Bismarck State College A.A.S program and getting in

[storm13]

I've done a bunch of searching and found a couple or three comments about how BSC's A. A. S. in Nuclear Power Technology was "highly regarded" and a "good program".

Having just graduated this spring, I'm curious to see if many posters have direct experience with BSC, either themselves, or having coworkers who graduated from there. IS it really a program that utilities are looking to hire from (since in theory they designed it themselves), or is it just eye-candy that may or may not get me in?

I did the program in hopes of gaining a NLO/EO/AO job and working my way to RO from there.  I'm in a bit of the doldrums at the moment though because of what I hope is just a timing issue; there don't seem to be any operator jobs available at the moment.  Did I just miss out on a rotation, and just need to wait 6-12 months, or are ops jobs really that hard to come by these days?

[Higgs]

A little of everything..., I think you missed a rotation (start checking again for hiring this fall), plus, those jobs are highly competitive due to the economic situation all over the country..., so the listings don't last long. Besides the standard ex navy nukes and college grads applying, you are competing with people that may have left nuclear for "greener" pastures only to find that things aren't so green anymore..., so they are trying to get back in. Look around this site, there are new "trying to get back in" posts every couple of weeks.

My best advice is to keep trying, make checking all of the utility jobs sites part of your daily routine, you might start seeing some things pop up towards the end of the summer. Rumor around here (Beaver Valley) is that they may be trying to fill an NLO class near the end of the year. A friend on FB recently posted that he thinks his company will be hiring a class this fall.

I know that wasn't very encouraging, but it is simply a matter of timing, economics and competitiveness.

Hopefully some folks from other utilities will give their perspective.

Good luck!

[storm13]

Thanks for your take on it, you more or less reinforced my opinion that a lot of it is in the timing.  I noticed a few threads here dating back to earlier this spring where a couple of guys got hired at various locations. 

I didn't really start hitting the websites looking for jobs until last month when I actually graduated.  Before that time, I'd pretty much limited myself to keeping an eye out for openings at the local plant, so probably missed out on seeing openings earlier this year.

My general "plan of attack" is to just watch websites for job postings every few days, and work an outage or two this fall/winter for more experience and exposure to plant personnel.  I'm assuming that contacts made at a plant are even more valuable than the actual experience, although that won't hurt either.

[Higgs]

Yeah for sure. Like I said though, I would recommend checking daily. At least at my place, when the reach a certain number of applicants, they take the listing down. We had one listing last less than 2 days. Others might do something similar.

Good luck! I will do my best to keep the site posted about openings.