A New Class

So it all starts with a...

This is basically a nice brochure the school puts together that outlines the curriculum, the application process, and costs etc. There are also banners put up around the area with information about registration.

Then over the next two months young people (mostly high school seniors) come with one of their parents and register. They have to meet requirements such as height and weight, provide a picture, and pay a fee to register.

Then in mid-August they come to campus for the entrance exam. This year we had 78 register and 60 show up to take the test.

Lining up the morning of the entrance exam

 The test has four subjects - Indonesian, English, Math, and Science. It is a total of 100 questions and they have 3 hours to complete it. It is actually really hard, especially considering they are not allowed to use a calculator.

Hard at work taking the test

Once the students are done taking the test, the correction team gets to work. Each answer sheet is coded, removing the student's name from the answer sheet, to help prevent cheating. Each year members of the correction team receive offers of bribes from family members of those who are applying. There is also temptation because many who apply are local kids and some have extended family members who work at the Nursing School. We also have each answer sheet checked by two people and then a third if there is any discrepancy. After the grades are entered, we make a final decision as to how many students will be accepted. We usually try to make it a definitive answer like they passed in at least two of the subjects but this year we didn't have enough to reach that point. The average was quite low unfortunately.

We don't have a scantron machine, so each correct answer block is cut-out by hand and then corrected by hand

Waiting for the results to be posted

In the end we accepted 50 students. They still had to pass a physical exam though and go through an interview. Our final class new freshmen class has 46 students. It will be a lot of fun to get to know them in the coming three years. I will be providing academic counseling and support to 3 of them: Nimrod, Gusniati, and Dolina.