Megan Riksen (00:16):

Hello, and welcome to the work like a Laker podcast. I'm Megan Riksen. And today we are talking about secondary admission programs at GVSU or what we will be referring to as secondary admit programs. So we wanna talk about what they are and what you need to know about them. So, first of all, what does a secondary admit program mean? So essentially these are programs where universities admit students to Grand Valley, but the entry into a specific program requires another process, a secondary admission process. So examples of this would be our Bachelor's of Nursing program or engineering. And these secondary admission processes typically involve a few things, taking prerequisite courses, submitting a written statement, maintaining usually a high GPA in prerequisite courses, and then sometimes an interview as well. And there are certainly no guarantees that you'll get into any of these programs. Many of them are competitive, while some of them just are selective in terms of you'd need to meet the certain requirements.

Megan Riksen (01:29):

So in order to get in, so I've mentioned already nursing and engineering, but at Grand Valley, there are also secondary admit programs in the health professions and also in business. And if you want to find a full list of those programs and their requirements please check out the link in our show notes. The academic advising website does a really nice job of breaking those down. All right, so now I get to bring in our two guests to help us take a deeper dive into a couple of secondary admit options here at GVSU. So I have Mike Saldana, who is the Director of Student Services for the College of Health Professions. Hi, Mike.

Mike Saldana (02:11):

Hi.

Megan Riksen (02:12):

And I have Mackenzie Ware, who is the student Engagement and Academic Resourcing Specialist with the Kirkoff College of Nursing. Hello.

Mackenzie Ware (02:19):

Hello.

Megan Riksen (02:20):

Thank you so much for joining me, both of you and Mike. I'll start with you. Can you just give us a little introduction of yourself and maybe what you do here at Grand Valley?

Mike Saldana (02:30):

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me on. Of course. Again, my name is Mike. I'm the student Services Director in the College of Health Profession. So I oversee all of the advising that happens within our college. Each, every student who comes in gets assigned an advisor on our team, and then we kind of work with them to help them matriculate through towards graduation.

Megan Riksen (02:55):

Okay. Amazing. Yeah. Over to you Mackenzie.

Mackenzie Ware (02:58):

My name is Mackenzie. I am a specialist in the nursing advising office.

Megan Riksen (03:02):

I like that you just shortened that whole title. You're just like, I'm just a specialist.

Mackenzie Ware (03:06):

It's a long title and realistically, a lot of students will connect with me either through the communication that I send out of the advising office, or I host and organize most of our like, events, seminars, workshops, those types of things.

Megan Riksen (03:23):

Okay. Awesome. All right. So let's stick with you, Mackenzie, when we're talking about the Kirkhof College of Nursing and the nursing program. How competitive is it? What are we dealing with here?

Mackenzie Ware (03:35):

Yeah, so the traditional Bachelor of Science in nursing is competitive simply because we have more eligible applicants than we do clinical space. So from that idea alone, we have 120 seats in our program each semester. So every fall and every winter, we admit 120 students and that does vary

Megan Riksen (03:54):

It seems like a lot.

Mackenzie Ware (04:01):

It is. It's the second largest bachelor science in the state in nursing program in the state. So with that, each semester's a little bit different just depending on the cycle of who's ready to apply when, but right now our numbers are usually between 150 to 200 applications for those 120 spots. So it's about, it varies, but 60 to 80% that get admitted each cycle.

Megan Riksen (04:29):

I'm sure that's changed over time with COVID and all these things in the mix.

Mackenzie Ware (04:34):

It has and our program has grown too, so when I started, we didn't have 120 seats, we had like 80 seats. So we are so significantly grown, we're thankful that we've been able to expand the amount of students we've been able to admit.

Megan Riksen (04:47):

Awesome. Cool. All right. So Mike, for you, what programs in the College of Health Professions require a secondary admin process? And then I know you have more to talk about, Mackenzie's lucky, she just gets the one today. You have a bunch, but just more in general, how competitive they are as well

Mike Saldana (05:04):

Yeah. So it's, it's probably easier to talk about the programs that don't have a secondary admin process.

Megan Riksen (05:10):

Well, let's do it. Great. Yeah.

Mike Saldana (05:12):

Because it's pretty much every program. So we have a couple of emphasis areas within Allied Health Sciences that don't have a secondary process but other than that, pretty much everything else does and students will hear our advisors talk about competitive programs and selective programs. So we have some programs that are similar to nursing, where we have more applicants than we do number of seats available. Those are like your sonography, your radiation therapy all of our graduate programs but then we also have some programs that are selective, which means that you're not necessarily competing against other people, you're competing against the requirements themselves.

