Episode 166: Our BEST Application Tips- How To Stand Out As A CRNA School Applicant!

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Today’s episode is truly special! We’re excited to share our top application tips for CRNA school applicants. We’ve handpicked three fan-favorite episodes, starting with Episode 6, where we discuss the best ICU experience for your CRNA application. Then, we dive into an excerpt from episode 56, focusing on crafting a compelling personal statement. Finally, in a segment from episode 79, we guide you through the process of preparing your resume. These episodes may be classics, but their advice is timeless. Remember, if you want to delve deeper into any of these topics, check out the full episodes!

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Our BEST Application Tips- How To Stand Out As A CRNA School Applicant!

This is a very special episode. We are going to share with you our very best application tips and how you can stand out as a CRNA School applicant. We have selected three of our previous episodes that are fan favorites, which is all the way back to episode number six, which is going to reveal what ICU is best for your CRNA application, then we’re going to go on to episode 56 which covers a writing a good personal statement. Finally, we’re going to wrap up this episode with episode 79 which is how to prepare your resume. These three episodes are oldies but goodies. If you want to listen to the full episode, be sure to do so. Without further ado, let’s get into the episode.

The Best ICU Experience for CRNA School

The standard that is set for all CRNA schools across the country is that it has to take place in the United States. Your ICU experience needs to come from an ICU within the United States. It needs to be high acuity and you need to be dealing with advanced life support and different hemogenic monitor systems in your experience.

CRNA School Application Tips: Your ICU experience needs to come from an ICU within the United States and needs to be high acuity.

It’s up to the school to decipher what that means as far as what units they prefer. It doesn’t mean that a school prefers MICU over SICU, or CVICU over NICU, or whatever all the ICUs are. There are so many of them. Ultimately, this is a school’s preference. Not all schools will take a NICU or PICU experience. These schools base their standards on what they think a successful student displays in their program.

Meaning, historically, if you look at the data, do students who come from the NICU/PICU pass boards the first time, versus a student who came from the CVICU? That’s how they judge whether they accept certain units versus others. I’m going to let you know that you need to research your school, first and foremost, to see what units they prefer. Essentially, the safest units are any adult ICU.

There could be so many different types of adult ICUs out there. There’s the SICU, MICU, CVICU, CCU, or burn trauma unit. You can combine those letters any way you want to make any ICU. There’s even a SICU and MICU combination ICU. It doesn’t matter. As long as the acuity is there, that’s okay. The reason why NICU and PICU sometimes don’t count is because they feel that that’s such a very specialized ICU type of experience.

Maybe it’s not the best tailored for CRNA training. I don’t necessarily believe that to be true. I have seen plenty of NICU and PICU nurses go on to be very successful. I’ve worked with NICU and PICU nurses prior to anesthesia. The NICU PICU nurses were brilliant. One of the PICU nurses I worked with said that one of the advantages of being a PICU nurse prior to anesthesia was that she already knew weight-based calculation and dosing of drugs, which is something that I did not know coming from a MICU background.

Every background, whether it’s neuro, surgical, medical, cardiac, NICU, or PICU, you’re going to have certain strengths, but you’re also going to have weaknesses. The reality is you can’t gain all the experience in one unit. The key to trying to pick what unit is best for you to gain your ICU experience prior to CRNA school comes down to what the acuity is like, how often you titrate vasoactive active drips, how often you are managing vents, and whether you manage vents at all.

Most ICUs, especially the bigger ICUs, have respiratory therapists who manage vents. There’s nothing wrong with that. You still have to be able to troubleshoot the vents yourself to get an RT to take a look at things. Essentially, even though you’re not the one making the respiratory changes, you would have to be aware if there was a problem with the patient. Also, be analyzing blood work to notify the team of potential ventilator issues if you see that their blood gas came back that was all out of whack or whatever labs that you’re analyzing as an actual ICU nurse.

If you pick a unit where you don’t see a lot of ventilators, you don’t titrate a lot of vasoactive drips, or you don’t see a lot of advanced life support like CRRT, ECMO, balloon pumps, VADs, Ventrix ICP Bolts, you may essentially not be in a high enough acuity unit. If most of your patients are awake and able to talk to you, that’s probably a good indicator that that’s not a high acuity ICU.

