Nursing students currently face a more competitive application process for admission into nursing school due to an increased number of applicants for fall 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cancellation of Harding\u2019s study abroad programs the past few semesters caused many students that had planned to be a semester behind to now apply to nursing school on schedule, making this semester\u2019s application class larger than normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re only allowed a limited number of slots,\u201d Greg Brooks, assistant dean of student affairs for Carr College of Nursing, said. \u201cIf we could take more nurses we would \u2014 the world needs more nurses. We\u2019re limited, though, in how many places we can send students for clinical.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The application includes background checks, reference letters and academic records, according to sophomore Kayla Cesone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t realize how competitive it was going to be,\u201d sophomore Jaylee Poindexter said. \u201cI definitely could have worked on my grades my freshman year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If students do not get in initially, they have a few options: transfer to another school\u2019s nursing program, retake classes for a better chance or take a semester off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey also have conditional admission, so you take some classes from nursing school, and then you\u2019re also retaking some other classes from pre-nursing,\u201d Cesone said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These options come with their own challenges, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt affects your scholarships,\u201d Poindexter said. \u201cIf you\u2019re a semester behind, your academic scholarships run out before you\u2019re done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Carr College of Nursing is not the only program on campus with a very competitive application process. According to Angela Sivia, admissions director for Harding\u2019s Physician Assistant (PA) program, the program can only accept 36 students a year, while it receives around 700 applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn the U.S., there\u2019s 267 PA schools,\u201d Sivia said. \u201cSo by default, every school is getting hundreds of applications \u2014 but they can only take so many.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Providing clinical sites is also a challenge for the program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou have to be really intentional about developing those sites and maintaining them so that you can provide that clinical piece of the training,\u201d Mary Madill, program director, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the World Health Organization, there is a global shortage of nurses. At the same time, according to the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, U.S. nursing schools turned away over 80,000 qualified applicants for the 2019-2020 year \u2014 mostly attributed to a shortage of nurse educators. PAs are also under high demand, having been listed as number one in the top 100 best jobs of 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harding\u2019s PA program has a five-year, first-time pass rate of 95% for the Physician Assistant National Certifying Exam, and the Carr College of Nursing is ranked first in the state with a 100% passing rate for the National Council Licensure Examination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nursing students currently face a more competitive application process for admission into nursing school due to an increased number of applicants for fall 2021. The cancellation of Harding\u2019s study abroad…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15192,"featured_media":15795,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15192"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15796,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15794\/revisions\/15796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}