The West Chester University of Pennsylvania

I have been taking graduate courses for sometime and will be finishing in school health as I have too much going on in my personal life to commit to the rigors of the MSN program. I would like to say that I thoroughly enjoy the professors and the classes in both departments. I have an Associate's from Community College, a Widener BSN and a certificate from Immaculata. I can honestly say that the staff at WCU has been the most helpful and committed to helping me meet my goals as a working professional.

I went to an enormous research university for undergrad where I was a number and the professors could not have cared less about me. That said my graduate experience at WCU has been was better than I even expected. They actually offer Grad Assistant positions that pay tuition and give a small- very small but better that nothing stipend. While not really enough to live on by itself, you don't have to teach or anything- just research or support for faculty. This is my 4th semester being a GA and for the first time I am feeling a little overworked by one person- but it is nothing compared to friends of mine in other programs. I have really only had 1 mediocre class- and I am done with my coursework-and honestly it might have mostly been due to the subject matter and my personal tastes.

I did not rate things in terms of campus life, because I commute from 45 mins away. I could see myself as an undergrad being underwhelmed by the social scene on campus-but I wish I had not had so much to do at my undergrad institution- I would probably have studied harder. As a graduate student professors have always been more than available for me, very encouraging and inspiring. But then again as a grad student you get the cream of the crop professor-wise. Professors are also more than happy to help you work on things to get into conferences (which I have done multiple time thanks to faculty) and you can get good funding for travel- if you can prove you need it you can get up to $750 for a conference. You are also required to take a lit. theory course- which is soooo helpful and you should take it first, and an "intro to the profession" course that talks about applying to PhD programs, conferences, creative writing journals, teaching jobs etc. Thanks to interlibrary loan and a surprising availablity of library resources- for the price if you live in PA you would be a fool to go elsewhere.