I earned a B.S. with just a couple of easy stats classes - I would hesitate to call what I had “math.” I’m not sure how I did well on the math portion of my GRE. I had trig. senior year of high school. However, I’m definitely not going back to school! Your concerns may be valid although one would hope that the placement test is fairly accurate.
My senior is taking AP Calc AB and probably won’t need any math in college, assuming he gets at least a 4 on the exam. He wants to get a B.M. and his gen. ed. requirements will be pretty minimal.
I took two semesters of Calc in College while getting an Accounting degree. Then 9 years later while getting my MBA I had to take a ECON class. Because I had already taken ECON in undergrad I had to take a higher level ECON which entailed a bunch of Calc. I struggled because I hadn’t done it in many moons. Thank god for partial credit.
I was a poly sci major and was required to take one math class as part of our core curriculum requirements. I took the most basic math I could find but it was taught by a TA whose English was so poor (or perhaps it was that her accent was so strong we couldn’t tell whether her English was poor), that no one could understand a word she said. I basically had to teach myself the class.
Later, I took a course called Women in the Labor Market that was an Econ course with no Econ prerequisite. It was one of my choices that satisfied a “core enrichment“ requirement. It was like a foreign language to me. I think I nearly failed the midterm. I remember showing the study guide to my roommate who was a math/Econ major, in hopes that she could help me. She was shocked that this course was offered without intro to micro/macroeconomics as a prerequisite. Even she, who was well into her major with numerous math and Econ courses struggled with some of the questions on my study guide (I vaguely recall formulas were involved that I’d never learned). I think the only thing that saved my grade was that our final was a research paper.
The most math I do these days is figuring out the cost of something when a percentage discount is involved. My kids’ math classes have surpassed my knowledge so any help they need, they get from dh. Thankfully we balance each other out as I’m much more helpful when they are writing papers.
OP, Best of luck with your nursing degree-I have several friends who went into nursing as a second career.