Megan Riksen (06:00):

So the standards for the program. Okay.

Mike Saldana (06:02):

Yeah. So as long as you have the GPA, as long as you have the experience, as long as you turn everything in on time, students will, will typically get admitted.

Megan Riksen (06:11):

Yeah. That makes sense. So yeah, I think that's a really good transition to my next question, and we'll stick with you, Mike, to start, what qualities or skills do successful applicants usually demonstrate?

Mike Saldana (06:25):

I think the biggest thing that we're finding is students really need to have a strong understanding of the profession that they're going into.

Megan Riksen (06:34):

Not what I expected you say first. Yeah

Mike Saldana (06:38):

I'll give you an example so our sonography programs over the last couple years have just exploded in interest and what we're finding is that successful applicants have done a job shadow, they've done informational interviews, they've talked to ultrasound techs, like they can get into an interview setting and really explain why they're interested in this field, why they wanna go into it. The ones that aren't some most of the time haven't had that experience. So yeah, I think that's probably the biggest thing that as advisors, we try to tell students is like, okay, if you're gonna go into this, we want you to do a job shadow. We want you to talk to people, we want you to get a full breadth of experience just so that students can kind of articulate in those settings what they need to.

Megan Riksen (07:29):

Mackenzie, your thoughts on that?

Mackenzie Ware (07:30):

Yeah. I would echo one of our biggest pieces of advice for students is to not only just seek opportunities and experiences, but meaningful opportunities and experiences. The nursing program for the traditional program as a holistic process. So one of the things we say too, is you have to be well-rounded. It's not just one piece that you should put all of your eggs in one basket. It's your GPA, it's an interview, it's a profile, it's a statement. So really being well-rounded across all components is important and sometimes I think students get too hyper-focused on one area. But then when it comes to, like, we always get the question, well, what do I do? How do I prepare now? It's seeking those meaningful experiences those experiences that teach you about the profession, that teach you about yourself and being able to really articulate that through the process of like, okay, why do you wanna be a nurse?

Megan Riksen (08:40):

Yeah! That's great that we have this episode this season because we also are gonna have an episode this season about how to gain healthcare experience. So I feel like these two episodes are gonna be nice little pairing there. So you've started mentioning kind of some of these steps, but let's dig in a little bit for the steps for preparing for and applying to these programs. So either one of you, what's this process? When does it begin? Like, how early, you know, what's important?

Mackenzie Ware (09:16):

Okay. I'll start with the traditional Bachelor of Saints in nursing. The process really begins, I mean, your first step is to complete the prerequisite courses.

Mackenzie Ware (09:28):

So for each student, that is a little bit of a different timeline depending on if you've completed college courses earlier on in your academic career or if you're starting, when you start at Grand Valley. So that's really gonna determine when a student will start thinking about filling out the actual application. So soon as you have your prerequisites done for us, then we offer two application cycles per year. One in the fall and one in the winter and students are applying the semester before they plan on beginning because it takes time to go through that process and when the application opens, that's when students are submitting their grades for their prerequisite courses, they'll submit. For nursing, we require a student profile and a personal statement and then usually about a month after they submit those materials is when they would go through our interview process. Then shortly after that is when we would make decisions on the 120 students that we can admit.

Megan Riksen (10:36):

So it's pretty tight, like it's not waiting too long.

Mackenzie Ware (10:40):

Usually that happens for most students, sometime within their sophomore year.

Megan Riksen (10:43):

Okay. It's pretty typical. Got it. Yeah. Cool. What about for you, Mike?

Mike Saldana (10:47):

Yeah, sophomore year is critical for us too, but I would also even say that as a freshman it's important to meet with your advisor to kind start planning that out because for a lot of our programs, it's set up to where you're doing two years of prerequisites in general education, and then your last two years are in the program for most of our program students are applying second semester of their sophomore year. Which our applications actually open up October 1st

Megan Riksen (11:21):

For the following fall?

Mike Saldana (11:22):

Yeah. For the following fall. So it's coming up pretty quick.

Megan Riksen (11:25):

Yeah.

Mike Saldana (11:25):

But again, hopefully students are meeting with their advisor, hopefully they're talking with us and trying to game-plan out how they're gonna do things because I think this is one of those processes where you don't want surprises, you want to make sure this is planned out.

