<p>My kid felt having a committed pattern of hospital volunteering helped her applications a lot. In the beginning the volunteer jobs didn’t seem like they would add much to a resume. By the time she was a senior, the hospital knew her well and she was getting some really great experiences. A doctor offered to let her watch open heart surgery, for example. (She usually went to the hospital for 4-5 hours on a Saturday or Sunday morning.)</p>
<p>She also volunteered with a health care charity, and tracked down some nursing shadowing experiences for her resume. My daughter didn’t have any clubs or sports. When she came home from school she either helped to care for an ill family member or worked for a discount store. </p>
<p>She also used SAT and ACT review books starting with sophomore year. She felt that they helped her add about 20-30 points to her scores (at least from the first sample tests that she took in the books). She got used books on Amazon. If nothing else, the practice tests helped alleviate any test anxiety.</p>
<p>Starting in Jr year, she was able to dual enroll in our local community college. Our high school is highly competitive and supposedly one of the top schools in our state. The guidance office told her she could leave school early and go to the community college. She didn’t want to give up high school time, so she would enroll just for one evening class each semester and then pick up a class or two in the summers of her Junior and Senior years. She enrolled for the types of college prereqs that were easier to knock off (English 101, Sociology 101, Psychology 101, Philosophy, History, etc.). This looked good on her resume too, and by the time she went off to college she had accrued more than a semester of prereq credits. This meant that she was able to either add a minor or take lighter semesters when the schedule was going to have some really tough classes. The grades in those classes will someday be folded into a post-grad GPA for graduate school admissions.</p>
<p>Take a look at the admissions requirements for the schools on your lists. You’ll see a pattern of prereqs, particularly for sciences, math and often 3 years of a language. Spanish is always good for nursing, although my kid chose German. Interestingly, her first non-English speaking patient was from Eastern Europe, and her German came in handy!</p>
<p>Your GPA should be as high as you can get it, obviously. Sometimes a school will disclose the admissions profile of its admitted students, but sometimes it won’t. GPA is going to be important for scholarships too. If you are applying to a school with a 2+2 program, you are typically able to rely on the profile for admitted students. However, you will have to apply to the nursing program in your sophomore year, will have to worry about your college GPA and will have to meet the program’s prerequsities. If you apply to a 0-4 program to get into nursing as a freshman, typically the programs are much more selective than the admissions stats for the freshman class. Sometimes the nursing school will tell you the profile for their admitted students, but sometimes they won’t. We heard from at least one nursing school at a college that admitted students with GPAs of 3.4 that the nursing school’s average GPA was 3.6, for example. </p>
<p>When you get to Junior year, I also suggest going to open houses at the schools. The nursing schools will typically have open houses that show their facilities and answer questions. Since nursing is a school-within-a-school, the nursing open houses were particularly important to get the feel of a program. My kid got to meet nursing students at each school to ask them about the best and worst things at their school, and in her nursing school application was able to articulate why she was applying to School X . </p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
very helpful</p>