Also, if you are not a hardcore Christian, stay away from this school!  I am nondenominational/atheist (yet, completely respectful of a person's choice to be religious) and being forced to take a minimum of 9 credit hours of Christian theology in order to graduate is not only a huge annoyance in my life, but it takes away from the time, effort and resources I could be utilizing to become a competent nurse!  Hence, why the board passing rate is so low perhaps?  As a Jesuit institution, SHC requires a lot of courses that I don't find useful or interesting, but the requirements I find most detrimental to prospective nurses are: 9 hours of theology, 9 hours of philosophy, 9 hours of english and 9 hours of a foreign language.  These courses require the same amount of time and effort as any of my other classes; teachers don't make these annoying required classes an easy A, they are relatively hard!  If you're not a die-hard Christian, (like myself) that ridiculous amount of theology is going to piss you off and lower your GPA (I'd have a 4.0 if it wasn't for that damn theology class I got a B in!). 

I had the preconception that SHC was a ?party school that still maintained a high caliber of academic rigor,?  which sounded fantastic to me, a very driven, hardworking student who enjoys an exciting social life.  When I visited, the tour guides gave me the illusion that this school was academically rigorous, prestigious and it seemed like a nice place; it feels like a resort with the tropical Gulf Coast weather and the abundance of palm trees on campus.  The school definitely has a nice ambiance, students and faculty are overall very nice and approachable people but, I?d still give the overall student life a D.  There is just no nightlife or fun things to do on campus; apparently there used to be, but ?all the fun people graduated last spring.?  Mobile is a small, boring city and the downtown area is a pathetic excuse for nightlife and is usually pretty dead.  There is one ?club?  (i.e.  a super trashy bar with a dingy 9X9 dancefloor with a stripper pole) and a few bars that serve minors, but I was bored of the downtown scene after about a month of being here.  I think being in a sorority or fraternity helps assuage the endemic boredom on campus, but they?re expensive to join ($700 a semester) and the perks are limited (you don?t even get to live in a house).

This school is tanking FAST and is extremely money-hungry ever since the recession; philanthropists backed out of their donations and enrollment numbers plummeted.  So, basically the school gives anyone with a highschool diploma a half-ride and have really lowered their standards on admitted students.  Naturally, what follows is a very unimpressive, unmotivated student body; teachers have dumbed down their classes to accomodate for the profusion of dummies in this school (all in efforts to make less people fail out so the school can keep getting their tuition money).  Overall, student morale is low.  From what I hear, most students feel that SHC is not a respected or an even wellknown institution, and most people aren?t particaularly proud to be here because most people came here because it was the only school that gave them a decent scholarship, not because they really wanted to be here.  Personally, I am dissatisfied with this school because I was disillusioned by the low-grade the academics; the core requirements are redundant of high school and a waste of my youth; many of my friends transferred after their first semester; and I am bored on the weekends.

Another very reason I don?t reccomend coming here is: you are NEVER allowed to live off campus, you must live in a dorm, eat in the cafeteria and follow a dinky RA?s rules all four years.  Most people in their early 20's are not interested in living in a dorm where they have to follow petty rules (no persons of the opposite sex allowed in your dorm after 11pm) at risk of being written up and fined by the RA.

I feel like I?m in high school all over again, except in high school I didn?t have to pay out the ass for room and board for four years.  I basically live off campus with my boyfriend at his apartment, but I still pay $11k to have my name on a residence hall list.  Waste of money.  And to be exempt from living on campus you either have to have parents that live right by school or have a serious medical illness that would be a hazard to others if you lived in the dorm.  Oh, and you have to present your case to a committee that will decide if your medical illness is a big enough hazard that they are willing to lose your $11k a year.  And you will have to present your embarrassing illness to be regranted permission to live off campus each year and if you're suspected of lying, you will be punished by however the committee feels is appropriate.  THIS IS BULLSHIT... I know no other school that requires students live on campus, and you should not be punished for not wanting to live here.

The above paragraphs are my honest review of SHC that I hope will be useful to all prospective SHC students.  In the paragraphs below I am honing my review to the concerns of prospective nursing majors.

First of all, the nursing program is a hair away from losing its accreditation; worst case scenario, (i.e.  you?re a last semester senior and the nursing program tanks and you lose 4 years of studying, tuition money and time with nothing to show for it) is extremely plausible at this institution.  The worst part is, our nursing advisors won?t even be honest with us about this possibility; they lie to us and tell us the program is average because they don?t want us to transfer and lose our tuition money.  The only way freshman nursing students are aware of how awful the nursing program is, is from talking to the juniors and seniors who say that they are made fun of and disrespected by other schools' nursing students during clinicals, due to their incompetence in the hospital setting.  SHC's board passing rate is so low that the exact percentage cannot be found ANYWHERE; even as a nursing student, my advisor “is not allowed to disclose any information about the nursing program like that.” You know it's bad when this number isn't proudly announced on the college's website, but if your advisor won't even reveal it to you, a current nursing student, in privacy, it's got to be awful.

Also, if you are not a hardcore Christian, stay away from this school!  I am nondenominational/atheist (yet, completely respectful of a person's decision to be religious) and being forced to take a minimum of 9 credit hours of Christian theology in order to graduate is not only a huge annoyance in my life, but it takes away from the time, effort and resources I could be utilizing to become a competent nurse!  Hence, why the board passing rate is so low perhaps?  As a Jesuit institution, SHC requires a lot of courses that I don't find beneficial or interesting, but the requirements I find most detrimental to prospective nursing majors are: 9 hours of theology, 9 hours of philosophy, 9 hours of english and 9 hours of a foreign language.  These courses require the same amount of time and effort as any of my other classes; teachers don't make these fruitless, required classes an easy A, they are relatively hard!  If you're not a die-hard Christian, (like myself) that ridiculous amount of theology is not only going to piss you off, but it will lower your GPA (I'd have a 4.0 if it wasn't for that damn theology class I got a B in!).  There are just too many aspects of this school that will SCREW you over if you intend to ever get a job as a nurse, or even hope to pass the board exam after working hard for 4 years.