A lot of people will tell you that you need level-one trauma experience. The reason for that is it’s not because it’s a level-one trauma. Level-two trauma is essentially the same as far as acuity goes. The biggest difference is that the level-one tends to have more opportunities for research and tends to be at more academic facilities. The acuity is usually about the same. Essentially, you can have a non-trauma hospital and still have high acuity but you have to still frequently see ventilators and patients who are on advanced life support.

As soon as your patient needs a ventilator or needs vasoactive drips or maybe needs Prisma or CRRT, do they get shipped to the nearest trauma center? That’s what I want you to ask yourself. When you’re interviewing for these ICU positions, you need to be asking the manager, “What’s the acuity like? How often will I be titrating vasoactive drugs? How often would I be managing ventilators? How often would I potentially get extra training and other advanced life support measures like CRRT or ECMO or those types of opportunities?”

It’s important to be asking these questions when you’re taking your ICU position. Remember, based on what you work on, you’re not going to be able to get all the experience. You’re not going to do ECMO, Prisma, VADs, Ventrix, and ICP Bolts. You can’t find a unit that has it all. It’s okay not to have it all. You just have to have something a little bit extra that puts you in a unit that says to the admissions committee, “They are clearly from a high acuity unit because they were taking care of X, Y, and Z.”

NICU or PICU for CRNA School

As far as PICU and NICU experience, you have to know whether your school prefers that or not. If they say on an individual basis, what that says to you is they don’t prefer that experience. If you’re an overall good candidate in every other way, they’ll consider you. I don’t necessarily think that’s putting your best foot forward going into your application.

As much as it stinks and seems unfair, not that I’m encouraging any of you to pursue pediatric anesthesia because I personally do pediatric anesthesia. I love pediatric anesthesia. Unfortunately, if you live in an area with one school and that’s the school you want to go to, if they only consider NICU PICU on an individual basis, you’re probably better off getting your experience in an adult ICU before applying to school. You can then make your shift into pediatric anesthesia after school.

The reality too is in school, you only spend about three months of your entire training at a pediatric hospital. The rest of the time, you’re working with the adult population. I don’t think it’s impossible for NICU PICU nurses to come in there and acclimate to the adult environment. It probably would be more of a challenge considering the vast majority of your training is all adults. Keep in mind too that even if you did NICU PICU, that’s okay.

Especially, if the school says, “We take NICU PICU.” By all means, get that experience. You are still expected as a candidate to know the difference between a baby and an adult cardiovascular-wise or hemogenic-wise and how to manage those two different types of patient populations. You still need to have an idea of the fact that the physiology is different between a baby and an adult, and why that is. They could potentially ask you that in the interview.

Even if your background is only NICU and you understand neonat’s hemodynamics, fluid shifts, and how to manage them, you still have to have an idea of how that is different from an adult. If you gain that experience in the NICU PICU, that’s okay, but make sure you understand the difference between adults and kids as far as hemodynamic monitoring and management.

If the school says, “On an individual basis,” I would see that as a red flag. If you want to try it, that’s fine. Plenty of people get in on an individual basis. Knowing that going into your application, make sure that you’re highlighting what your strengths are coming from that background and sell your experience. Make sure your resume highlights the attributes that you’re bringing to the program.

“How are you going to handle this if your experience is only this? How are you going to acclimate to the adult world?” Make sure you’re thinking about those hard questions they could ask you. It can potentially confront you off guard when you’re in the interview. As long as you have a way to sell yourself, you’re going to be okay. There are some of the units I want to caution you about. The main one that’s probably the most common unit that people don’t realize is not considered ICU in a lot of settings– that is the ER experience.

ER Experience for CRNA School

They get a lot of traumas. You see the realistic patients coming in the door. You’re the first responders. You’re right there in the action, but you then simply stabilize the patient and get them up to the unit. You’re not managing them long-term. What they like about the ICU experience is that you’re managing these patients for an entire shift and you’re not just stabilizing and shipping out. That is why ER experience, for the most part, in a lot of schools’ eyes is not equivalent to ICU experience.

