8 weeks away from finishing, and I'm 100% happy with my choice to go to WCU! Best of luck, and feel free to message me if you ever have any questions!