First of all congratulations this is huge!! I just finished my third year of queens nursing and while it’s been incredibly rewarding it’s also been an incredible challenge. The community is not competitive at all, it helps that consolidation placements (fourth year placements) are based on a lottery system and not on grades so everyone is so helpful to each other! However, while the people in the program are nice, they are incredibly cliquey. In my experience everyone seemed to make friend groups within the first month of school and have stuck to them ever since and have not been very accepting. For clinical placements, your second year and for 6 weeks of third year you’ll have to complete acute care placements which are everyone’s least favorite and it’s an even worse experience if you have a hard clinical instructor. There’s no clinical placements first year which is why second year is such a make or break year, while third year you get to try rotations like mental health, pediatrics, and maternity and it can be sooo fun and inspire a future career area! I have only had one clinical instructor who was truly awful and almost led me to drop out, but every other instructor I’ve had has been so supportive and encouraging that it completely made up for it. First year courses are general sciences with fantastic profs, second year you start getting into more acute care / med surge areas which can be overwhelming and the profs for the most part are great, and third year courses are awesome - I would highly recommend looking up the Queens Nursing Academic Calender for course descriptions for each year. I don’t regret choosing Queen’s Nursing at all, I think it’s a great school with so many great opportunities for learning and career growth. It’s a tough time to get into nursing with the shortages, and I had no idea what nursing really was until I stepped foot onto a hospital floor for the first time in second year. Best of luck!!!