r/utarlingtonnursing

I got into the Fall 2026 program and I was wondering if anyone else has requested a Religious Exemption from the COVID-19 vaccination. I submitted my request on April 22 and the status is still pending review. Was wondering if anyone else's has changed or not.

so j2 has officially started for me and and i wanted to ask for advice from people who’ve already gone through it recently. i’ll be taking Nursing of Older Adults, Mental Health, and Med-Surg, Nursing Research, and I’m honestly trying to prepare ahead of time instead of falling behind.

i’ve looked through older reddit posts, but a lot of them seem outdated since programs/classes change over time, so I wanted to hear more current experiences and tips. please tell me anything you wish someone told you as a j2 student🙏🙏 (thank you ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡ )

Hey Everyone! Is the waitlist still moving? I’m curious to know how many people are actually on it. My score is a 7.6 unpartnered for DFW! Has anyone in the 7’s been called yet for DFW?

This course is at least three times the work of Adults (Med-Surg). I will detail all of the problems with this course. In order to do well, you have to be the type of student who is able to learn a lot of material in a short amount of time. You have to be someone who is not only above average, but one of the highest performers. The averages on all of the Complex Needs exams other than the final are Cs. All other nursing courses have B exam averages. That is why I say being above average is not enough.

The worst aspect of this class is that there are no good lecture videos. Some of the ones that were redo-recorded by Professor Ramirez are decent, but most are older pre-recorded videos by Dr. Reid (the older professor) and they are awful. Dr. Reid gave Professor Ramiez intellectual property of her old material and Professor Ramirez has not changed the learning material but has changed the content areas tested on.

Why Reid’s pre-recorded videos are bad: They delve way too deeply into Pathophysiology of certain diseases/disorders and concepts that are cool but not high yield / tested on. Nursing exams after J1 are based on nursing considerations and interventions. This means having a good idea of clinical manifestations and nursing/medical management more than anything else.

This is why people historically raved about Hughes Clues and many people even exclusively used Hughes Clues. Hughes Clues condenses the material and cuts out a lot of stuff from Reid’s lecture material. The problem is, Hughes Clues is based on Reid’s exams, not Ramirez. Hughes also retired after Fall 2025, so you cannot ask her questions if you’re confused on something in her videos.

This is why Dr. Hamdan’s Weekly Review Sessions are the new wave. He reviews Comex Needs exams with students. He has seen all of the exam questions from the previous semester. He doesn’t get to see Professor Ramirez’s current semester exam before the students take it, but he bases his teaching on the previous semester’s exams. This is a safer way to narrow down what will be tested on compared to using Hughes Clues videos that are 5-7 years old.

But pointing out some of the big setbacks: his slides are objectively less aesthetically pleasing and his accent/microphone is harder to understand than Professor Hughes. His are live TEAMS meetings that are recorded. Hers are pre-recorded, polished videos. Hughes Clues videos are more digestible for that reason but they do not address Ramirez’s exam content. That being said, Hamdan cuts straight to the facts. It’s dry, but it’s straightforward. Hughes will bring up a patient scenario and then ask you a question and then give you lecture material and that style is a bit too scattered for me.

That being said, unless you just do not have time because you can’t digest it fast enough, you still have to read through the lecture slides/lecture notes to get a complete understanding. You just don’t have to commit all the information to memory. These two resources contain the exact same information in different formatting. You only have to go through one of them. But there is material that is on the exam that is not covered in either Hamdan’s Sessions or Hughes Clues. Your bridge of the gap will be those lecture slides/notes. If you really just do not have time, the Escape Room will cover most of the gaps and definitely tell you what to focus on. Never skip the escape rooms. If you cannot find it on Canvas then please ask someone. It is diabolical that people skipped using a resource where a few questions are actually repeated word-for-word on the exam.

Okay so let’s talk clinical: they hand out Performance Improvement Plans with Penalties like they are CANDY! In Med-Surg, many students would just complete 3-5 medication sheets to submit on Canvas but then pass 10-20+ medications in clinical. That is not what the CONHI policy states, but most clinical instructors are not that strict and most Med-Surg preceptors know that the medication sheet policy at UTA is the biggest waste of time and will not wait for you to spend 20 minutes per sheet to pass a single medication.

I know people in Complex Needs who chance it anyway, but I personally wouldn’t if I were you. J2s/S1s already lost the privilege to insert indwelling catheters and give medications by central line (PICC, CVC, tunneled catheter, port). S1s also lost the privilege to pass meds in OB/Pedi. We only get these privileges taken from us when a previous cohort messes it up for us. Please do not chance it.

