October 12, 2024 • 8 mins
Your Grades are Either A's or F's - Advice on Prerequisites
In this episode, as I always do, I keep it brutally honest with you all about how serious your grades will be to getting accepted into nursing school. It's as serious as this - if you don't earn A's, you might as well earn F's. Not literally, but your grades are SUPER important. If you need some advice about your specific situation, send me an email at paramedic2rninfo@gmail.com. I am happy to help.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I was at work.
(00:04):
This happened about a couple of days ago and I ran into one of the patient care techs.
So a funny thing about when I'm at work, I wear a white coat and sometimes people can't
mistake me for being a doctor and always have to kind of correct them, say, hey, I'm not
a doctor, I'm a nurse.
(00:24):
This particular lady was about in her mid-40s and she said, you know, I was thinking about
going back to nursing school and becoming an RN.
And I said, maybe you should.
And I kind of gave her the kind of talk about how we needed more nurses and the shortage
(00:47):
and yada, yada, yada.
And she said, well, I'm trying to complete my prereqs now.
And I asked her, how was it going?
And she said, well, I'm trying to get it done as fast as I can because I feel like
I'm probably going to be the oldest person in class.
And I kind of told her, no, you know, don't worry about your age, but for your prereqs,
(01:13):
you know, you need to pay attention to them.
And so I just want to kind of give you some tips on your prereqs like I did her.
So welcome to my podcast.
So the conversation we had was specifically about your prereqs.
(01:37):
And I told her, I said, the approach that you need to have taking your prereqs is really,
you see the A's or F's.
And I kind of explained that in a bit.
So one of the things that you got to know before I even get to prereqs is why nursing
(01:58):
is so competitive, especially now.
And I mentioned this during our previous podcast that the shortage itself is not because we
don't want more nurses.
The shortage affects everyone in the nursing field.
It affects educators, staff nurses, supervisors, leadership, quality control.
(02:26):
Every area is being affected and it's gotten more enhanced because of COVID.
And keep in mind, if it affects educators, it's going to affect class size.
So where school mainly could admit 40 people per class, maybe because they had four instructors,
(02:46):
now they're down to two, they may be only able to admit 20.
So the competition is pretty stiff.
To give you an example, I talked about this in a previous podcast about how there's a
university that I know of that 75% of its enrollees in their nursing program don't even
(03:07):
come from the immediate area.
It comes from an area about an hour away.
And the mission of this university is to provide services in their city.
But when you have your nursing students that's coming from major universities one to two
hours away, they're graduating and going to serve their community, it's still leave
(03:30):
that community with a list of basically, it leaves them with a limited amount of healthcare
providers.
So even though their mission is to provide healthcare providers for that area, that's
not what's actually happening due to the competition.
(03:52):
So one of the first advices I gave her is that number one, your Y has to be strong.
School is not easy.
Anything is worthwhile having is not easy.
And I gave her my story and I just told her that I wanted to be a nurse as bad as I wanted
to breathe.
And so I was willing to drive an hour and a half away to class and clinicals and do
(04:17):
clinicals at night with the hour and a half drive back home is because I really wanted
to be a nurse.
So any problems that I would run into, it didn't really matter because I wanted to be
a nurse all better than what the problems presented.
So keep in mind, the first rule of your prereqs is it's either A's or S because your prereqs
(04:41):
are everything.
Number one, your prereqs even affect your score and the placement exam.
I took the T's test and the T's test, I think I had four areas.
I had math, I had science and I had grammar, but I remember the most, oh yeah, I had reading
too, reading comprehension.
(05:02):
So I had four areas, but I remember the science area being like the hardest because it had
chemistry, it had basic AMP, it had some microbiology.
So if you never took those courses, then you wouldn't score high on this placement exam
as someone who did take AMP, anatomy and physiology, they took biology, they've taken microbiology,
(05:25):
and they've taken chemistry.
So that's why your prereqs are important.
Now when I say A's or F's, one of the things about my journey that I'm appreciative of
is I say this story of how I wanted to be a PA.
I wasn't looking for nursing at first.
So I knew going to my first classes, I knew that I needed to make an A. Any other grade
(05:53):
just wasn't going to do.
To me, if it wasn't an A, it was an F. So I buckled down and advice that I gave her
is don't try to rush through your prereqs because you could hurt yourself.
The key to your prereqs to be competitive is to slow down.
If you slow down and take one prereq at a time and post your best score, then go on
(06:18):
to the next one because here's what happened.
Let's say for example, if you had two English's, both anatomy, anatomy, physiology, you had
both psychs and you had like the humanities.
If you're competing for slots, what beats an A?
Nothing.
A is the top.
(06:38):
So to be competitive, you need to be the number one competitor, which means you have to have
an A. If you go in with maybe one A and all B's, there's a chance that you might not
get a slot because people are going to come in where all A's is going to beat you.
So put yourself in a position to where you are one of the top selected, to be one of
(07:06):
the top selections for school.
So slow down.
To me, it makes sense to take one class a semester and get your prereqs out the way,
then to try to fly through your prereqs and post B's and C's and have to retake classes.
So that kind of gives you a little bit of something to help you when you start looking
(07:31):
at your prereqs.
My advice again, slow down, take one prereq at a time, especially the harder ones.
Some of the more easy ones, yeah, you may be to group them up, but especially for your
anatomy and physiology and your psych and your English, you might want to focus on taking
(07:51):
one class at a time.
And if you take that approach, you post all A's, then there would be no doubt you can
get into nursing school.
