Vanderbilt Program

I graduated from the combined ANP/GNP program a few years ago. I went to another school to get my post-Master's certification as a FNP. I live in TX and I can tell you that I've landed every job I've interviewed for and it had EVERYTHING to do with me graduating from Vanderbilt. However, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they've got the $$$ to pay for it without taking out a loan. Fortunately, I just had to go one year b/c I was already a BSN. I was a distance student, so I had to pay for airfare, hotels, restaurants, etc (this was very expensive). Also, they are misleading people when they say you can work fulltime and attend their accelerated program...it is NOT possible! I had to finish close to 800 clinical hours in one year plus the trips to Nashville...where's the time for a job? Another thing, I remember there were a lot of nurses there who had a big problem with the students who were non-nurses. Frankly, I didn't care, but I thought it was really weird when we were all starting our clinical rotations and some of them hadn't even taken the NCLEX yet! In fact, before going to Vanderbilt, I had never even heard of a NP program that accepted non-nurses. If someone is truly an Advanced Practice Nurse, then the general public is going to assume they actually have experience as a nurse first! Also, I remember the non-nurses complaining that they were treated very poorly by the staff where they did clinicals, specifically b/c they hadn't put their time in as nurses. Although, I never heard about docs treating them poorly.