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Thursday, August 8, 2013

Southwest Business-Part 1-Admission To Nursing School

SW Business
Studying/testing


Let's start all the way at the beginning.




ADMISSION TO THE NURSING SCHOOL

Here are a couple of bulletin board discussions about what criteria are needed to get in:

SW Acceptance Process

But why believe what they say when you can have the official word? Here you go...

Nursing Department

There is a rubric for admission




First criterion is your grades in THREE of the prereqs (although more are required, these are the ones they look at):
A&P 1, A&P 2 and Microbiology. Having As is important. I have heard of people getting in with a C in one of them. I am pretty sure it's really hard to get in with a C in ALL of them. The more As, the more points toward your final score. I applied for nursing school while I was still taking A&P 2 and got in. My friend who was taking A&P 2 with me didn't know you could do this and is consequently graduating a year behind me. But you may not get in that year, anyway and have to apply again when all your prereqs are done.

Next criterion is the NLN score

Here is official SW information about sitting the exam



The NLN is basic math, English and science. It's not hard. I called the testing center on a Monday and asked when the next sitting was and was told Friday. I had exactly 4 days to prepare and got a 146. SW wants 100 or above. You are better off with 120 or above, in reality. Again, one point could be the difference between you being accepted and someone else being accepted.



Of COURSE there are study guides. Practice always helps, but this is not a hard test.









Next criterion is your GPA- again- the higher the better. Gaze fondly on your pre-admission GPA, it will never be that high again.

Lastly, you are expected to write an essay about, "Why I Want To Be A Nurse". Mine was awful.

TIP:

How many people DON'T actually read information given by the university?



read it!!!

Here's a possibility to help pay for this endeavor:



Since I mentioned prereqs, let's talk a little about that. Do everything in your power to get them all  (A&P 1, A&P 2, microbiology, nutrition, psych, stats, English comp1) done BEFORE you start nursing school. You won't believe me when I tell you that ONE nursing class will consume ALL your time. That being said, I am scared of math and avoided stats for a really long time. I ended up having to take it in third semester. I took peds first so the easy part of stats was during the more difficult class and the harder part of stats was during mental health which was the easier part of the semester. The fact that I found a stats class easy and a welcome break from nursing should tell you something. One of my classmates had to do prereqs in the last semester and got no sleep whatsoever. Way too difficult to do. Take them in the summer if necessary, but do try to get them out of the way.

Some of the prereqs can be done via the CLEP test


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