Pass the MINIMUM number of medications in clinical. Do your 3-5 medication sheets, make sure they are approved by your clinical instructor before you administer.

Just wait until you’re a nurse resident to learn nursing skills because you will not learn them at UTA unless you go in open lab, except you basically need to purchase your own supplies to use the open lab. Alaris tubing is $20 per tubing if you want to practice priming a line. I would have not attended UTA if I had known how restrictive our scope was compared to Baylor and Texas Woman’s and TCU.

Furthermore, many people will not get all ICU and ER units for Complex Needs clinical. In fact, many people will get a lot of Med/Surg and Stepdown. This is the consequence of accepting well over 200 students in Campus Based and 50 students in Accelerated Online, DFW home region.

Also, a lot of people fail and remediate the IV Push skills validation. There is one rubric, but every clinical instructor has their own personal preferences. Please try to pass with your own clinical instructor who teaches you how they want the IV push validation done. If you do not, you will retake the skills validation with a different clinical instructor with different preferences and will likely fail a second time.

You get unlimited tries, but every time that you don’t pass it, you won’t be able to pass medications in clinical that week. Yes, even though it’s a CVC IV push validation and we don’t even give medications by CVC in clinical. The way it can become a clinical failure is if you continue to not be able to meet the clinical competency requirements throughout the remaining clinicals because you could not pass the validation early enough. Most people pass by their third, and I met a faculty member who is so sick of the long remediation lines that she is proposing that students will have a clinical failure (and need to drop the course or accept the fail) if they cannot pass in 3 tries.

I have a lot to say about this course, but just know that for those interested in ICU/ER (and I know a lot of you are, because nobody seems to want Med-Surg since it is very task oriented due to the less acute conditions/higher patient ratios rather than the ADPIE nursing process you get with the higher acuity pathophysiology in ICU/ER or OB/Pedi for that matter)…

Try to not lose your interest because of this class. I know UTA graduates who made a B in this class and are ICU/ER nurse residents right now. The class is really, really hard. It’s okay to not make an A.

That being said, I kind of respect how brutal this class is because Med-Surg jobs are a dime a dozen, while I’ve really only seen students get ICU/ER nurse residency if they have their foot in the door (through a very powerful reference, PCT, externship, internship, etc.) Although the A is uncommon in Complex Needs, a critical care nurse residency offer is even less common. I tell myself that’s why this course has to be difficult.

I have a lot of opinions on S1 and the only positive ones are related to OB. Let me know if you want my review/opinion on that course. Use the section time that you are in OB to study more for Complex because you won’t have as much time while you are in Pedi.

Does anyone have a link and or pdf of the pedi book?? Help a girlie out 😩

Hello everyone! I took the TEAS exam and unfortunately I did not meet the percentage to be considered passing for the science portion. I passed every other section of the exam. The deadline for upper division nursing is June 1 so obviously I won’t be able to retake the exam within time since they have a mandatory 30 day waiting Period. Has this happened to anyone and if so, what did I academic advising suggest? Is there a possibility that they might take a combined score rather than individual for each subject ? From my knowledge, there are only two start dates for upper division, nursing . Deadline for spring session is July 1 of the previous year and the start date for the fall session is January of that same year I was told. It’s kind of a bummer knowing that I may have to start in the fall of 2027 :(

So I just got off the waitlist for AO fall '26 and they gave me 2 days as deadline for everything. What stuff do I specifically need to accomplish? And when am I suppose to get my scrubs?

I am planning to take the TEAS test online on May 26th to meet the deadline for the Spring 2027 application. Does UTA accepts TEAS tests taken online? . Also, when registering for the exam, should I choose ATI Remote Proctoring or Institution Proctoring?

In addition, I was informed that it may take up to 4 business days for the official transcript to be sent. In that case, would I still be able to apply before the deadline using my unofficial TEAS scores first?

I got pulled from the waitlist 2 days ago and now I need to finish 4 classes before July (I have not had a break AT ALL since January of last year, and I would like to take a month break before the program)

Here are the classes I am missing:
*2 Upper-division electives
*Sociology, Intro to Public Health or Anthropology
*NURS 3364

Can you guys please let me know what professors are easy so these 4 classes can be doable. TIA

Payment is due on Friday and didn’t receive my financial aid letter until this week (I don’t qualify for summer aid this year). Saw that online students can’t do payment plans either like I don’t have 6k to fork over all at once and in such short notice. Is there anything else I could do? Sucks that I just completed J1, now I can’t afford J2

I took OB first and Pedi second. (You will not get to choose.) I am writing this because I was shocked that Pedi was noticeably more difficult compared to OB which you could study for 2-3 days before the exam.

