Everyone has their reasons for applying to be a nurse.
But, here’s the catch:
Most people have the same reasons.
Good income? Yup. The mean nursing salary in California is $113,240 and it’s $92,960 in Oregon.
Better ROI than being a doctor? Debatable… but certainly so for a good number of people.
That brings us to a pretty big issue. Most people want to become nurses. So, your generic reasons won’t be enough to stand out from the application pool.
This article covers everything you need to know to answer the “Why I want to be a nurse” essay prompt.
We won’t just cover how to write the “Why I want to be a nurse” essay, but also provide an example “Why Nursing” essay that worked.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Table of Contents
- How Important Is the Application Essay for Nursing School?
- How to Write the “Why Nursing” Essay.
- Successful “Why Nursing” Essay That Worked.
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How Important Is the Application Essay for Nursing School?
Long story short: the Nursing School application essay is very, very important.
This is NOT just for Nursing School. It also applies to students applying for Nursing Majors at the Undergrad level.
Now, how do we know this?
Well, we can take a look at what’s called the Common Data Set. Most schools have this. It’s a record of what the schools value most in their application process. In this case, we’re showing what JHU’s undergraduate application process values.
Along with academic rigor, class rank, GPA, letters of recommendation, and Standardized test scores, the application also happens to be very important to JHU. They’re measured at the same level of importance.
However, If you look at the non-academic section, there are 3 points: extracurricular activities, talent/ability, and character/personal qualities.
These sound like separate factors in the application process; however, they are very easily determined by the application essay. Thus, despite only being one factor in the application process, it also serves to constitute multiple other elements of the application.
Doing a poor job in the application essay can make a significant difference because it also shapes the way admissions officers see your ECs, talent/ability, and character/personal qualities.
In addition, there’s another element to the nursing application essay that is crucial to know.
The essay is the ONLY opportunity for you to provide qualitative value to admissions officers. In terms of grades, test scores, etc, you’re only given numbers. To the admissions office, you’re a statistic.
The “Why Nursing” essay is the ONLY chance you have to truly differentiate yourself from the rest of the admissions pool. So, don’t waste it!
How to Write the “Why Nursing” Essay.
Below, we’ve provided four major points on how to write the “Why Nursing” essay. These are not always required to write a winning nursing essay. However, these are the best techniques we’ve used to help students get into both the Nursing major at the undergraduate level and Nursing school.
1. Empathy… For What It’s Worth.
We know this title sounds silly. After all, empathy should be one of the main ingredients of a good nurse… right?
Correct… to a certain degree.
Empathy is certainly the main ingredient when it comes to a great nurse. But, you should also consider that the rest of the competition will therefore write their “Why Nursing” essay with empathy too.
Everyone is going to be talking about empathy.
So, your goal is not just to write about empathy. Your goal will therefore be to write about empathy in your “Why Nursing” essay in a manner that stands out from the rest of the admissions pool.
One way to do this is to define empathy in your own terms.
Perhaps some people think that empathy means being able to see themselves in others’ shoes. However, maybe you have a different way of looking at it. Perhaps TRUE empathy is the utilitarian skill of being capable of understanding other people’s feelings and using said understanding to take action in the best way possible.
For instance, you understand how your friends and peers feel when you cannot exercise as much control as student council president as you’d hoped. So, you’ve used your empathy to understand what they truly want and take action as president to ensure that their needs are met.
This is not a REAL definition of empathy. After all, everyone has their own definition. We highly recommend making your own definition of empathy to have a unique stance in your “Why Nursing” essay. This is one of the best ways for you to stand out.
2. How YOU Maintain Academic Performance.
This is perhaps one of the lesser-known topics to discuss in your “Why I Want to be a Nurse” essay.
Academic performance is an important element to not just the field of Nursing, but all college applications in general. But, what contributes to your academic performance are the details behind them.
If you are able to specify how YOU managed to maintain high academic performance or develop an exponential growth in GPA over the past few years, you’ll provide admissions officers a much more rich perspective.
This is especially crucial since admissions officers are careful in accepting the right students who they are confident will manage to maintain academic standing through the Nursing major despite the difficulty. After all, many people drop out of Nursing.