I’ve heard of nurses who have an ICU bay in the ER. Meaning they keep patients longer because the beds are full in the actual ICU. They have an ICU bay in the ER. Unfortunately, if the school is not super familiar with that hospital or with that system, they may not understand what that’s like and understand how that qualifies as an ICU. That’s where it takes your resume to display that to them.

If a school only considers ER experience on an individual basis, it’s not going to be exactly what they’re looking for. It’s not going to be their preference. They’ll consider you but it might not be ideal. The only way to set yourself apart is to sell your experience on your resume and make sure you’re knocking your interview out of the park. A vast majority of schools out there saying no completely to ER experience.

This is something that I see a lot of students struggle with when they get all the way to the application process, then they realize this when they go to apply. It has to be gut-wrenching. You realize you spent the last three years working in an ER and your school does not even accept ER experience. I don’t want to see that happen to you.

Please, I’m stressing to you. Make sure from the day you decide you want to do CRNA that you’re thoroughly researching your school. Go to their website. There’s an on another website called the COACRNA.org. You can look up your school stats on that website. most of the time, these schools list their accepted ICU experience on their website under the admission requirements. You could also give your email to these schools and they can send you more information. Please do that early on in your path to CRNA.

I do understand that there are some people who don’t necessarily choose CRNA until maybe they see CRNA is the bedside and the ER place in central lines or doing airways. I get it. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes you don’t know that you want to go on for CRNA until you’ve experienced being around some CRNAs. At that moment, I encourage you to start researching your schools if you’re even questioning CRNA. That way, you make sure you’re getting the experience they want.

Writing Your Personal Statement for CRNA School

First, why do they have you write a personal statement? What’s the purpose of writing a personal statement? As you may know, your interview is only one piece of the puzzle. Sometimes it’s only 10 minutes long, maybe 15 or 20 minutes.

Some schools I’ve heard are 30 minutes to 45 minutes, but the vast majority of schools only spend a short period of time interviewing you. They use your personal statement as another way to gauge your personality, as well as your writing style. Your personal statement is for them to assess who you are as a person, get to know you, and assess your goals, educational background, work ethic, and writing style.

Remember, you’re entering into a Doctoral degree. There’s going to be a lot of graduate-level writing involved in getting your Doctoral degree. They want to assess your writing skills and word choices, whether it’s unprofessional or if you’re more of a conversational writer, which is the problem I have when I write. I write like I’m talking to you in person versus writing. Be aware of where you may lack and address these areas before starting your statement.

We’ll get into how you can do this and some resources for you to utilize to make sure that you’re looking over your writing before submitting that personal statement. Some of the things to point out as far as looking at your writing style, they will think, “Is this student going to need a lot of guidance and help to get them up to speed to be able to succeed at writing this paper?”

Let’s say they have two candidates who relatively scored about the same in the interview but one of them has a good personal statement and the other one is mediocre. They may lean on the student who had a better personal statement, knowing they’re going to need less help and less guidance to do all the Doctoral writing involved in the program.

I’m not trying to discourage you if writing is not your strong suit. Just know that you need to make sure you make your personal statement strong. When you’re in school, you’re going to have to rely on additional resources to make sure you’re getting extra help in proofreading where you need it. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It means that you’re going to need some extra help. You need to identify that before submitting your personal statement.

To also point out, we’ve had students whose English is their second language. They’ve needed 3, 4, or 5 edits on their personal statement, and they still get into school. May they require some additional help during all their writing? Yes, but now they know they can get assistance. They can get someone to proofread their papers for them and help them where it’s necessary. I don’t want to make you feel like this is not possible if English is not your strong suit. You can do this. You just have to be aware of the possible help you’re going to need along the way to accomplish the goal.

