El Paso Community College Reviews

"There were a lot of unprofessional things I saw happen with the faculty while I was a EPCC Nursing student. However the main problem with the school is the dropout rate. As said in other reviews, most other nursing schools require a 75% average. At EPCC you must have a 78. And those 3 points goes a long way. I had a lot of really hard working and smart friends flunk with a 76. Also if you fail more than one class you are out and have to wait 2 years to reapply. So the program has 8 classes and you can only fail one once. Some other schools in the area do not have this. I know someone from the Donna Anna program that didn’t pass 2 different classes on the first try and is a successful nurse now. The second reason why so many people do not make it through the program are the test questions that some of the professors pick for the exams. For example, the NCLEX likes to focus on the drugs you will use most like the main heart and pain medications. But on some of the exams at EPCC it was very common to see test questions on medications that are almost never used and we would be given tables in the books a couple of days before exam time to memorize along with all of the lectures and required reading and with no time to learn them with their side effects, contraindications and nursing considerations. Everyone would get the same answer wrong and the teachers didn’t care. Med Surge 1 was the worst about doing this, Peds was awful as well. So when they say you need a 78 you really will need an 84 average because every exam would have multiple questions where everyone got the same questions wrong but it didn’t matter. We didn’t “study hard enough.” These questions would not help you pass the NCLEX and they will not help you become a good nurse. It didn’t matter. I am pretty sure I know why they did this but I want to report what I saw and not speculate. If you want to be a part of a nursing program where you average 5 hours of sleep a night for 2 months straight because you are up doing busywork assignments and you learn nothing or other classes where you watch half of your friends work themselves into the ground only to fail, this is the one for you. The professors there that have tenure couldn’t care less. This is not the case with all of them, but there are enough teachers like this where almost half of the students had to go looking for different careers. These older tenured teachers have not kept up to date with the latest changes to the nclex and so the response by the school is to fail the students who do not teach themselves instead of retraining or firing the professors that make this place a dumpster fire. Furthermore the egocentricism and defensive bickering of some of these lazy, unprofessional faculty was unreal. Some examples of issues follow: Will not get a course packet until days before the class starts so it is difficult if not impossible to know what to study over the summer or winter break. Same goes for know what edition of the textbook to buy. Get ready to wait in line hours or wait months (literally) to see if your clinical clearance paperwork is acceptable. The majority of the instructors have zero clue how to use any technology. Teachers would openly talk about how stupid they thought certain students were. (We are talking about people who would be straight A students in most other college programs) Students getting admitted to the hospital with Kidney injury from drinking too much caffeine from lack of sleep. The boomer professors were the worst. Not every one, but over half the boomers were the main problem. They would talk in class about how difficult they had it back in their day. And we are all sitting there thinking “Really? Medical care has become less technical and detail oriented since you went to school?” I hate to make a big deal about it, but it sucks being there with a total of 20 hours of sleep in the past 5 days and professors spend a hour drumming on and on about how they went uphill in the snow both ways. You could be getting precious sleep or God forbid doing some productive studying but instead you waste so much time with these people. Want to make family plans when you are on semester breaks? Forget about it. They will tell you out of nowhere that you have to attend mandatory meetings days before they happen so if you buy plane tickets then know they may have to be canceled when you are not even in the semester. Could the meeting have been accomplished by emailing a powerpoint with a recording? Yup. But no one at the school cares enough to learn how to use a computer. One class was so bad that lower level faculty would help students with the test because over half the class was flunking and the lead professor went to the dean and tried to have the lower level faculty fired. In the classes with the good professors (mostly younger people with nursing experience that doesn’t date back more than 2 decades) they would warn us “Guys your next class has some miserable people teaching it. It is going to be awful. I am cheering for you and I hope you make it.” And they were right. Some teachers forced us to forge documents to pass their class. They have their own system of writing care plans. If you look online for instructions on how to do them, there is nothing because epcc has their own system that looks nothing like what is done anywhere else. And if you do not follow their specific format that somehow manages to change from teacher to teacher, you can get a terrible grade on something that you spend 8 -12hours working on. Ultimately it falls on the dean of the program, Pauline Ballesteros. She is the one that allows these terrible teachers to continue to ruin the lives of students and not promote teachers that actually want to teach. As long as she is the dean there. I would suggest you avoid it altogether. To call the culture that she sets here toxic is like saying the sky is blue. If you want a good nursing program, look for one that brags about their high passing rate. Those schools actually give a shit about their students. We would see individuals from other programs (UTEP, TT) in clinical, and they had a lot of positive things to say about their university. Everyone at EPCC in contrast hated the experience and hated the school. If you do decide to go into this program anyway, may God be with you. It was hell."

