starting the nursing program at eku in january

sophie<3 · Dec 9, 2009

i have not taken the entrance exam but i am also a student at eku. what program will you be attending? i applied to both adn and bsn and so far have been accepted into the adn program and am still waiting on my bsn letter!

lucy247 · Dec 11, 2009

I am going to do the adn program right now and then bridge over later. I hope you get into the bsn program. How long does it take them to tell you if you are accepted to it?

sophie<3 · Dec 11, 2009

well i for adn we had to turn our applications in by october 1st and i found out i was accepted by the beginning of november where as the bsn applications were due october 31 and i still haven't heard anything. i was told they would make decisions over christmas break!

sugarbush · Dec 11, 2009

I am an upper level Nursing student at EKU (To protect myself I will not say which program) and my advice is RUN!!!! It is a terrible program and many of the instructors think they are Gods gift to Nursing students. The graduation ratio is only 30% of the admitted class. I score a passing grade on the HESI, but have a hard time passing the actual nursing classes. I have had to repeat one semester and am on the verge of having to repeat another.....if I didn't have so much invested at this point I would Transfer to another college.... There are many other programs who pass higher ratios of students and take a lot less time and money....in the end we are all RNs. I have been attending EKU for 4 years now and am still at least a year out from graduation.... I have a prior degree and was a straight A student until I reached EKUs Nursing program.

lucy247 · Dec 12, 2009

Oh my goodness! I am tansfering from Midway College with most of my basic classes out of the way. I had to transfer to Eku because they are a lot cheaper. Midway is an excellent college and none of the professors or nurses that I have had or talked to act that way. I hate to hear that, that makes me nervous. Thanks for the heads up. Is the work that hard or is it if the instructor likes you or not?

ybq2008 · Dec 12, 2009

You might want to check out the boards pass rate. For your school last year, they were 95%, which is great. I've attached the file for you to look over. Good luck with everything! :)

NCLEX_Pass_209.pdf

sugarbush · Dec 12, 2009

Any school that admits 110-120 students and fails out 70-80 of them is keeping the absolute cream of the crop and of course will have a high pass rate on the boards. That is not a reflection on the program as much as it is a reflection on the students they choose to keep. Like I said, I score well on the HESI I just have a hard time passing lecture exams. The problem is not in that I don't learn/know the material, but in that I don't do well with the way they write their questions.

They have/had some really good instructors, but some of their better ones are retiring or recently retired and they have a lot of new instructors who are fresh out of graduate school. They rotate through lecture so the exam will have questions from 2-3 different instructors.....It is often really easy to see on the PAR sheet what instructors have bad questions because they are grouped together and you score badly in groups. You can forget about getting questions thrown out, you can argue that it is not valid or another option is a better option until you are blue in the face and most instructors will not give at all on them. The only way they will throw out a question is if only a couple of students got it right.

I am not trying to scare anybody; just being honest and saying that nothing is going to be easy about it and it is not in your favor that you will get through it in one shot.... you might fail and repeat one or two semesters before you graduate. Last semester we had two students who graduated and then did not score an 850 on hesi so they had to redo the entire last semester. One of them scored an 848 and they would not give on the two points and allow her to graduate.

If you are set on going to EKU here is the rundown....

You need a 90% on the math exam every semester or they kick you out....they do give you three tries on it though. I am good at math and have never thought it was really hard....The math exam is not multiple choice and IS all word problems, you have to show your work and your answer. They do not alow calculators the first semester, but do on subsequent semesters.

First semester you have 2 classes, the firsts is a skills type class and is really easy, the second is a Fundamentals class and has one really bad instructor who likes to pull entire exams out of assigned readings instead of the lecture....good luck with that, half the class will drop by midterm. The director of level one is really nice and actually a pretty good teacher even though she has been teaching only a few years. You will have to do one history and assessment which is an 18-20 page written assignment on one patient.

