Hi, I’m a currently a highschool senior. I want to become a nurse and I was wondering about the steps to reach the goal of being a nurse. Do you have to go into a 4 year college as a nursing major in order to go into nursing school? Or can you go to a nursing school with a biology background. I’m just really lost, please clarify everything for me. thank you.
There are three ways to become a registered nurse with a BSN these days.
The easiest and most direct way is to major in nursing as an undergrad the first time around. You’d need to go to a university that offers a BSN (bachelor’s of science in nursing) program. These usually take four years, and sometimes take five. There are two flavors of these BSN programs. A small number of schools offer direct admission as a freshman (e.g., you’re admitted to the school of nursing when you apply to the college, and you are guaranteed to be a nursing major as long as you keep your grades up). But most make you apply to the nursing school in your sophomore year to start your junior year. In those, you complete pre-nursing prerequisites in your first two years and then start nursing classes in your third year.
The second way is to complete a regular bachelor’s degree (in anything, although a science major makes this easier), then go back to school and get an accelerated second BSN. ABSN programs usually take 14-18 months after your first bachelor’s degree, which adds time and expense to getting your BSN. This route is usually chosen by people who didn’t realize they wanted to be a nurse until after they were already in college, but I’ve known a couple of college students who chose to go this route because they wanted to go to a liberal arts college to undergrad and yet still wanted to be a nurse. If you do this you have to plan your prerequisites carefully, since colleges without nursing programs tend not to have classes like anatomy and physiology.
The third way is to complete a regular bachelor’s degree (in anything, although again, a science major makes this easier) and then go into an entry-to-practice MSN program. Entry-to-practice programs are 3-year programs in which you get your RN in the first year and then your MSN in the last two years, which allows you to practice as a nurse practitioner. This is only a good idea if you know you want to be a nurse practitioner (an NP is a nurse who gives primary care).
Really, if you know you want to be a nurse now, the best way is to go to a college/university that has a nursing undergrad major.
@juillet if my end goal was to become a NP, would the first way be better or the third way? (considering time/expense)
That’s a good summary above. One additional option is to get an Associates degree in nursing from a Community College that has an approved RN program. Those programs are usually competitive for entry, unlike most other community college programs. Often, the community college has a waiting list for nursing and will make you take a number of science classes first to prove that you are capable of handling it, before you are accepted as a nursing major. Your job opportunities will not be as wide as if you have a BSN, but you should still have no problem getting hired. Many of those grads then go onto later get a BSN, while taking classes part-time. Many health care employers will subsidize those classes.
The community college option is often chosen by older students who have local family obligations, or who need to work many hours while attending college.
The worst option is usually a for-profit online program. A person is typically much better off going to a community college, which is usually much cheaper and more likely to result in licensing. Some online classes can work for some topics, but I wouldn’t enroll in a nursing undergrad degree program that claims to be mostly online.
Most of the BSN programs in the northeast US are direct entry from high school, while most programs in the southeast US are 2-2 programs. Some colleges have a mix, where honors college students are admitted from high school, but others have to compete for the spots.
Most RNs are only admitted to a NP program after they have several years of experience. One program said the persons admitted to their program had an average of 10 years experience. I imagine many successful applicants will have also taken some part-time grad classes and completed certifications before they are accepted. That experience and education will matter much more than the name on your undergrad degree.
If you list your GPA and test scores we can help find a school for you. Also what state are you in?
Well, neither is inherently better, but the first way is likely to be cheaper mostly because of the time and the selection of schools you can go to.
The tl;dr is that the first way may take you longer in total years, including work experience, but would probably be cheaper; the third way would be shorter in total years, but would require more years of education overall and would be more expensive.
And quite frankly, if I knew that I wanted to be an NP as a high school senior, I’d just go to a university with a nursing program and try to do the regular route of BSN + work experience + MSN/NP rather than messing around with an ETP/graduate-entry program.
If you do it the first way, you get a BSN in (theoretically) 4 years. Then you go get the MSN. That takes two years if you do it full-time, but many nurses work full- or part-time during their MSN degrees to help with costs. If you go this route, you already have all of the prerequisites you need at your university for the BSN, and when you graduate, you will also have everything you need to get an MSN. Also BSNs and MSNs are offered at a lot of public universities, which are generally less expensive especially for the master’s level.
The caveat is that, as charliesch said, most traditional MSN programs that train nurse practitioners expect several years of work experience as a regular floor nurse/RN before accepting you into the NP program. This is changing somewhat - the number of years programs are expecting is going down as the need for NPs rises and awareness of the career field rises for younger students. But still, most people who successfully get into NP programs do have several years of nursing experience - I would say at least 5+ for most programs, although of course some programs have higher averages.
The third way is explicitly designed for students to go straight from 0 to NP without the years of work experience (kind of like being a medical doctor). You spend 4 years in undergrad and then the entry-to-practice program is 3-5* years, so that’s 1-3 additional years of education. (That’s not counting any time you have to spend taking prerequisites if they aren’t offered at your school, like A&P.) They’re kind of just like an ABSN and an MSN combined. In these programs, you can also theoretically work part-time once you finish the RN phase of the program.
But the big caveat is that most of these programs, for the time being, are offered at really expensive universities, like Johns Hopkins, Yale, Columbia,* Penn, Vanderbilt and Emory. (Emory calls theirs an “accelerated BSN + MSN program” but it’s the same thing.)
*As I was doing some research for this comment, I’ve noticed that because the AACN endorsed a movement to the Doctor of Nursing Practice being the minimum qualification for nurse practitioners, some schools are transforming their programs to accommodate that and so they take longer. For example, Columbia’s program is now an RN+DNP program that takes about 4.5 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if over the next 5-10 years more ETP programs transition to a DNP model and take a bit longer.