Let’s get into the structure and some red flags that I want to point out. Students sometimes make themselves sound like they’re good writers. Sometimes what they do is inflate their verbiage, meaning they use these big vocabulary words. They think that the more big words they use, it will make them sound smarter. The problem is if you don’t truly understand the word, not only is it going to become difficult to read quickly, but let me also remind you that these programs are getting 150 to 200 applicants or more sometimes. They have a lot of essays to read.

If it’s difficult to read, you’re automatically going to trigger something in their brains and say, “I need to be able to read this efficiently and quickly. They’re using many fancy words that I have to slow down and ask myself, ‘What do they mean by that?’” The reason why I want to bring that up is so that you will be aware of the word choices you’re using and use language that aids in your descriptions. Be cognizant of the flow of that and how difficult it is for someone to read quickly and get the gist of what you’re trying to say.

Richard Wilson does guided Q&As inside the academy. He pointed out that sometimes it’s not about the word definition matching, but it might be used out of context a little bit. You may have to be aware that even if the word definition fits what you’re trying to describe, maybe it’s not used in the best context or the best flow for the sentence. I also want to point out that you need to proofread. It looks sloppy if you make pretty basic grammar errors in your essay. It shows them that you didn’t take the time to do your due diligence, essentially to proofread the paper before submitting it.

That means getting help to do that. Read it over when your eyes are not fatigued. Sometimes I read something and put letters where I think they should go, which is my brain, but I didn’t write that down. Especially when I’m fatigued, I tend to do that more frequently. I miss the little errors that I’ve made. If you haven’t used something called Grammarly, I highly recommend you do that, but that isn’t everything. There is a free version of it. While it’s amazing, unless you pay for it, you can only get so much out of it. It shouldn’t replace a good proofread, but it’s a good place to start.

You can install it on Google Chrome. Make sure you’re doing that for your first proofread, for example. Also, I’ve noticed that when you take documents and put them into a Word doc, Google doc, or whatnot, it will do some proofreading for you, but it can flip words that you may not even catch because maybe your spelling was off a little bit and it will pick a similar word, but maybe it’s so similar that you didn’t catch it.

You have to be careful about that too. You think you’re correcting a misspelling but in reality, you’re completely changing the word altogether. Maybe your brain doesn’t recognize that right away because it’s similar to the word that you wanted to say. You have to be careful. Don’t rely on spell-check and Grammarly to do everything for you. You still need to put second eyes on that paper, walk away, and come back. You need to proofread.

I want to take this moment to also share with you a story from one of our students because another thing that can happen too is when you’re writing multiple personal statements, sometimes you may make a mistake and leave in the wrong school name for example. Maybe you express how you’d be a good candidate for school X, and you submit that personal statement for school Y. Even though it was relatively the same prompt, and you updated the prompt to match, you left in the wrong school name. That happens probably more often than I would even realize it happens. It’s easy to do.

Let me share with you this because this is from one of our students. I thought it was a great takeaway. “Jenny and CSPA family, I want to take time out to thank everybody who was a part of this community. This is my testimony to the effectiveness of the program. Back in June of 2021, Richard helped me write a concise and thoughtful letter of intent. This letter, along with my decent stats, got me interviews at 2 out of 3 schools. I used the content in the CSPA library and the resources on the site to prepare for my interviews.”

“I was offered a seat on the spot during my first interview. The second program also offered me a seat two weeks after my interview. I want to pause here and mention the importance of being honest, and prepared, and not letting your mistakes define you. I sent my letter of intent with another school name on it to the program that offered me a seat on the spot. Many people told me to forget about ever getting into that program.”

“Instead of giving up, I wrote a letter to the director of the program, explaining my mistake and showing her that I take responsibility for my actions. In the interview, she later told me that my honesty and willingness to take responsibility for my actions without making excuses is why she wants me in her program. I owe my acceptance to this community. During my second interview, I was able to interpret graphs that I saw in one of Richard’s presentations. The interviewer told me I was the only one who was able to correctly interpret the data out of so many applicants. Thank you, Jenny, Richard, and everyone in this community. I look forward to using CSPA resources and crushing CRNA school.”

