few questions

[TCLA]

I have a few questions about nursing school & classes"

I am currently a senior in high school and i want to get my BSN. I get fairly good grades, i have a 3.0 but idid horrible on my ACT, i only got a 17. my questions are:

1. do nursing schools look at your ACTscores & high School grades? or are they just worried about your pre-reqs? If i cannot get into a university with my ACT score i plan on attending a community college then transferring to a univ's.BSN program. the community colleges i want to attend are: Santa monica or Pasadena City College. and then transfer to one of this univ's. i picked which were Cal state long beach, cal state los angeles, or azusa pacific.

2. i am really confused on how to do the community college transfer thing. do i just find the pre-reqs needed @ one of the univs. i want to attend and then show that too one of the guidance councelor's @ the community college and they will place me in the right classes to complete my pre-reqs? Im just really confised & my guidance councelor at my high school is no help at all, everytime i ask her a question all she says is to search it on google. so i need someone to make this step very clear too me.

3. and i noticed that some pre-reqs are organic chem is this organic chem like BASIC organic chem class or is it the real deal, like you'd take in med school?

i want to attend college in california, as an out of state student ( i live in ohio) and all this is just so confusing!!

i planned on getting my Accociates degree then doing the bridge program to my BSN but i heard that all hospitals in california require a BSN. is this true?

[Tait, MSN, RN]

I think the only people who can answer these questions are advisers from the colleges you are looking to apply to. These standards and transfer reqs vary widely from state to state, school to school.

Best of luck!

Tait

[whipping girl in 07, RN]

Check with the schools to which you want to apply, don't just take the word of the person at the community college. Generally, your community college pre-reqs will transfer, just make sure they are the same class. For instance, some schools require a particular chemistry or biology and will not accept anything less. I had taken chemistry at Arkansas but they wouldn't accept it at UL because it didn't cover organic and biochemistry. If I had taken chemistry, organic and biochem separately they would have accepted all three. So I took UL's class that covered all three. At Arkansas they counted about 10 different classes for your fine arts credit but at UL they only allowed a few so I had to take a music lecture class because film lecture didn't count.

By the time I applied to nursing school, my ACT score was so old they didn't care. They looked at my college transcripts. Some schools put more weight on your science grades, so try to make good grades in those.

I wouldn't recommend taking more than one science class at a time. Make sure you take the lab for your science classes, even if it's optional. A friend's daughter is trying to get into PA school and she didn't take anatomy lab when she took anatomy and now she's having heck taking it by itself but she's limited to which schools she can apply to without the lab. Even if you think your sure you won't go back to school, you may change your mind and you don't want something like that to come back and bite you.

Knock out as many general education classes as you can at the community college level because it's cheaper! And if you get to college and change your mind, those classes will still count toward another degree.

My college advisor my freshman year was terrible! Don't count on them to help you pick the right classes. Good luck to you!

[rn2bnwi, BSN, RN]

generally your act is going to be what you use when you apply to get into college.... you won't need that when you apply to the actual nursing program 2 years later. 3.0 is okay... but 2.75 to 3.0 is the bare bottom of what many nursing programs take.... and most nursing programs are going to be very competitive. so really make school a priority when you start. if you find it a struggle get a tutor and always show up to class. you can do it!!! good luck

[diane227, LPN, RN]

It may be different now, but in the past some schools would let you in on a probationary status and if you did well in your first semester then your probationary status would be removed. I don't know if schools will still do this. Junior colleges may differ from other colleges. Now as for classes required for transfer, once you get into college you will need to focus on the nursing schools that you intend to apply for and find out what chemistry, biology, etc they will require. I can tell you now that you need to do well in chemistry, anatomy, physiology because you will need this when you get out of nursing school. I did not know how much I needed these classes until I got out of school and then had to go back and study what I did not study in school. You will not be required to take the same chemistry courses that are required for medical school. If you are going to do your pre req. at a junior college, don't over work yourself. Pace your classes out so that you can get your GPA up as much as possible to offset your ACT score. Also, if you can take courses in the summer, do so, so you can get these course out of the way as soon as you can. After a year at the junior collage, you might want to retake your ACT or the SAT before you apply to a nursing program. Good Luck.

[medicrn16]

The only thing I would add is check to see if any of your community colleges work with universities in your area to graduate with BSN. In Orlando, there are two comm. colleges who work with UCF to give students the opportunity to graduate with their BSN in two years + one semester extra after ADN program. It's a bridge program. I could not do it because I was in fast-track medic-to-RN 1-year program and they don't have a curriculum for that yet. This may be a good option for you. Everyone else has addressed your GPA and ACT stuff. Good luck!!!!