So, proving to admissions officers that you’ll have what it takes to take on academic difficulty and obstacles through your own unique study and work methods would provide you a major advantage compared to other students who are vague about their reasons for high performance.
Here’s an example.
At PenningPapers, we’ve worked with a lot of college applicants who were aiming for prestigious universities despite unexpected disadvantages such as low income, low grades, gender disparities, or neurodivergence.
One of the most common situations our students deal with is ADHD. Specifically, students discovered they had ADHD all their academic lives; and, it wasn’t until their diagnosis that they learned the necessary skills and coping mechanisms to help maximize their academic performance with minimal effort.
In particular, students would create unique study methods and formats that accommodate their unique attention issues; and, this helped them have an easier time earning high marks with minimal effort.
If you are capable of writing about how your unique study and work habits help you keep high academic marks with less effort, you will make it easier for admissions officers to accept you. Part of the concern admissions officers has is whether students will crash and burn whilst studying for Nursing. So, this topic can come in handy.
3. The Power of Humility.
Yes, you most likely will want to talk about your experience helping other people in your “Why I Want to be a Nurse” essay.
Yes, your trip abroad helping those in need may be compelling and quite interesting (so long as it’s not cliché.)
Yes, your many hours of work experience and volunteer service to help the disadvantaged are impressive and will certainly demonstrate to admissions officers your dedication to those who are truly in need.
This is not said in jest, by the way.
The reason we point this out is because there’s one thing that admissions officers are going to be scouring your essay for. It’s humility.
This is especially true when analyzing your “Why I Want to be a Nurse” essay.
Becoming a nurse is more than just your interests and passion for helping others. It’s also about your personality and the kind of temperament you bring to the field when helping others.
It’s especially important when writing the “Why I Want to be a Nurse” essay that you do NOT come across as self-absorbed or narcissistic. It’s a fine line, especially when those who are narcissistic often use empathic actions and activities such as volunteer work and donations to feed their covert ego.
One way to demonstrate your humility in the Nursing essay is to show that you’ve made mistakes and how you’ve learned from them. It’s in admitting your faults that you show admissions officers you have the true confidence to be transparent. And, it’s in demonstrating your knowledge gained from said faults that you can show admissions officers just how well you can adapt to unforeseen circumstances.
Ultimately, this will make you a great candidate since your personality will fit in perfectly with the field; and, it would make you a responsible choice for the Nursing field.
4. Imagery, and Why it’s Important.
You DON’T need perfect imagery to write a compelling Why Nursing essay.
So, don’t worry. If you weren’t paying attention in your creative writing classes, there’s still hope! It is, however, still important that you have some level of writing capability that is strong and stands out amongst the rest.
Thus, at the most basic level, you’ll need a strong sense of imagery.
Imagery isn’t really just making things sound flowery. Although fancy and flowery writing can be “cool” it’s not really the best. The reason you need imagery in your Nursing essay is that it helps the admissions officers understand the magnitude of the ideas you want to portray.
Okay, here’s an example.
Example 1: “I worked at a very poor district, where graffiti was everywhere and students never attended class. Teaching here was hard.”
Example 2: “Every day on my way to volunteer for the district’s most vulnerable and underfunded school, I passed by in faded blood-red lettering the words ‘anarchy’ and ‘screw the world’ before sitting in my desk with the teacher and waited, and waited, and waited. 10 minutes. 20 minutes. 30 minutes. Only a quarter of the 30 students assigned had arrived. What most people call a ‘bad day’ we called ‘lucky’.”
The first example is not the worst. It still depicts an image of what the work environment for this student was like. However, you may notice that the first example implements more telling rather than showing. In the second example, the student uses more showing rather than telling to demonstrate to admissions officers just how deep the struggles of an underfunded school are.
This level of imagery is going to help elevate your essay in a way that stands out much more compared to the rest of the admissions pool. In addition, you’ll be capable of showing the readers a level of depth to your character that helps provide them more reasons to accept you into their school.
Successful “Why Nursing” Essay That Worked.
