my son was accepted by penn state nursing program and purdue nursing program with honor college acceptance. We initially were very excited about the honor college acceptance, since only 10% freshman were accepted, but after campus visitation, we were so impressed by the new nursing school building on Penn state campus, and purdue nursing school building looks much less impressive since it is old and small, but the honor college building on purdue campus was very nice. Now it is very hard to make a decision, going to top program without honor college, or going to a lesser nursing school with honor. Anyone has experience or idea, how important to go to reputable program vs honor college? especially he wants to do master degree to become NP
I ran into a similar situation with our daughter, who was also accepted into PSU Nursing at UP. Gaining acceptance to any direct-entry nursing program is quite the feat. At our Spend-a-Day event at PSU, the nursing program told us they receive roughly 1500 to 1600 applications for 140 spots each year…so less than a 10% acceptance rate. We were totally prepared (and willing) to go to Erie or Altoona, so getting into UP was a nice surprise and we turned down other offers (and scholarships) from other schools.
To answer your question in a nutshell, Purdue and PSU both have name recognition. Our family spoke to someone who recruits for hospital systems and he said most hiring managers just want to know you passed the NCLEX exam. You may want to compare the first time pass rates between the two schools – and if they are roughly the same, consider going with the least expensive school. If he’s going to grad school, he might as well not accumulate a ton of debt at the undergrad level.
You may also consider looking at the hospitals in the area to get a sense of where he might do his clinicals. PSU requires UP students to go to Hershey for a year. While some students love the idea of doing clinicals at Hershey (my kid fantasizes about working in their new pediatric ER) others see relocating their senior year as a big negative. Purdue seems to have a handful of hospitals within a close vicinity of the school, so maybe he wouldn’t need to relocate his final year??? I would ask Purdue where the clinicals take place to see if he can get experience in a trauma 1 hospital. As you know, UP is in a very rural area of central PA so we don’t always see a ton of action in our local hospital.
Hope this helps. Sorry for the long-winded response.