WNY Nursing programs advice beware of ECC

[rgodfrey]

One thing you should never do as a student who aspires to be a Nurse is to give up on your dream. And my experience at Erie Community College North Campus in Buffalo, NY taught me this.

One thing I took for granted with Nursing programs was retention rates (not necessarily NCLEX pass scores). But with Retention rates....how many people actually graduate from ECC who start. They'll start with 100 plus 10 lpns, and they will end will 45-50, and they'll lose the majority between the 2nd and 3rd semesters. Honestly im a firm believer that there is no such thing as a bad student, but bad teache, and ECC has plenty of them.

Also ECC is known for lying to their students.... they claim to have a 98% pass rate on the NCLEX exam......... In fact the board scores for this school the year I graduated in 2010 was actually 83% (only about 15% lower than what they told us lol)...... The instructors claim that "very rarely, do we have someone not make it to the end...we'll lose about 10-15", when reality is they lose close to half the class.

The School is also lying about their accrediation status. They claimed in 2010 that the schools accrediation was good for 7 years, reality check:........... they're on probationary status and are in jeporady of losing their accrediation because of the following:

- declining NCLEX Pass Rates, extremely low retention rates at the city campus, and pretty low at North, and not enough faculty....also poor facilities Rumor has it (pretty true since I heard this from several students that are there now).....that they also dont even have enough staff to send all their students to clinicals next year because of budget constraints. I has complaints about the program when I was in it let alone mainly about the exams: they were unfair, the questions were all arguable, and we couldnt even dispute the answers. Also Exam reviews were a joke.....they just put on an overhead and we see the answers and thats it.....they also give No rationales. Nobody in this program has ever gotten an A, or even an A- since it is a 97% and 95% respectively, and the majority of the program ends up in the c, c+ range..... and this will hurt you when you decide to go on for you're BSN, and you're applying for schools.

I left this school in 2008 after a very unsuccessful run. I failed my third semester because I had scheduling conflicts with my clinicals for level 3, I was a evening track student and I was forced to do day track clinicals and I failed because of fatigue mainly, ....because I work the graveyard shift at a hospital and had to go to clinicals the next morning.... and the department chair Patti Lositio told me "maybe I should drop out" after pleading my case.....luckily i only failed the lecture/theory portion

the next year, I applied at Trocaire (I had to start all over) and passed with a 3.5 gpa, and graduated with my A.A.S, and passed my boards on the first attempt....granted their are dark spots about Trocaire, (there are a few nasty instructors, and the cost)...but its worth it because they provided me with the resources to be successful. After exams we get to sit down and speak with our instructor to see what went wrong on the exam, and we get rationales for the tests. There is an arguable question here and there, but the exam questions were fair and literate......

Overall the message from my experience is beware of some Nursing programs, ....College is still a business, ......and do you're research .....pay attention to retention rates as well because honestly: what good is NCLEX pass rates if you have a 50% chance to even make it through the program.... and if you're unsuccessful, go to another school if you can .....and by the way, I strongly suggest you take you're pre-reqs at one school and transfer into another if possible so if you flunk out of a nursing school, the school that has your transcript that you used to apply to school isnt tarnished by a failing grade..... sometimes it is the school or the program, and sometimes, some people who are unsuccessful are successful a second time

[jm08168]

Thanks for the post! I was going back and forth between ecc and trocaire. I decided in trocaire and I'm starting my prereqs (chemistry and A&P I) in two weeks!