Nursing School Admissions

The difficulty in getting into nursing school ebbs and flows but for the near future it looks like it will be harder, rather than easier to get in. Why is this?

New words: nursing shortage. Which isn’t so much a nursing shortage as it is a nursing faculty shortage. The real bottleneck is that schools can attract and keep faculty members.

This is undoubtedly in no small part because most experienced nurses can make more money as a floor nurse than they can as teachers.

Some schools report waiting lists as long as 6 years.

Don’t despair though, future nurse, there are ways of increasing your chances.

First, find out the weighting of the admission criteria for the schools you most want to attend. Some schools rely more on standardized test scores, some on grade point average from high school or past college work, some on community service. If you’re weak in the area the school weighs most heavily, there are steps to take.

For example, if your standardized test scores are low, take a test prep course. These can be very expensive, so before you put your hard earned money down, ask for statistics about score improvements. Many schools offer a guarantee, such as, "either increase your test score by a certain number of points or they will give you your money back." If you are headed to nursing school, money spent on improving your ability to take multiple choice format exams is money well spent. Many nursing school exams are a multiple choice format, while the NCLEX exam is nearly all multiple choice.

If you think your grades might be decreasing your chances of gaining admission, take a few pre-nursing classes at a local community college where there is a good tutoring program, so you can get any extra help you might need. This shows both initiative and that you are perfectly capable of doing college level work.

Doing community service, especially in the medical or health care area, is another excellent way to show that you have what it takes to be a nurse.

If you’re getting increasingly frustrated, cruise on over to discovernursing.com again. They reserve a section of their site for students to learn about the many nursing programs that don’t have a waiting list.