Nursing School App Updates!

"Hey sorry__(name of friend)___ for being MIA, I've been____(insert some lame excuse here)____ "...

I feel like this has been my reply to everyone for the past few months! I just wanted to update you all on my life, since I feel like I've been pretty MIA on the blogosphere lately.

I've been in the process of applying to nursing schools since August of 2013. I applied to a handful of "accelerated second-degree" nursing programs, which are specifically for people like me who already have a non-nursing degree in another field. Instead of going to college again for 4 years to get another bachelor's degree, these programs let students receive a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in about 12-18 months. Pretty cool!

I applied to 5 different schools, all of which had different deadlines, ranging from late August to late January of this year. To say I had planned extensively might be an understatement. Since October of 2012, I've had a spreadsheet going of nursing schools I was interested in, ranked by program type, location, required prerequisites, etc, etc, etc. I'll probably have a separate post about this process, so for now, I'll leave you with this: I've been dreaming about, and planning for, nursing school for a while.  

You thought I was kidding about the spreadsheet...

Well, my crazy application season is finally over with, and I wanted to share the news! I was--and still am--shocked and excited and overwhelmed to have received acceptance letters from all five schools to which I applied:

 Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA)
MGH Institute of Health Professions (Boston, MA)
University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
Duke University (Durham, NC) and
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD)

So now comes the "easy" part (which has actually proved to be incredibly difficult): picking a school!

Each of these schools had their pros and cons. I won't bore you with the details. Unless you really want to know, which in that case just FB me/ text me/ email me/ leave me a comment below!  While I'm still deciding, I've pretty much narrowed my choices down to two schools:

and

... So it's between Duke and Johns Hopkins. 
I've already visited Duke-- I had to fly in and interview for the program-- and I'm planning a trip to Baltimore in a few weeks. I'm hoping that I'll have a final decision after my trip to Charm City!

Which school do you think I'll eventually pick?! Comment below!