"If you are considering this program STOP. El Paso has many other choices where the Professors are there to support their students and help them be successful. EPCC does not have that goal. TAlk to others students and graduates - I have not found any student who was happy in the EPCC Nursing Program. I am a mother of a daughter who attended UTEP, who looks fondly on her experience. Texas Tech also has happy graduates. Not only are the professors unprofessional but the program requirements change during the year and graduate plan. Tests change without explanation. Please consider the other options! Your money and time should not be wasted."

"I respect C's review of the school and mentioning the fact that teachers have her a "little on edge". That's an understatement. My experience in the nursing program has been nothing but negative. There are several instructors here who should not be teaching, much less interacting with other students. They are rude, condescending and overall disrespectful, but I will say that there are other instructors who are awesome. I noticed that instructors tend to show less respect for the older students as well, while I noticed that several younger students are favored by certain instructors. This does not make it right and is a violation of school policy, but do you think that the dean cares? Apparently I approached the dean with other unrelated issues and all she did is blow off my complaint. Also, keep in mind that if you do attend this nursing program and you decide to file a formal complaint, say for example, on an instructor. I guarantee you will become a target. You will be retaliated against, which is against school policy, but you really have no one else to turn to. This is a government entity and they know how much they can get away with. The nursing program has this mentality that they are right and you are wrong. In this case, the customer is NOT always right. As C. was saying, the number of students that fail nursing classes is quit alarming and should be a cause for concern. I know they raised their passing score from a 75 to a 78, so if you get a 77.9, you have officially failed that class because in the nursing school, instructors do NOT round grades. When I was there, I know 20 plus people failed the 2nd semester and I know of 20 others that failed the semester before me. Some of the best nursing instructors that I have had the pleasure of dealing with actually warned me and said to look into a better nursing program elsewhere and to stay away from the EPCC nursing program. That says a lot coming from an employee of the college. I personally know friends that moved to Arizona to attend the nursing program at Grand Canyon University, one was a former student of EPCC, and they were happy to report that the education was much better than EPCC. They say the difference was night and day. Unfortunately, it is not easy for me to pack up my family and move to Arizona. One last thing, i know that sometime in 2015 or 2016, the school was in a lot of trouble because more that half of students failed the NCLEX, which is why they raised the passing grade to 78. The school probably panicked so they made nursing classes that much harder, but is that really fair for the students? If you can avoid this nursing program and go elsewhere, do it. Trust me, there are better options out there. If you have to, you may have to move out of town to get that quality education you deserve."

"I have had an excellent experience at my school thus far. I do, however, struggle with some of the Nursing teachers reputations that have me a little on edge and anxious. One particular graduate from the program in which I am enrolled told me that out of the 75 students that started in her class, only 9 actually graduated. This is rather disconcerting and keeps my anxiety level at full throttle. My instructors have said that due to the poor pass rate of the NCLEX exam at the completion of the program, the administration decided to narrow the field of students succeeding in order to ensure better results on the national testing. Will I make it? I am certainly giving it a valiant effort and trust that my character will be shaped out of granite by the time I graduate. I must admit that Nursing school is not for the faint of heart and I look forward to the challenge because of the eventual outcome of being able to work as a Registered Nurse - a dream that I hope will soon become a reality."