Going Back to School for My Nursing License?

You can likely do the pre-reqs online , but not the actual program. Good luck, my friend is doing that and she loves it.

Hi,
I live in Mpls as well and have a bachelor's in an unrelated field. I am planning to get a "direct entry" nursing degree in the next few years. What that is is typically a 2nd bachelor's major or a master's degree. The one at the U of MN is a 15 month program that has 9 prerequisites before you can even get in and results in a "master of nursing" degree. I would imagine you have some of those prerequisites already. There are 2 options at St. Kate's for a "post-bac certificate." They have a night and weekend program and a day program. The prerequisites for that program are built in, so you can get accepted to the school and then complete the prereqs with a "cohort" until you are ready for the actual nursing classes. The other program is at Metro State University. It is similar to the one at the U of MN in that it is a Master's degree that you obtain in 15-17 months of full-time study, but you need to complete several prerequisites prior to admission. All 3 programs lead to sitting for the nursing exam and obtaining a license.

I have taken 7 of the prereqs needed for the U's program. Of those, 3 have been online classes. None of the programs I describe above are online. I know of no reputable institutions where you can do the nursing coursework online (unless you are already a nurse and doing advanced practice education such as becoming a nurse practitioner or getting a doctoral degree). I would beware of any online universities. There is a Frontline on for profit universities where people have been totally screwed because the degree is worthless. There is a particular section that deals with nursing students who did all their coursework and clinicals and even sat for their state nursing exam and passed. It didn't matter, the clinicals were so pathetic that no one wanted to hire them. Clinical training occurred in daycares and the like and the students got no real training and never set foot in a hospital.

Here is a link to that Frontline about the for profit schools:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/

Good luck in your decision making process. It's very exciting. Feel free to contact me if I just confused you.

I am an Associate degree RN. It was by far the hardest thing I have done. It is a very rewarding job and I wouldn't change it for the world. I'm not sure how you can do the actual nursing courses online. I had to do a LOT of physical check offs in a learning lab. That was 9 years ago. I guess you can do a lot by video or web cam these days. I am currently doing online classes for my BSN. I don't have to do the clinical aspect of it now. There are a lot of pre-rec's so it is taking a while.
Good luck!

As long as you have a bachelors in any field, you can do your nursing BSN, totally online in 1 year. You have to go in for clinicals is all. HOWEVER, and it's a pretty big however, most of the BSN programs have staggering pre reqs. You may well be able to get out of a lot of them due to your psychology degree, but you will have to do your A and P 1 and 2, microbiology, chemistry, pharmacology, math up to algebra, history's governments and a whole lot of other ones. They differ by school.
It is doable, will take you a year or two to get the pre reqs, then a year to 18 months to get your BSN. It is HARD! hard hard.

Yes it is hard but not with your background. The more intelligent and well educated you are the easier it is. I don't know about online classes but the college you choose will.

Hi ~ I was in the first class of the post-baccalaureate program at the U of MN. It was a 15 month program at the time (don't know how long it is now), and we ended up with half of the credits needed for our Master's in Nursing when we were finished. I LOVED it. The instructors at the U are wonderful (I still send Christmas cards to one of them every year), and I love being a nurse. I ended up finishing up the Master's at the U of M a few years later and had to do most of it long distance. The online courses were just fine - no problems, although I did have to fly back to MN twice. It was worth it. I can't recommend it highly enough.

When I lived in Tucson, a lot of Associate degrees nurses were getting their BSN from online schools, and they liked it. I do know one RN who got her NP online at the U of Phoenix, and she liked it too, although I think it is pretty expensive.

Good luck! I am so pleased I went back to school for my nursing degree. I make less money than I did doing what I was doing before (marketing and advertising), but I am so much happier being a nurse.