When I was accepted into the program I followed some guides from 2 users:

https://www.reddit.com/r/utarlington/s/xtjo8ipdXS

https://www.reddit.com/r/utarlington/s/4DXZQmGyzM

So these two guides are outdated because in this era of UTA Nursing, there were no Memory Aids outside of Complex Needs. Now there is no reason to give students an index card that could be handwritten on for attending 2/3 lectures in Pedi for Exam 2 (they did this because Cardiac was on that exam).

If you look at these guides, you can see that exam averages were once 88-91, even without MAs. They are now 80, 86, 86 for Exams 1, 2, 3 and on Exam 1 and 3, the highest grade was only a 96. Even after 2 questions had points returned on Exams 1 and 3.

It becomes necessary to write down all of the Developmental Milestones, Erickson/Piaget stages, and Health Alterations (Clinical Manifestations + Interventions) in very small handwriting in order to fit everything necessary on the Memory Aid for the exam.

The questions are really that specific. And especially on Exam 1 and 3, there are a lot of Nursing Considerations / Nursing Interventions questions asked in a prioritization style.

Student Success slides created by Professor Peterson (updated by Professor Nickols) once covered 85-90% of exam material but they absolutely do not anymore. Those slides were created based on old exams and Professor Martin completely redid her questions. They match Exam 2 somewhat well but there is little info on the Exam 1 and 3 SS slides that would help for the exam.

I would also have to say that if you want every last point possible, there are ~3 questions on Exam 1, ~2 questions in Exam 2 and 3 where you had to open the textbook in order to confidently know the answer, though educated guesses were possible. About 1-2 questions from each exam, had answers that were heavily hinted at during live lecture and aren’t in the pre-recorded videos. Exam 3 had ~3 questions that referenced material from exams 1 and 2.

Pedi does have the most specific blueprint of any class which is essentially a topic list. Not every health alteration in the lecture slides is on the blueprint (which means not on the exam). Every health alteration on the blueprint will be on the exam.

As for the ATI, approximately 12% of students will make a Level 3 but the rest will be half/half split between a Level 1 and Level 2, other than the small minority of those who make a Below Level 1.

As for Pedi clinicals: if you like kids you will enjoy being around them during this clinical. But outside of the assessment and basic cares, you will be mostly hands-off. Even if you do a Pedi capstone at Cook Children’s in S2, you actually still will not be allowed to pass medications.

This course was easier than Complex Needs, but it was noticeably harder than OB which was just too much for S1. Historically, students used to say that Pedi was easier than OB, but no more.

Pedi is manageable but many previously 4.0 students made their first Bs in S1 and many of those Bs were in Complex as usual but surprisingly many Bs were in Pedi as well…

My last bit of tea would be that my clinical instructor told me only 5 UTA students got into the Cook Children’s nurse residency most recently.

** My credentials: My exam scores were 90, 96, 96 and I made a 79.3 on ATI (Level 3 cutoff: 78.3).

Hi! I’m posting just to seek some clarification on the application process (fall 27) since this summer I was planning on working in the immunizations and stuff. What I’ve gathered is that I should get a Titers first to see what boosters & stuff I need. Then get the necessary boosters. Then a final Titer?

Thank you in advance

What is going on with UTA 😭 I’ve NEVER had issues with financial aid being this late.. payment is due this Friday and they have yet to send me my financial aid package.. does anyone have any update? They should prioritize students who classes almost start smh..

What do I do I feel so let down 😔

has anyone been pulled out of the waitlist for CB fall 2026 ?

So I graduate this weekend for my Bachelors in a different field. I applied to uta online AO BSN and got admitted to the school but I don't know what exactly is supposed to happen next.
I applied for the summer start date but recently saw that I have to have a TEAS exam?
I haven't heard anything else besides I've been admitted and I just had my financial aid give me offers to accept.
Does an advisor contact me? How do I know if I'm actually in the nursing program? I'm assuming I have to have the teas exam before I can start classes.
I'm just a little bit confused!

Hi! I am applying for Spring 27 and I know I need patho done before then. I currently have a scholarship with my local community college (HCC). If I take patho at HCC I won’t have to pay anything out of pocket. Has anyone else taken patho elsewhere and gotten their credit approved? Thanks for the help!

I was accepted into the nursing program for fall 26. I’m taking patho right now, my exam is on the 5th. I have to get an 85 to have the 70% exam average so there’s a decent chance I will fail. In case I do can I retake patho in the summer and still start nursing in the fall? I’m already registered for it just in case but I saw another post saying you wouldn’t be able to. Idk just let me know.

Also if anyone is also in patho or has taken patho and has final exam tips they would be much appreciated .