ADN straight to MSN with a BS already?

elkpark · May 23, 2011

Some nursing graduate programs will accept people with an ADN and a BA/BS in another subject. You won't have as wide a choice of schools as you would with a BSN, but you would certainly be able to find programs that would take people in your situation.

A school that accepts you without a BSN will probably require you to take some additional courses (basically, covering the stuff that would have been covered in a BSN program).

metal_m0nk, BSN, RN · May 23, 2011

Yes, you absolutely can.

A lot of people on these boards will impart all sorts of completely untrue and poorly researched advice on this subject. However, it is often done in defense of their own choices, so I urge you to take the naysayers with a grain of salt. Most of them are trying to justify their own decisions and/or perspectives on what should and shouldn't be a sufficient or applicable level of education for nurses.

There are 75 schools (and this number is growing) in the country which offer direct entry MSN programs (at least one in most states) and many colleges which have MSN programs that do not advertise themselves as direct entry, but that do accept bachelor's degrees in concentrations other than nursing. Do some research around your area. There are also universities which offer online RN-MSN bridge programs for those with a bachelor's degree in a field other than nursing - which eliminates the need for relocation.

In terms of pre-requisites, the program I am considering after I complete my ADN requires a statistics course only - that goes for BSN and non-nursing degree holding students. I have not researched every applicable program in the country, but among those I have researched (10 or so), not a single one of them required any significant prerequisite course load. Many require minimum GPA's and/or GRE (or some other test) scores, but the vast majority assume that if you have a bachelor's degree in one field, you have fulfilled the core requirements for a bachelor's degree in any field (English 101, Composition, college level algebra, history, those sorts of things - pretty standard for any degree).