I am currently a junior and am interested in Michigan’s nursing program. I am selecting courses for next year and need advice on which courses are particularly appealing to admissions at Michigan. I am 100% taking AP Calculus, AP Stats and Anatomy and Physiology. I am now deciding if I should take AP Bio or Ap Psych. I am having such an internal debate because AP Bio at my school is extremely rigorous and I am scared I will suffer with my workload already. However, If it is going to make my chances better of getting into the nursing school / even looks slightly better I am willing to fair my chances. Basically, I just want to know which course would look better or if there is not a huge difference.
I was admitted in December to Michigan’s School of Nursing so maybe I can help? I’ll just tell you what my courses are this year:
AP Gov
AP Bio (note - not taken seriously in my school, so my grade is high but I will probably fail the AP test)
AP Calc
AP Lit
(And then one more honors class that had Latin prerequisites, that is pretty damn hard but is hard to explain and only offered in my school)
I would recommend taking Bio over Psych, but if it’s really gonna kill your grades and/or mental health than you should value your health and happiness over one class, haha.
My daughter has decided against the nursing program but did attend the nursing school presentation earlier this year. I can’t answer your question regarding Bio or Psych but I do remember them stating that they value AP Stats over AP Calc. They said it was much more relevant to nursing and seemed to imply that Calc wasn’t necessary. Not suggesting you don’t take calc… just passing on that information. Maybe call the school of nursing to ask their opinion.
If you apply for early admission (recommended!) only your junior grades will matter in the decision. You will need a lot of time during your senior fall semester to apply for colleges, scholarships, awards, and possibly make last minute college visits and/or meet with college representatives. If you need to re-take the SAT or ACT you will also need time for that. I would take whichever course allows you sufficient time to complete those objectives.
You can get quite a bit of AP credit, see the following: (The Nursing school follows LSA AP guidelines)
Michigan nursing is a strictly 4 year program, doesn’t matter how many AP credits you have.
AP Bio is probably the most useful. You will have to retake statistics anyway.
Hi! I’m currently a junior (class of 2017) in the Umich nursing program. Honestly, you don’t need to take AP calc-- you’ll never need calc as a nurse and you don’t need to take it for BSN curriculum–so why suffer?? You can probably tell that I’m really not a math person :). If I were you, I’d mainly go with AP stats and Psych since STATS 250 and PSYCH 111 are required. I know a lot of people used their AP credit for Psych and many people took stats at other colleges over the summer and transferred it in. Sophomore year of nursing school is very tough (patho, pharm, first hospital clinical) and having stats out of the way over the summer is a big relief.
Taking other AP courses could help you get some those elective credits out of the way, but you only need like 11 elective credits so they’re really no big deal (you could even just take some classes at community college over the summer and transfer them over).
I’d say the best thing you can do is keep your GPA up and work hard on the test scores. AP courses will not make a big difference in nursing school.
I’d also like to add that I actually highly recommend the PSYCH 111 course with Professor Schreier (all the nursing students take it with her). She is awesome! I feel like those who tested out of PSYCH 111 totally missed out
I’ve been a nurse for 15 years now… I will agree you do not need Calc and AP stats is worth your while because you need statistics in college. Also, i never had to take an entry level Bio class… had to take Anatomy and Phys 1 and 2, Microbiology, and Chemistry. I did however, have to take psych. So you may do better with AP stats, and AP psych
