I’m just starting to look at nursing schools to gather information. It seems many of the nursing programs are more competitive to get into then the general admission rates of the college would indicate. Does anyone know how to get details on acceptance rates into the actual (direct entry) nursing programs vs. into the school?
Thanks!
That info is typically not published. Sometimes persons are told by admissions officials, and they have posted info about a particular college on this site.
Yes, in almost all cases, the nursing program is more competitive for admission than the general student population.
we called most of the schools and asked what size is the nursing program, confirmed direct admit, how many get accepted, how many accept. what are you looking for? here are my dd stats so what do you think? do you give preference to in-state? How far are the clinics and what type of clinics? Do you take into consideration if student visited the school when deciding who to admit? etc At some schools, i spoke to nursing dept and others i spoke to admissions. Depends how they are set up. But even one dean at the nursing school talked to me and was really open and nice.
some schools (non direct admit) have programs that could last 4.5 yrs. Good to know… and some of the non-direct have various criteria if you get into nursing or not and we asked those stats. Some had interviews, some had tests, some required you to make a video. All so different. DId apply to 2 non-direct as back up but found the direct entry wasn’t as bad as we thought.
this was helpful in determining what schools to apply to. Most websites did not have all the info and traveling was too hard.
I never went to this trouble with my other kids but we are clueless on the whole nursing and thanks to the forum here, we learned a lot about direct vs non direct etc…
For a non-direct entry school, it is really important to know how many applied for how many seats and their average GPA.
For a direct entry school, you can be a little less worried about some of those numbers. Some colleges will say that 1,000 high school students applied for 100 nursing major seats. However, they may have accepted 300 students in order to get 100 students enrolled. That is because the typical student applies to multiple programs. There is a big difference between a 30% admission rate and a 10% admission rate.
You just have to email or call the nursing admission. If you have a chance, try to sign up for a tour / info session specifically for the college’s nursing department. Ask all the questions that the other posters above me have said,
how many applied,
how many seats are available,
what are the admitted students’ high school GPA & SAT etc,
do they look for students who have taken many AP classes or IB or dual enrollment classes?
what college GPA is required to stay in the program,
where are the clinical locations & other questions you may have.
Also nursing programs will have extra lab fees &/or clinical fees that you need to keep in mind.
Do you have a few colleges in mind or are you looking for a private college or a state college?
Most colleges do charge extra tuition and fees for nursing students. Those costs often are not easily found on the admissions portions of the websites. For some colleges, it can cost $3K or more a year above the base tuition, usually during the last 2 years.
It is good to know how hard it is to graduate in 4 years. My daughter’s nursing program requires 128 credits, and many students take 4.5 years. Most scholarships, state grants and financial aid dollars are only good for 8 semesters, so an extra semester or two at full list price can be expensive.
Thanks everyone! I will be looking at east coast schools - mostly New England region. I did not realize this information would be such a well guarded secret : ) I am attending an event in April with central MA nursing colleges so I will try to start collecting some of this data there.
That is due to a student taking less than the standard course load and/or failing a course and needing to repeat it.
@Tink2019
At our local state U, each year 700-750 freshmen indicate Nursing for their desired major, but the College of Nursing only accepts 260 Nursing students per year. So the 35-40% acceptance rate is way lower than the 77% gen adm rate.
My daughter got accepted into a program called RIBN as a HS Senior. She was accepted immediately into the Nursing program, instead of having to sweat out the first two years of University wondering if she would make the cut. She is dual-enrolled at the Univ and the local community college, spends the first 3 years at the CC getting her Assoc in Nursing, and finishes the BSN in Year 4 at the Univ. It will be a fraction of the cost of what the already-inexpensive state U would have been. This program has been really great for her.
Because my daughter’s nursing program requires 128 credits, the college offers two choices: 1) a 4 year program where students have to take 17 credits some semesters and have to take one course during half of a summer, or 2) a 4.5 year program where students do not have to take more than 15 credits per semester and do not have to take any summer classes.
Fortunately, my daughter had some AP credits and was able to take two non-nursing classes at home over the summers, so her course load is reasonable. However, many other students do have trouble taking two challenging science classes with labs in one semester, or need to work many hours at paid jobs during the school year, and therefore can’t handle 17 credits.
Therefore a number of students do take longer than 4 years. One advantage of her college’s 4.5 year option is that if a student in the 4 year program does need to re-take a course, they can fall back into the 4.5 year program. At some other nursing programs, a student who needs to re-take a class may have to take a year to retake it, which may push them into 5 years until graduation. This is because many nursing classes need to be completed in order.
Some nursing programs require a B or higher for nursing classes vs. many other non-nursing majors will let a student move ahead with a C.
At some large universities for non-nursing majors, some students had trouble graduating within 4 years because they had trouble getting into the classes they needed each year. That is probably not a problem for nursing schools because they limit their total enrollment.
My daughter’s program requires her to take 2-3 classes each summer for 3 years. So technically it’s a 4-year program, but that’s stretching the definition. Fortunately it’s at the community college so it is still affordable.
Check out their website to see any stats they provide
UPenn: 10%
UCLA: 2%
UC Irvine: 3.5%
@Charliesch Uh, it’s not difficult at all to graduate in 4 years. And honestly, I don’t know that many people who took longer. My parents made it very clear to me that I had 4 years to finish my degree. I started college in the Fall of 2013, transferred after 2 years and lost a lot of credits setting me back to sophomore status. However, I loaded, took extra classes at the local community college, took summer classes, and I am now set to graduate in the Spring of 2017 again, just like I was at my old college.
Students need to make it their priority to finish on time. Taking longer than 4 years is inconsiderate to whoever’s paying for their education whether it’s their family, an employer, or the school. And it’s not difficult at all. Had I not transferred, I’d probably be graduating early.
I’m glad my son graduated in 4 years and my daughter is on track to graduate in 4 years. If a student needs a 5th year, it can often be extremely expensive, because many types of need based and merit aid are only good for 8 semesters. Also, many families run out of college savings after 4 years, so much more expensive private loans are needed.