Megan Riksen (11:42):

Right. Right. And if we're talking about some of these other elements, like gaining experience, things like that, you need to give yourself some time to do that.

Mackenzie Ware (11:49):

Yeah, absolutely.

Megan Riksen (11:50):

Before you're applying you need to be thinking about that early on. So I do think that is one of the reasons why we wanted to do this episode is just be like, yeah, you can be thinking about this pretty early on. At your time at Grand Valley. Awesome. thoughts then on what helps an applicant to stand out?

Mike Saldana (12:11):

I think it'd be nice if everybody had a 4.0.

Megan Riksen (12:13):

I mean, that would be, of course, that would be ideal.

Mike Saldana (12:15):

I mean, we don't live in that world, but I think GPA wise, and again, our programs kind of vary across the board but having a strong GPA and then that usually means A's and B's in the prereq courses. But then again it's the experience side. It's being able to articulate what you've learned. A few of our programs do interviews, so that again, is a good opportunity for students to be able to do that. Others just require an essay, and I think sometimes students think of an essay as like, oh, that's just a paper I'm gonna write. But we try to tell students it's like a cover letter. Like you really should be explaining like, "Hey, this is what I did, this is what I learned, this is how that experience is is gonna help me once I get in."

Mackenzie Ware (13:04):

Yeah. I'll touch on the GPA piece of that too. It's, for us, the grades are 25% of their admissions process for nursing. So it's one of four factors and then the other three are really more like focused on personal attributes and motivations for pursuing the profession. So I think the thing sometimes with GPA is there are, for nursing specifically, there's like stricter requirements around grades. So students have to meet various eligibility requirements. Which sometimes can make it feel more important than it always is, because there are certain thresholds that you have to make sense. But I always feel like I can usually tell when an how much time an applicant spends on their application. So for us, our student profile and our personal statement are always available in advance.

Mackenzie Ware (14:08):

Okay. Students can be working on them months ahead of time and I think the more thoughtful and the more time and intentions students spend on those, like you can tell, you looked at it once and filled it out and turned it in, or if you worked on it for months and picked it up and did a little bit and then put it down, and then looked at it again, and maybe then sought out some more experiences to add to it. So I think that thoughtful preparation definitely makes a difference. So I always tell students, ask a million questions. I am always surprised that after the fact when they're like reviewing things, they say, "well, I didn't know if I should just ask."

Megan Riksen (15:00):

You should of asked!

Mackenzie Ware (15:02):

Right. I always say, like, my answer is usually yes.

Mackenzie Ware (15:05):

Include anything in everything, but ask all the questions. Does this makes sense to include?

Megan Riksen (15:14):

Yeah.

Mackenzie Ware (15:14):

That's what, that's what your advisors are there to help you through.

Megan Riksen (15:19):

Right. For sure. Okay. So we've, we've touched on interviews a little bit. I'm just a little more curious for Mike, for the programs that require interviews, what do those actually look like? How long is it, are we talking like a real job interview that could be like an hour and you meet with a bunch of people, like what, what is the structure of this?

Mike Saldana (15:39):

Yeah. So it's definitely not that. So, and I think students also have that fear of like, okay, this is gonna be like, I'm gonna have to wear a suit and show up all day and be ready and interview with 10 different people, but in all actuality, they're probably looking at 15 to 20 minutes, and they're probably looking at somewhere between four and six questions. You know? And I think the career center does a great job of preparing students for interviews. So I would encourage anybody who has one coming up to definitely work with you all.

Megan Riksen (16:15):

Yes. We have specialized career advisors who know the ins and outs of these interviews so, yes.

Mike Saldana (16:20):

Yeah and I mean it happens periodically where we'll have students who have great GPAs, they have all the experience, but they just can't explain it and that really does matter. The interview does play a part. Soft skills are important in healthcare and you need to be able to show the programs that you have, not just the technical ability, but the relational skills as well.

Mackenzie Ware (16:45):

Yeah. I mean, yeah. These programs that's like so critical to being successful in the field. Is absolutely that ability to communicate and develop relationships. What a great opportunity. Like there's no one better to share your story than yourself. So I always tell students to think about it that way. Like, this is your time and space to really showcase like who you are, what makes you unique, and like why you want this. I know it's, when we think about like all the different pieces, it can sometimes be the most intimidating, but it's a great opportunity. For nursing, we interview all eligible applicants, so if you're eligible to apply, you're getting an interview. Get invited to interview. Ours are, it's very structured. It's short and sweet, very similar 15 minutes. We have a set of five questions. You usually are interviewing with like, there's two different people in the room with you.

