Denied from nursing school...

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I am a registered nurse. A family member of mine recently decided to go back to nursing school at the local county college program. She is in her late 20s, works over 40 hours a week, & worked her butt off to get a 3.95 GPA in all of her prerequisites. She found out yesterday she was not accepted into the program. When she called to question what was going on, one thing held her back. They stated that in 2010, she either failed or withdrew from 2 classes (I forget which). This was the semester after she graduated high school and was dealing with a ton in her personal life.

So, that being said, she had a few A's from 2010 that could not be used and she had to re-take those classes to keep them up to date, however now those classes 8 years ago, as a teenager, will forever hold her back?

I personally feel this is extremely unfair. We are dealing with an adult now trying to advance her career.

Has anyone else had this issue? does anyone have advice????

Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

Moved to general nursing student forum

I failed out of college the first 2 times I went (this is below a 1.0 GPA in each), and got into a nursing school with no problem. I agree with everyone else that there's more to the story than withdrawing from 2 classes almost 10 years ago.

Everyone should be applying at more than 1 school if it's possible, because of how competitive it is. At every school, someone has to be denied. And when it gets to too many great choices of students, they have to find whatever idiotic reason they can to justify who has to get cut.

But one thing that anyone serious definitely needs to do when they get rejected is to meet with the person in charge of the program to put together a plan on how to get a better chance of being accepted next time. They're the people who know exactly what you'd need to do to make them want you. Plus that looks great the next time you apply.

But definitely always apply to multiple schools and programs. Don't limit yourself to only a BSN program. ADN still leads to an RN license. LPNs are still nurses. Whether you got your BSN at an Ivy League school, or an ADN at a community college, you're still getting trained on the real world way of doing your job. The biggest mistake in all of these posts is that someone applied to one school and got denied. Some of these schools have an 80-90% rate of denial, because they just can't fit any more students...

Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

When I was 19 I was in nursing school for one semester. I quit going to class, didn't drop anything and received an F for all classes. GPA 0.8....joined the USN

Fast forward to age 30, went back to school re-doing pre-reqs. First semester I was on academic probation. Did fine, passed all classes and made it thru nusing school.

Try another school.

Specializes in Critical Care.
Many schools require some (science/biology) pre-requisites to be within 5 years old. I had to retake A&P and Microbiology to make them current.

^^^This. I have to re-take statistics for graduate school because the one from my BSN was >5 years.

I know this because my buddy went to PA school after getting rejected from BSN programs.

This is just insane. I am starting my ABSN program in January and I am troubled by this. Talking about oversaturation of nursing field with nurses...

I will day that if she was neck and neck with someone who had one less W or fail then no, this isnt unfair. Your performance in the past is all they can judge. Now as far as expiring As. I'm in the same boat and mine are only 5 years old. Going for a medical or healthcare related field, everything has a shelf life for the exact reason that science is always changing so we must be current to this knowledge. I was dismissed from my nursing program but that sure isnt gonna stop me. It's all persistence. She will get there eventually. She just has to ask when she can do to better her odds in the future and do that. Best of luck for her! Great gpa!

NNm

Specializes in NICU.

The other classes lowered her GPA and she will have to take more classes to offset this,they averaged it all into one.Tell her to keep going.That is the problem when you dont stay on one course,there is a penalty,it is a money thing.It happens even one state university to another same sate university,like I said it is a money thing.

This is just insane. I am starting my ABSN program in January and I am troubled by this. Talking about oversaturation of nursing field with nurses...

I just talked to my buddy again. It wasn't a BSN he got turned down from. It was an ADN at a community college.

But it's not about over-saturation of nurses. There was an article here about how a hospital in Springfield, MO. is paying $5000 for RN students to commit to work for them once they pass the NCLEX/graduate.

It's all about the region.

Specializes in Med/Surg/Infection Control/Geriatrics.
try a different school

I agree.

Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.
Yeah, no kidding. I remember one program requiring my entire k-12 grade transcripts. High school, SAT scores, and LPN program grades were not enough for that place. Sent me all over the place one summer trying to get my grade school records. I'm not sure what they were trying to prove-maybe what age I was when I learned to play nice in the sandbox with others?

The whole process delayed everything by a semester. By the time everything was accepted by this community college and I got an acceptance letter I had moved on with my life.

The program that I eventually graduated from didn't even calculate my GPA from my transfer credits. They were labeled as PASSED with no GPA impact. An A, B, or C wouldn't make a difference. Acceptance was based on placement exam scores and program openings.

There are plenty of other schools out there.

Mine are carved into stone tablets in cuneiform. Postage would cost more than the tuition!

When I went to inquire about my country college program, they specifically stated that retaking a class for a better grade would receive the average of the two classes in points. Find out how far down the list your family member is. A lot of people get accepted but not everyone actually goes. In my class there were 5 out of 100 no shows and a few people took those spots. If not, a lot of local but more expensive BSN programs are less selective due to less competition.

She should try calling the school she went to and failed and seeing if she can actually have those grades completely removed. I did this at my current school; I messed up when I first started college, had a bunch of real life issues, and didn't even know about withdrawing (no one told me anything, just "too bad"). I came back to this school a couple of years ago, 15 years after the fact, and my GPA was a 0.08. LOL. So bad. The school said I should just fill out a form to have all of those credits wiped. Basically, I lost the classes I did pass, but it put me back to a point where I wasn't trying to fix a horrid GPA.

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