First, I love everything about it. The takeaway from this for you is the fact that this student had to own his mistake. He did this. He put the wrong school on his personal statement and sent it. He still got offered a spot during this interview, which is amazing. There are a couple of takeaways from this. One, he owned his mistake. There are probably plenty of students who make this mistake and are fearful.

Plenty of people told him to walk away, to give up on that school. It’s not going to happen. He made a mistake, and he’s got to live with it. Instead, he was like, “I don’t want to end that way. I have to at least let them know that I’m aware that I made a mistake.” That’s what these schools want. They want a student who has a voice to say, “I messed up. I’m sorry.” That’s important as far as your attitude.

That’s what they’re looking for in a candidate. It’s not all about your ICU background or 4.0 GPA. They want to see that personality characteristic that you’re going to take ownership of when you make mistakes. I also love the fact that he was well-prepared for his interviews. That also clearly displayed his interview skills.

Preparing Your Resume for CRNA School

We’re going to discuss preparing your resume for CRNA school and some of the things that you should avoid, as well as some things that you should be thinking about or little nuances so that you’re making a good impression. First and foremost, I want to make sure that when you start doing your CRNA school resume, you are not treating this process like checking a box. They will be able to tell if that is the case.

CRNA School Application Tips: When you guys start doing your resume for CRNA school, don’t treat the process like checking a box. It makes you look like you’re not a serious candidate.

It will essentially make it look like you are not putting a full amount of effort into it or that maybe you’re not the most serious applicant. Make sure that when you work on your resume, you’re putting a lot of effort and time into making sure that it’s easy to read. It flows nicely. It’s well organized and you have a hundred million times triple-checked the spelling. I use Grammarly. There’s a free version of it. Copy, paste, and stick it in Grammarly quickly because if you’re like me, I make typos without even realizing that I made them.

I will reread something five times and I’m like, “How did I not see that?” I use Grammarly a lot for that reason. Sometimes it’s hard to proofread your own stuff because your brain is plugging in words that aren’t there or it’s correcting the mistake because that’s what you meant to say, but you didn’t type it out that way. Make sure you have someone else lay eyes on your resume too. Have your coworker, your friend, your mom, dad, or whomever.

You can also do a resume review with TeachRN’s expert providers. That’s always an option as well. Make sure that you’re putting a lot of effort into your resume because if you think about an invitation to a wedding or getting an invitation to anything for that matter, it’s your first impression. We always say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but the reality is people do and will judge you based on your resume. That’s their first impression of you.

They don’t know you or your personality. There’s something to be said with physically hearing someone speak, the tone of voice, and eye contact. All of those things go into how you display yourself, whereas a piece of paper can’t usually do you justice. You have to go above and beyond to make sure when someone’s reading a piece of paper, if they’re in a bad mood or had a bad experience and they go into reading your resume, that you’re going to make them smile somehow. They’re not going to know you. They are not going to hear the tone of voice or anything like that.

There are mistakes people make when they do the resume. One is they want to highlight their clinical experience. They tend to do this in place of their education. That is a mistake. If you think about it, you’re applying to grad school. You’re not applying for a job. If you took your old template from when you were applying to your ICU position, maybe it mattered more about your work experience as a nurse’s aide because you’re applying to a work position. You’re applying to work as a nurse versus applying to school. Your educational background should be front and center.

The other reason why you should put your education at the top of your resume versus going right into your clinical experience is that it’s going to be a shorter section. It’s going to be more concise to the point. If you were to put that at the end of your resume, they have to read through all your clinical stuff to find your education. By the time they get there, they may skim over it quickly and you’re not going to be able to highlight your accomplishments as well.

Remember, you’re applying for a grad school position. Highlight your educational background. Where did you get the degree? What is the name of your school? When did you graduate? It’s not just the year. Some people make this mistake when they say, “I graduated in 2020.” Did you graduate in May of 2020 or December of 2020? This can say, “They graduated in May of 2020, so they have six more months of experience versus someone who graduated in December of 2020.”

Differentiate yourself and make it known like, “I graduated in January of 2020, so I had the entire year of 2020 to get experience under my belt.” How well did you do? I get asked this question a lot as far as whether you should be placing your GPA on your resume. The answer can go both ways. I do think if you have a 3.5 or higher, you should be highlighting that on your resume.