Mackenzie Ware (17:44):

One person is a faculty member that teaches in our program. The other is a, we call them a community partner. So kind of like an outside perspective. It's pretty structured in the sense that like, everyone gets 15 minutes and we've got five questions, short and sweet, but a great opportunity and cool that everybody gets the chance because some people can thrive and that might be the piece of their application that is the best and we do see that.

Megan Riksen (18:17):

Yeah and I think your point about just like sharing who you are and like being okay with that. I think a lot of times students feel like they're bragging. We hear that a lot. I know in the career center when we do practice interviews, like, "Oh, but that would be like society has told me not, I know I'm like to brag about myself", but yeah. It is literally like, no, Please tell me more about that. You are not bragging. This is your chance to shine. You are like, you own best advocate.

Mackenzie Ware (18:45):

Like, there's no one better to advocate for yourself than you and it's hard to get past that. It's feeling of like bragging. Please do it. Totally.

Megan Riksen (18:56):

Okay. So since these programs many of them are competitive, where not everyone can get in. What are you seeing in terms of students wanting to reapply if they don't get in the first time? And if you could speak a little bit to what might make them successful, what changes are they making? What are they doing to kind of maybe get in that second or third time after they've already applied? Mike, you wanna start with them?

Mike Saldana (19:24):

Yeah, sure. So I would say the majority of our students reapply.

Megan Riksen (19:30):

Oh, interesting.

Megan Riksen (19:32):

I would agree. Wow.

Mike Saldana (19:34):

And I think sometimes students think, oh, if I reapply, like, am I gonna look worse? Or, you know, are they gonna hold it against me?

Megan Riksen (19:40):

Imposter syndrome just creeping right in.

Mike Saldana (19:43):

Yeah, no, but it's very common and as advisors we'll reach out to students who aren't admitted and we'll set up a time to meet with them and we'll talk about like, okay, here is your application, where can we beef things up? Sometimes it's as simple as, well, let's repeat this pre-req class. Like, you feel confident you can do better. Let's beef that up. Sometimes it's getting more experience, but it's never a good idea to apply with the same application that you had the first time. I'm sure that same thing happens in nursing.

Mackenzie Ware (20:16):

Yeah I agree.

Mike Saldana (20:16):

And in our programs, they look at applications every year with a blank slate. So it, there isn't any kind of like you know negative.

Megan Riksen (20:28):

There's no bias, negative, towards someone who has applied before..

Mike Saldana (20:32):

Right. Yep. And as advisors, I mean, that's what we're here for. We're here to help students game-plan and try to figure out what that, what that looks like.

Mackenzie Ware (20:40):

We offer the same and that would be my very first piece of advice is to get feedback. I guess I'm not surprised anymore, but students usually kind of have an inkling of like, how well they did in the different parts of the application. And I always kind of ask like, how do you think it went first? And they're usually spot on, like, oh, nice. Oh yeah, this, this piece I didn't spend as much time on, or I was really worried about this, or I know this one went really well, and I'm like, yes, yes, correct. You're right. So like, how can we make, and often it's like small tweaks and having those conversations about like, well, you talked about this in your interview, but you didn't mention it here. Like, why?

Mackenzie Ware (21:27):

The making, just some adjustments and doing a little bit more like preparation and thoughtful reflection in some of the different pieces and that can make a big difference. Just spending a little bit more time with some of the things.

Megan Riksen (21:42):

Okay. Awesome. Great. All right. For thinking about support, I know you both have mentioned this already, but what kind of support advising is available just in general to help students, whether they're reapplying or it's their first time? Like what does that process look like? How often maybe are they coming to you? What are you saying to them? Any insight you can have into that process would be amazing.

Mike Saldana (22:09):

Yeah. I think for students, they should probably meet with their advisor at least once a semester.

Mackenzie Ware (22:16):

I would echo that.

Mike Saldana (22:18):

Yeah, because I mean, it's helpful for the first semester freshmen just to kind of check in, be like, Hey, how's this going? Do we feel like we need tutoring? Like, where are we at? Especially with the beginning level science and math. I mean, that can be a, like a real kick in the butt of like, oh, I need to get compared to...

Megan Riksen (22:37):

High school, I'm sure.

