I don’t know what to do.
Hi, so I’m currently finishing up my prerequisites at Foothill and De Anza and getting ready to apply for transfer to SJSU for nursing. I know that to attend the nursing program in Fall 2027, I would need to apply to SJSU itself in Fall 2026 and to NursingCAS around Jan-Feb.
So, now here’s my dilemma. I have a 4.0 GPA which would likely be maintain, I don’t see any foreseeable significant changes to it. I haven’t taken my TEAS yet and I unfortunately haven’t been able to get any volunteering experience, licensure or certification (ex. CNA or EMT), basically extracurricular stuff that could boost my application. I had a lot of family issues going on, but I know schools don’t care about that so really it’s still my fault regardless I know. But I only have roughly around 6 months to get those in if I do want to. I’ve heard that SJSU Nursing mostly looks at TEAS and GPA, but I don’t know if other stuff can help boost your application tremendously or not. My main question is should I just use my time to study and focus on getting a high TEAS score and not do anything extracurricular or should I at least try to maybe split my time and do something while studying for my TEAS?
Now my follow-up question is if doing something extracurricular would help, are there any recommendations on what I should do? I try looking into CNA program and I was going to apply to EVC, but I wasn’t aware applications already opened in April (I know that was bad planning on my part), so now if I do apply I’ll probably be waitlist very far down the line. And I also look into volunteering opportunities like at hospitals (Kaiser and SCVMC), but they require references. I haven’t been employed nor do I have any professors who knows me well enough to write one so that’s iffy too. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!