Level 2 you have two classes, medsurge I and OB. Both of the instructors for OB are hard core and a lot of people have problems in OB. If you have kids it will be pretty easy. You have to do 7 of the 18-20 page assessments, 3 in OB and 4 in M/S. The hardest thing about level 2 is all the time you have to spend doing and redoing History and Assessments. You will have very little time to actually study for exams. You also have to write a research paper in APA format. LEARN APA FORMAT....this paper can sink you if you mess up APA format even if it is the greatest nursing research paper ever. You take HESI and your score is 10% of your grade.

Level 3 you have M/S II and Psych. Psych is not too bad, but you have to read the text and study just like anything else. M/S II is pretty hard. You only have to do 3 of the 18-20 page History and Assessments so you have more time to study. You also have another research paper and it will sink you of you mess up APA format...

Level 4 is a walk in the park compared to the rest of it. You have a nursing integration type class that is just writing a weekly summery of lecture and nobody fails out of this. second class is an easier version of the previous two M/S classes. Have to score an 850 on HESI in order to graduate.

You also have clinicals every semester.... it is 60 hrs the first semester, 60 hrs second semester, 140 hrs third semester and 190 hrs 4th semester.

sophie<3 · Dec 12, 2009

see i have heard many, many bad things about eku's nursing program and i work in the skills lab so i see a lot of first hand things that are just really not fair but i believe that most of the instructors have good intentions. i do not think they personally seek out people to fail but i do agree their structure on tests and lectures are disorganized. this semester a student in level 1 had failed a check-off..she went to re-do her check-off and failed it again for a different reason. her third and final shot, she did everything perfect but one small (and easily corrected mistake) and they failed her again and she is now out of the program. i know in nursing there are lives in your hands and you cannot make mistakes..but i felt so sorry for that girl because working in the lab i see many people slide under the radar that shouldn't. i see people who get lucky in the skills check off because an instructor will look over something important and they will pass. a girl did a transfer on me last semester from bed to chair and did not even have the gait belt secured around my waist enough..had i been a real patient, if i were to fall i would have probably been injured. but the instructor didn't see that and so she slid by. i have seen people get lucky enough to draw the skill they know and breathe a sigh of relief that they didn't pull NG or IV. in my opinion, you should know how to do every skill! i see people every day who do not take nursing seriously and i see people who take it very seriously and do not pass. i think what eku is TRIYNG to do is weed out the people who aren't in it for the right reasons and sometimes they are entirely too tough and the wrong people are punished. it worries me because i have already been at eku for 4 years and i am not even accepted into the program yet. i applied last semester and was declined because my doctor had ran my hep b titer incorrectly and when this was pointed out to me i supplied documentation that i was IMMUNE to hep b! there were 20 spots open in the bsn program, i had everything else (good gpa, all prereqs completed, all other immunizations up to date)..but because of someone else's mistake i got the boot. i am nervous that eku was a mistake and that it will take much longer to get through then any other nursing school but i feel i have invested so much time and am hoping to be in it for the long haul. if i get in the bsn program i am going to make it my life until graduation, we will see how far that gets me! good luck to all of you!

lucy247 · Dec 13, 2009

Can you tell me what instructors that I do not want to get that way I might be able to change my classes if I have one?

Columnist · Dec 13, 2009

please remember to not discuss instructors on the public board by name. the terms of service (rules of the site) states

no potentially libelous information about specific schools, instructors, or health care facilities/entities should be posted in these forums. while it is important to be able to network, everyone should be mindful of the following:
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while allnurses.com is a wonderful place to vent (without excess personally identifiable details) it is not the place to express why ("x" specific person, place or program) is terrible. gripe away, but since we cannot permit allegations to be made about named entities, your care in not naming them is very much appreciated.
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it is better to communicate this type of information via private message. members can send private messages once they have 15 posts.

sugarbush · Dec 13, 2009

We don't get a choice in classes and professors; you have to take the class with the professors who teach it.