At the end of the day, they are going to be reviewing your transcripts and calculating your GPA regardless. If you don’t do this step, it’s perfectly okay. If you’re a B-plus student on average and you have a 3.5, you should highlight that. Why not? It’s going to take up very little room and you might as well highlight it. If you have someone who has maybe a 3.0 or a 3.2, this could be something that is better left off the resume.

They’re going to be calculating your GPA with your transcripts anyway, but it gives you a space to highlight other things. Maybe you were given an award or maybe you served on a committee in nursing school. Make sure that you’re using your resume to highlight your strengths. That’s always what your resume is all about. That explains as far as highlighting your GPA and things like that. Some of you are taking different routes to becoming a nurse. Some of you have gotten your ADN and BSN. Some of you have a Bachelor’s in Biology and you get an accelerated BSN.

Depending on what you do, make sure you put your most current schooling up top. If you had your ADN and got your BSN, your BSN should be at the top of the page versus the other way around. You should always go with the most current ICU experience, education experience, and degree at the top, and list the older experience below that.

Also, another tip is to spell out your degrees. Put a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology versus BS in Biology. That’s a nuance that Mr. Richard Wilson pointed out to me. As a faculty member, he appreciates seeing things spelled out. It doesn’t take up a lot of room on your resume. It sounds and looks better. We discussed GPA. It’s the same thing. If you had cum laude and things like that, you could put that on your resume.

Another piece of advice was given by Dr. Dawn AuBuchon, who has been a Program Director for several years and is now a Program Faculty at a CRNA college. A lot of you are taking courses and you’re like, “Should I list individual courses? I didn’t get a degree at this college, but I took individual courses there.” You don’t need to list individual courses if it’s going to reflect on your transcripts. If you’re currently in a course and it’s not going to reflect on your transcripts because when you submitted your transcripts, the course hasn’t finished, you can and should highlight the course you’re in.

What these program faculty and I have recommended is for you to approach your professor, wherever you’re at in the course, and ask them for a short letter that they can sign that says, “Such and such is in X, Y, and Z course is such and such into the semester. I anticipate them getting an X grade in the course.” Have them anticipate what they think your final grade will be as long as you keep performing as you have been performing in the course. It’s like an unofficial way of them saying, “I anticipate the student to achieve an A-minus, an A, or a B-plus, whatever it may be.”

It shows these schools that you are taking something additional, so they don’t miss it. After you have completed the course, you could submit that course to go into your overall GPA, as long as they’re able to take things after the deadline. This is something that you can reach out to the program and let them know, “Is it possible for me to submit this course after I take it even though the deadline for applications is X date? Two weeks later, I’m going to have my final grade. I can submit an anticipated grade. Once this course is complete and it reflects on my transcripts, I can submit that.”

A lot of schools will take that into consideration. It is something to think about. Don’t think you have to list all these individual courses you’ve done at different schools as long as it reflects on your transcripts. That’s something to also think about. I’ve heard this argued in both ways. Make sure that your transcripts are solid. Review your transcripts. Don’t just submit them and not look at them. I’ve had students that have happened where they think they take their transcripts from a school and submit them. They come to find out afterward that they didn’t submit all their transcripts as they thought they did.

Make sure you are laying eyeballs on your transcripts. Especially if you’re submitting from multiple schools. Y, you don’t want something to get missed. You can list things like honors, societies, rewards, and committees. You don’t have to put what you did, but list the fact that you have received rewards or you have served on the Student Nurse Association for your college. You can list that stuff there, along the lines of Magna cum laude, and things like that.

That wraps it up for this episode, future CRNA. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed these episodes. As a reminder if you’re looking for the full episode on which ICU is best for CRNA school that is episode six. If you’re looking for the episode on the personal statement, that is episode 56. Finally, if you’re looking to listen to the full episode on how to prepare your resume, that is going to be episode 79. I hope you guys enjoyed it and take care until next time. Bye.

Important Links

• COACRNA.org
• Grammarly

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