AE-MSN with foreign degree?

[mannina]

I did my first degree (a BA) in England where students are able to specialize in their field immediately and do not have to take the multitude of general education credits that they do here. I'm planning to apply to an alternate entry MSN course (Family Nurse Practitioner or Midwifery) for those that already have a non-nursing degree. Has anybody else on here been accepted into this kind of program with a foreign degree (particularly a UK one)? If I get my pre-reqs done, will my UK degree be sufficient?

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

Hi welcome to allnurses.

I know that in California, the requirement is that the BA or BS obtained already include all the general education credits such as Languages, Arts and Humanities, Social and Biological Sciences, etc. in the curriculum.

These are the same general education credits typically seen in a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree in the state so the expectation is that the student will only need the undergraduate nursing courses to fulfill the requirements of a baccalaureate in nursing prior to proceeding to the specialized courses of the MS/MSN leading to FNP specialization (even though a BSN is not awarded in some cases).

I think, in your case, you will need to complete the missing general education coursework your BA did not provide in order to qualify for admission. However, you should direct this inquiry to specific programs you are interested in attending as the the process might be different for each particular program.

Here is a link to UCSF's MEPN program requirements as it pertains to applicants who have specialized BA/BS degrees like yourself: Did your undergraduate degree prepare you for the UCSF MEPN program? | UCSF School of Nursing

New York and Massachusetts are other states with many of these types of programs and it doesn't look like the websites of the specific programs there indicate a preference but that does not mean that they do not have the same rules. Again, I would direct your question to the specific programs.

[mannina]

Thank you for this excellent information. I have been looking at programs in and around Seattle, and they do not inude this much info on their webpages.

[ghillbert, MSN, NP]

The universities themselves will have to evaluate your prior transcripts and decide what prereqs you will need. I did a MSN but I had a nursing degree from another country (which also didn't have the general ed stuff, but I did also have a grad dip of another year long) as well as some masters level subjects completed overseas. I ended up getting advanced standing for a few subjects.