Has anyone else run into extra fees for Nursing classes? As we were perusing a course catalog at one college, we came across fees in almost every nursing class, some more than $500. Is this common? Now we have to call other choices to see if they have them also.
Yes, it’s very common. The fees are often used for testing (Teas, hesi, ATI, Kaplan, etc) and they can be quite high.
Yes, many extra fees and costs. Most colleges are charging an extra fee for nursing classes and for science lab classes. (They are also charging extra tuition in many cases for engineering and business courses). There are also fees for malpractice insurance, test prep materials (as described above), plus costs for medical tests, etc. At some colleges, the extra tuition is a couple thousand dollars more for each of the last 2 years. The extra costs are usually buried in the fine print.
More research for me!
As a general rule, if you estimate that you can just barely afford a certain college, you can probably not afford it. That is because there will always be unexpected costs, for both a student and for a family. All costs will also increase each year.
The college is near the top of our range knowing increases will occur. We knew about fees for tests, uniforms, etc and maybe some of those fees are for such things. It would have been nice to be told up front.
I’m not sure about all colleges, but my college increased tuition by 5% last year and 4% this year. We also have extra nursing costs for ATI exams, scrub tops & pants for clinicals, our clinical bags, etc. I just bought a stethoscope and have to get all white leather shoes to wear during clinicals too. There are probably other things as well that I don’t know about yet as I’m beginning my first semester of clinicals now. Nonetheless, it’s expensive!! 
Keep in mind that many nursing majors will need a car to get to clinicals, particularly since the hours may be at times when public transit is not running, or hours when it is unsafe to wait at a bus stop, or involving long distances where buses do not run. Some nursing schools charge for test prep materials and classes. Some nursing programs make you retake their test prep class during the next semester (with extra costs and delayed fulltime employment) if you do not do well enough on the certification practice tests.
And … some programs require you to get an STNA license on your own time, usually in the summer, to supplement college work. That can be had pretty inexpensively at your local community college, but it is an additional cost in time and money that you need to know about up front.