Mike Saldana (22:39):

Yeah. Absolutely. But especially as you get closer to applying, it is nice for students just to check in and be like, Hey, you know, I think I've got my resume. Okay. Like, this is a part, maybe, I think needs a little bit of work. You know, we're not experts by any means. We definitely will pass them off to to you all . I think we've, our team is seasoned enough that, you know, we've seen some instances of like, oh yeah, you're right. I think this does need a little bit of work, and here are the people that can help you do it because yeah, students want, they wanna be successful and especially I think for both nursing students and CHP, they tend to be type A, they tend to be on it.

Megan Riksen (23:23):

Be high achieving.

Mike Saldana (23:24):

If you tell them to do something, they typically do it. And so, you know, we wanna empower them to be able to ask questions and get the help that they need so that they they can accomplish their goal of getting admitted.

Mackenzie Ware (23:38):

Yeah. New for this year, so starting in the fall of 25 we're starting to do a series of workshops for students just because we want them to begin thinking about it earlier. So we offer a workshop, which is, it's more focused on like the brainstorming and preparation side of things. Where am I at now? And like, maybe what else do I wanna do? So we offer that for our student profile and personal statement because they're available in advance. So like, let's take a look at it.

Megan Riksen (24:09):

At least let's least be thinking about it.

Mackenzie Ware (24:10):

Yeah and see where you're at. We also have a website that's dedicated to like application preparation, where, like for example, on our interview prep website, we would link all of the different resources that like the career center has.

Mackenzie Ware (24:28):

For example, I know that there are nursing specific questions in big interview. Which I'm like, use those and have time as much as you can and then I think I feel like peer support is also a really important piece of it. So I always encourage nursing students to join our pre-nursing association because it's one thing to always chat with an advisor but to also hear from your peers, like, what's going on? What are you doing? And they offer a really great mentorship program with students that are in the program. So to like hear from someone who just went through all of this and who did all of the things and had to fill everything out, like I think peer support is also like a huge piece of it that can just help you feel more informed and more comfortable through the process.

Megan Riksen (25:22):

Awesome. Yeah. So good. Cool. Well, I think we're about ready to wrap up. But what things have I missed? Is there anything that you're like, oh, I wanna make sure students know this, or any other last pieces of advice? And if you don't that's okay.

Mike Saldana (25:40):

Yeah. I mean, I would say for students who are applying, meet with your advisor early. Like let's talk about where you're at because as we run up on these deadlines, I mean, semester's gonna get busy. You know, you have to have time to do fun things too, so you're not gonna be thinking about your application the whole time. But as advisors, we can give you good tips and pointers and things to look for things to practice, like big interview and, you know, making sure that you get all your materials done early so you're not stressing and trying to do everything last minute.

Mackenzie Ware (26:16):

Yeah. I think for nursing and CHP, it's sometimes students can feel a little bit disconnected from the college because they don't run into like, nursing courses or courses specific for their career or major until they get admitted. So like your point of contact as a student is your advisor like that's going to be your go-to person who will be with you from the very beginning to the end. So I will say this a million times, like ask a thousand questions. I always feel like the more, you know, the more confident and prepared you'll feel. So from the beginning just meet with advisors and ask everything. Because there's no dumb question, especially when you're brand new for something like this and the earlier you start asking questions, the more you give yourself time to then like, seek out opportunities and experiences that you can use to strengthen your application. So I just want students to know that they are, they do not have to navigate this process alone. It's not meant to be some scary, ominous process. Like we try to be as transparent as possible and really just support every step of the way. I mean, that's the job of your advisor is to help you through this. So just please don't ever feel like you having to do it alone. I feel like that's so often I'm like, I've never met you. I never talked to you. Like, where have you been? Like meet with advising so I could just say that a thousand times.

Megan Riksen (27:59):

I love it. Awesome. Okay, well thank you both so much for your time today. I really appreciate all your insights and advice and I think it's gonna be so, so helpful to students.

Mackenzie Ware (28:09):

Yeah, thank you for having us.

Mike Saldana (28:10):

Yeah. Appreciate you having us.

Megan Riksen (28:11):

Absolutely. So for our listeners, we will be linking everything in the show notes, all of these resources both from the career center, but also from each of the advising centers represented here as well as the ones we mentioned in the intro. Also just a note that we do have an episode and resources on what we call parallel planning. So if for instance, you discover that you're applying to something either you're not getting in or you're not sure you're gonna get in or you're not sure it's what you want, there is a process you can do to kind of, I know I wanna be healthcare adjacent but maybe not in the nursing program itself. That parallel planning process is something we can help with. So we will link those resources as well. So thank you so much to everyone for listening, and we hope you tune into a future episode soon.