Changing into Nursing major at TCU

Thanks in advance for your feedback on this question: Our daughter is very excited about getting accepted into TCU. We don’t doubt it’s a great school. Our concern is that she applied and was admitted as a health/exercise major, which really is not prep for the career to which she’s aspiring. Most other schools she applied to, she applied as a nursing or health science major, as she is planning to go into the nursing or physician assistants field. I believe she applied as a health/exercise major because she really wants to go to TCU and heard that the nursing program at TCU is the most competitive. Now though, we are staring at the TCU tuition, and knowing she has been accepted to fine, but less prestigious and perhaps of lesser quality, universities as a pre-nursing major or Health Science, with merit aid, too. It’s going to be hard to justify TCU with no financial aid and as an exercise major. However, we might be able to justify it were she to be in the nursing program.

The question: how difficult is it for TCU undergrads to switch into the Nursing undergraduate major?

Thanks again!
a Mom

So I think it’s doable. My DD has been deferred into the Nursing program (yes agree, ultra competitive with 14% acceptance rate). My daughter’s friend and her older sister go to TCU so she has talked to her quite a bit thru this process. Her friend’s sister started out in another major and then switched to Nursing at some point her Freshman year.

Not sure if you saw this on the site - Ive looked at this before:
https://harriscollege.tcu.edu/nursing/admission/change-of-major/
It says that the student will then be on a minimum 4 1/2 year plan with a change to Nursing. So from a finance standpoint, that option will definitely add more cost.

From my understanding, unlike a lot of other majors (ex Business), the college that you attend for Nursing does not make a difference in how much you will be paid once you graduate and pass the NCLEX. It may open doors initially, especially if she is interested in staying in the Dallas area and being employed by one of the hospitals that she did her clinicals in. But the pay scale is not going to be that different.

The whole college experience piece does play a factor into the decision and that is something that we have discussed quite a bit as well.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Thanks so much. Very helpful!

My daugher is in her second year at TCU. She was phychology with the intention of going to medical school. The summer before starting TCU she decided she didn’t want to be 38 years old with a ton of debt and miss her entire young adult life. : ) She changed to nursing. She will be going an extra semester at TCU. Her friends that were all declared nursing majors going in are one semester ahead of her. All of her scholarships will no longer be available that last sememster. They cover only 8 semesters, so that’s something to consider. It works for us. She loves it there and is excited about the nursing program.

I was just going to post that there is a Nursing transfer online session this week! If you go to the TCU Nursing page, there is info about the virtual session. We signed up for it just to get info.