One of the most attractive things about a career in nursing is that in order to get a degree as a registered nurse, all you need is a high school diploma or a GED, and a two year associate’s degree. Hooray! Two years to your dream career!
Right?
In most cases - wrong.
In fact, before you can be accepted into an associate’s degree program, there are a number of “prerequisites” courses that you must complete, and do well in. These will take you AT LEAST a year to complete. Every school has its own set of prerequisites, and you must contact each school you are looking at individually to find out what they are, but they typically include: Anatomy & Physiology I and II, psychology, nutrition, English, microbiology, college level algebra, and human growth and development. The science classes are intense and demanding; it’s not advisable to load up on too many of them if you also hold down a full time job. Many associate’s degree programs require you to have finished most of the prerequisite classes with a grade of C or better before you can even apply.
Realistically, with the intense competition to get into two-year community college nursing programs, most of the students accepted these days have at least a B average in all of their classes, if not higher.
And here’s what makes the wait to get into these types of two-year associate’s degree nursing programs even longer: students have to complete most of their prerequisites before they can apply. There are usually hundreds of students competing for dozens of slots. Most of those students have very good grades. Most nursing schools these days turn away many qualified candidates. Some schools have waiting lists, but many schools don’t, which means that if a student is not accepted into their program, they must wait as long as a year before they have another chance - to again compete against hundreds of qualified students for very few slots.
Does this mean that you’ll never get that nursing degree of your dreams? Of course not. It means that you will need to look into other options. And we’re here to help you find them.