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2025 Application Guide

Welcome, pre-nursing students! The 2025 application cycle is a bit different from past application years. The following describes a brief overview about the expectations regarding this year's application and provides tips to help create your application. Good luck!

01

Personal Statement

Here are the questions for BSN. They are different from the prompts in the ABSN application.

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Respond to ALL questions below: 

  1. Describe your specific healthcare experience and how it has prepared you for the nursing program. Respond in 500 words or less.

  2. Cultural humility is an essential aspect of healthcare and nursing. Three principles of cultural humility include: 

    1. Encompassing lifelong learning and critical self-reflection​

    2. Recognizing the mitigating power imbalances in the healthcare system

    3. Promoting institutional accountability​

      Describe a healthcare experience when you worked with a patient, family, community, or population different from yourself.

      Explain how you applied these 3 principles of cultural humility in that situation. What did you learn from this experience that will 

      help you become a professional nurse caring for diverse populations? Respond in 500 words or less.

  3. What does anti-racism mean to you? How do you think it would impact your role as a nursing student and your future nursing

      practice? Respond in 500 words or less.

  4. Effective feedback is crucial in healthcare as it enhances personal and professional growth. Describe a situation in your

      academic or professional life where you received constructive feedback. How did you respond to the feedback, and what steps

      did you take to implement it? How has this experience influenced your approach to learning and navigating interpersonal

      relationships? Respond in 500 words or less.

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Tips: 

  • Focus on strong examples that illustrate each prompt. A popular format involves using providing one example for each prompt  

  • Make sure to answer the prompt: 

    • (Popular error: turning your weakness into a strength --> this does not answer the question of your weakness. Instead, this provides two strengths.)

    • Be vulnerable! 

  • For the cultural humility prompt, pre-nursing students may find it beneficial to research the term "cultural humility" and gain an understanding via reading articles, blogs, nursing and medicine-related pages, or watching informative videos. 

  • Avoid: 

    • Not answering the prompt / answering the prompt incompletely 

    • Swearing 

    • Placing blame onto others / pointing out other people's flaws 

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  • Guiding questions: 

    • What did you learn from this experience?

    • How does what you learn apply to being a strong nurse in the future? 

    • How will this characteristic benefit your future patients and the nursing/medical field? And why?

    • What will you do to ensure patient empowerment? 

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*** The ABSN personal statement will consist of FIVE questions. Updates TBD. 

The due date for the ABSN application is OCTOBER 15th, 2024. ***

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02

Experience and Training

The Resume is now called “Experience and Training.” You do not need to upload a PDF. Instead, fill out boxes that pertain the Healthcare/Relevant Experience, Leadership, Community Involvement, Language Proficiencies and Certificates/Trainings.

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Requirements:

  • 100 hours of healthcare or service experience within a 3-month span

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Other Sections:

  • Community Involvement 

  • Leadership/Training

  • Healthcare Training, Licenses, or Certificates

  • Non-English Language Proficiency
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Formatting: 

  • 200 word count for each activity/experience

  • There are no requirements regarding using listing bullet points or writing a descriptive paragraph. Use whichever format you think that best illustrates the roles and responsibilities in your role as it applies to the nursing field. 

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Tips: 

  • Highlight your leadership / communication skills / strong moments at the beginning of your roles/responsibilities

  • Use phrases similar to: 

    • "assisted nurses with..." / "aided nurses with" / "work with nurses to..." / "observe nurses..."

    • "provide hands-on training for..." / "communicate with family" / "took lead role in..." 

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Guiding questions: 

  • What characteristics do you have that would make you a good nurse? 

  • What strong characteristics/attributes can you bring to the nursing field?

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03

Optional Statement 

Use only for transcript discrepancies, i.e., gaps in education (gap years, gap quarters), poor grades, multiple withdrawals, retaken classes, etc. This is optional and NOT graded. Your optional statement should be no more than 300 words.

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It is strongly advised to avoid writing why you want to be a nurse in this section. This section is generally for advisors to understand transcript discrepancies.

04

Letter of Recommendation

1. It is advised to meet up with your chosen Letter of Recommendation person and discuss the questions/prompts on the template. It is not required to sit down with them, but it may be easier to write a strong recommendation letter when they have more information about you. ​

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Guiding questions/prompts 

  • What are your strengths and weaknesses? 

  • What are good examples that illustrate these while gaining experience? ​​

  • Your examples do not necessarily have had to occur while you were working with that specific LOR person. It can be experiences with other nurses/professional staff/patients 

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2. Your LOR person DOES NOT have to be a nurse. It is best to choose someone who can write about you in a way that tells the application reviewer that you will be a good fit for the nursing program and the nursing profession. While the best person to talk to about the roles and responsibilities of a nurse would be a nurse, there are many other supervisory roles that can still provide very informative letter or recommendations. 

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3. Below is a list of people to consider as valuable people to ask for your LOR, however, this is just a brief list. Anyone that has observed you while working/volunteering/during your experience and training are highly recommended. 

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  • Nurses you work with/see on a regular basis (ADN, BSN, MSN does not matter) 

  • Charge nurse 

  • Nurse manager 

  • Work manager 

  • Work supervisor 

  • Mentor 

  • Teacher / professor / research (principal investigator) 

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05

Important Notes:

1. Applications for the 2024 BSN cohort are now CLOSED. We anticipate that applications for BSN 2025 will launch sometime in October 2023. The application deadline will be 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on January 15, 2025 to begin study the following autumn. Students can also RSVP for our Information. 

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2. Applications for the ABSN are due at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Oct. 15th, 2024 to begin study Spring or Autumn quarter 2025.

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