Is an Ivy-League Nursing school even worth it? Plus I need some advice too

[dfrecore]

As is my habit, I advise nursing questions to be redirected to allnurses.com where there are hundreds of thousands of nurses. Important life choices need more qualified opinions that what are found here. Just to clarify, I include myself as part of the group that you need to go outside of. There are relatively few nurses posting here.

One of my master's degrees is from one of those prestigious nursing schools where the name is a single word immediately recognizable. My other nursing degrees are from a state university in the top 5% nationally.

Don't spend your money on an extremely expensive private nursing school. Or a state university with expensive out of state tuition if you are out of state. The advice about going the cheapest route possible is wrong. It makes good sense to go to an affordable, good university affiliated with a large medical center.

You need to have good clinical experiences. There are very clear differences in clinical experiences. It works kind of like this. The top rated universities in a large city have their students working the day shift at top tier hospitals. The second tier universities have their students working the night shift. The night shift has somewhat of a tendency to limit the clinical experiences because the goal is to have the patients sleep. The community college students might not get any clinical experiences at the top hospitals. They are unlikely to see the most complex and varied cases.

If I'm interviewing a new graduate, I care about the school only because it tells me about the experience. If I'm interviewing an experienced nurse, all I care about are the clinical experiences at work.

Clinical experiences matter. Get the best clinical experiences from an affordable public university.

First, I've been to allnurses.com, and it is the WORST!  Ugh.  If anything will make you not want to be a nurse, it's the thought of working with people like that on that forum!

Second, I live in a large city (San Diego), and I can tell you that our public 4yr universities do not offer RN's; the BEST and cheapest way to get an RN or ADN in CA is through a CC.  Here in SD, we have 3 public universities, and NONE of them offer an RN; but each of the community college districts offers an RN/ADN on one of it's campuses, so there are 5 options.  We also have private schools that offer an RN, but they are VERY expensive; the CC's charge about $5000 start-to-finish, while the private schools are closer to $45,000.

So, while you may say that you should go to a 4yr school, that may not be the best option, depending on where you live.  I agree that clinical experiences are important; but just because a school is a CC does NOT mean they don't offer great clinical experiences (our CC's all offer daytime clinicals only).