UCLA Nursing Statement of Purpose
“Please provide a written statement (2-3 typewritten pages, double-spaced) that includes your assessment of your potential for undergraduate study and a professional career in nursing and your reason for selecting the UCLA School of Nursing. You may include information indicating any personal life challenges you have experienced. Multicultural experiences, bilingual abilities, and economic, educational, or social disadvantages should also be included here. Indicate how your volunteer, work or other life experiences influenced your nursing career decision. Please upload it as a PDF document into the online BS Application.“
UCLA School of Nursing Supplemental Application
UCLA Nursing Statement of Purpose
“Just looking over the windows of the second-floor classroom, one could see the neon green leaves scattering distracting natural colors into the classroom and making it impossible, for me at least, to focus on my notetaking before Mr. Salazar tests my attention by asking “what does the composition of the architecture here indicate” before I glance around the room, the notes on the board, and extraneous context clues which lead me to answer with “inspiration from the Phillipines…?” to which he accepts.
This is the daily life of an empath learning to master her undiscovered skill.
As someone who grew up hearing, “you’re gifted as an empath” and “you seem to always know the right thing to say” I’ve been no stranger to some of the unforeseen struggles and unconscious obstacles that come with empathy. It sounds rather strange to say. Especially since empathy is always portrayed as a skill to develop over time –which it is. But, what people often miss is how empathy can be used in a pathological manner; specifically, I learned at a young age how to use empathy in a negative way to get away with responsibilities. And, I’m not proud of it.
For instance, I’ve had the talent of understanding how other people feel and therefore knowing the “path of least resistance” that would remove negativity. I discovered very quickly that I could “get away” with daydreaming about enjoying nature outside the second-floor window or tracing the path of the plane in the sky. If my teacher asked me any questions, my empathy allowed me to process information quickly enough to produce an easy answer that would “suffice”. This extended into many elements of my life such as work, family, and friends. In other words, having an innate sense of empathy made living life “easy mode.”
I realized during the early years of my high school career, however, that I could not continue this path any longer. Empathy allowed me to understand others, and even give advice to close friends that they wanted to hear; however, it was certainly no way of living life because it was not living with genuine meaning. There was no substance to my empathy because I was only using it to satisfy other people’s desires.
So, instead of using my empathy as a crutch to do the absolute minimum such as providing last-minute discussion answers in class or using empathic compassion as a way of getting away with responsibility and labor, I started to use it as a tool for good. I could do more than the bare minimum; and, using empathy as a tool for fulfilling my potential helped me maintain a higher academic performance over time. In particular, I used it to induce exponential growth in my academic standing from my Frehsman year through my Senior year.
However, this lit from within me a burning passion and developing relationship with my empathic personality. My strength in empathy actually forged a desire to use this temperament to do more good for the world in my future career.
Thus, I was led to the world of Nursing.
The idea that I could use the talent I’ve lived so long with to nurse others through sickness and disease, to use the talent I’ve learned to manage and master through time to it’s maximum potential, is something that gives me great meaning to my life. The path of Nursing is a meaningful career path that breathes life into my moral and spiritual philosophy.
I’ve made mistakes in my academic career, both performance-wise and temperamental conscientiousness-wise. However, I’ve also learned from them and grown since then; and, I’m hoping to translate this growth and even see much more personal development on my journey to becoming a Nurse at UCLA.
UCLA is particularly interesting to me not just for its fantastic resources and pipeline plan for students entering the Nursing world. It’s also a great school for its creative and entrepreneurial spirit. And, as someone with a rather hands-on temperament, I value an educational experience that has the flexibility to promote entrepreneurial creative pursuits. I plan to use my education in Nurisng not just as a career pipeline; but, to also learn on a deeper level what the Nursing industry is like and potentially monetize it through startup projects.
Should I be accepted into UCLA, I would certainly attend to make the most of my now mastered empathic temperament and fulfill my entrepreneurial ideas.”
Successful Why Nursing Essay That Worked
If you have any other questions about how to write the “Why I Want to be a Nurse” essay; or, if you just have any questions about your nursing essay in general, feel free to speak with our expert college admissions essay editors and consultants. Schedule a free consultation today, and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours. We’ve managed to help countless students get accepted to some of the most prestigious schools for their top-choice programs.