All right.
Thank you guys for joining me and hopefully you guys take my advice and I hope to see
you guys in nursing school and come out and help us out.
(08:12):
See you guys later.
Take care.
Bye!
I was at work.
(00:04):
This happened about a couple of days ago and I ran into one of the patient care techs.
So a funny thing about when I'm at work, I wear a white coat and sometimes people can't
mistake me for being a doctor and always have to kind of correct them, say, hey, I'm not
a doctor, I'm a nurse.
(00:24):
This particular lady was about in her mid-40s and she said, you know, I was thinking about
going back to nursing school and becoming an RN.
And I said, maybe you should.
And I kind of gave her the kind of talk about how we needed more nurses and the shortage
(00:47):
and yada, yada, yada.
And she said, well, I'm trying to complete my prereqs now.
And I asked her, how was it going?
And she said, well, I'm trying to get it done as fast as I can because I feel like
I'm probably going to be the oldest person in class.
And I kind of told her, no, you know, don't worry about your age, but for your prereqs,
(01:13):
you know, you need to pay attention to them.
And so I just want to kind of give you some tips on your prereqs like I did her.
So welcome to my podcast.
So the conversation we had was specifically about your prereqs.
(01:37):
And I told her, I said, the approach that you need to have taking your prereqs is really,
you see the A's or F's.
And I kind of explained that in a bit.
So one of the things that you got to know before I even get to prereqs is why nursing
(01:58):
is so competitive, especially now.
And I mentioned this during our previous podcast that the shortage itself is not because we
don't want more nurses.
The shortage affects everyone in the nursing field.
It affects educators, staff nurses, supervisors, leadership, quality control.
(02:26):
Every area is being affected and it's gotten more enhanced because of COVID.
And keep in mind, if it affects educators, it's going to affect class size.
So where school mainly could admit 40 people per class, maybe because they had four instructors,
(02:46):
now they're down to two, they may be only able to admit 20.
So the competition is pretty stiff.
To give you an example, I talked about this in a previous podcast about how there's a
university that I know of that 75% of its enrollees in their nursing program don't even
(03:07):
come from the immediate area.
It comes from an area about an hour away.
And the mission of this university is to provide services in their city.
But when you have your nursing students that's coming from major universities one to two
hours away, they're graduating and going to serve their community, it's still leave
(03:30):
that community with a list of basically, it leaves them with a limited amount of healthcare
providers.
So even though their mission is to provide healthcare providers for that area, that's
not what's actually happening due to the competition.
(03:52):
So one of the first advices I gave her is that number one, your Y has to be strong.
School is not easy.
Anything is worthwhile having is not easy.
And I gave her my story and I just told her that I wanted to be a nurse as bad as I wanted
to breathe.
And so I was willing to drive an hour and a half away to class and clinicals and do
(04:17):
clinicals at night with the hour and a half drive back home is because I really wanted
to be a nurse.
So any problems that I would run into, it didn't really matter because I wanted to be
a nurse all better than what the problems presented.
So keep in mind, the first rule of your prereqs is it's either A's or S because your prereqs
(04:41):
are everything.
Number one, your prereqs even affect your score and the placement exam.
I took the T's test and the T's test, I think I had four areas.
I had math, I had science and I had grammar, but I remember the most, oh yeah, I had reading
too, reading comprehension.
(05:02):
So I had four areas, but I remember the science area being like the hardest because it had
chemistry, it had basic AMP, it had some microbiology.
So if you never took those courses, then you wouldn't score high on this placement exam
as someone who did take AMP, anatomy and physiology, they took biology, they've taken microbiology,
(05:25):
and they've taken chemistry.
So that's why your prereqs are important.
Now when I say A's or F's, one of the things about my journey that I'm appreciative of
is I say this story of how I wanted to be a PA.
I wasn't looking for nursing at first.
So I knew going to my first classes, I knew that I needed to make an A. Any other grade
(05:53):
just wasn't going to do.
To me, if it wasn't an A, it was an F. So I buckled down and advice that I gave her
is don't try to rush through your prereqs because you could hurt yourself.
The key to your prereqs to be competitive is to slow down.
If you slow down and take one prereq at a time and post your best score, then go on
(06:18):
to the next one because here's what happened.
Let's say for example, if you had two English's, both anatomy, anatomy, physiology, you had
both psychs and you had like the humanities.
If you're competing for slots, what beats an A?
Nothing.
A is the top.
(06:38):
So to be competitive, you need to be the number one competitor, which means you have to have
an A. If you go in with maybe one A and all B's, there's a chance that you might not
get a slot because people are going to come in where all A's is going to beat you.
So put yourself in a position to where you are one of the top selected, to be one of
(07:06):
the top selections for school.
So slow down.
To me, it makes sense to take one class a semester and get your prereqs out the way,
then to try to fly through your prereqs and post B's and C's and have to retake classes.
So that kind of gives you a little bit of something to help you when you start looking
(07:31):
at your prereqs.
My advice again, slow down, take one prereq at a time, especially the harder ones.
Some of the more easy ones, yeah, you may be to group them up, but especially for your
anatomy and physiology and your psych and your English, you might want to focus on taking
(07:51):
one class at a time.
And if you take that approach, you post all A's, then there would be no doubt you can
get into nursing school.
All right.
Thank you guys for joining me and hopefully you guys take my advice and I hope to see
you guys in nursing school and come out and help us out.
(08:12):
See you guys later.
Take care.
Bye!
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