Back to school for BSN in Minneapolis. Need advice on starting prereqs.

jcadler82, BSN · Apr 2, 2011

I just went through all of this myself and I'll tell you what I did. I basically searched all the community colleges in the area to see what they were offering the next semester. I decided I wanted to do mostly online because of my work schedule. I ended up going to three different schools during the course of three semesters (spring, summer, fall) at Minneapolis Community and Tech, Inver Hills, and Century College. For the most part any of these schools will have the correct classes for pre-reqs. The one you do have to be careful about is Anat/Phys. Makes sure you take both at the same school, as they are split up/structured differently at every school. My goal was to get all my classes in as quickly as possible so I decided to take them wherever I can get them. I had in classroom teaching at MCTC and Inver Hills and thought both were great. Please let me know if you have any specific questions. I'd love to help!

megstudent7 · Apr 5, 2011

Great info...thanks for sharing. I'm trying to talk as many folks as possible--students, applicants, working nurses to get some well-rounded advice. Did you apply to St. Kate's as well?

m4howie, ADN, BSN · Apr 23, 2011

If you have future plans of being a Nurse Practioner I would look into the physicians assistant program at Augsburg College. http://www.augsburg.edu/pa/

lukeslichy · Apr 23, 2011

I am also doing an RN program with a prior BA degree, although I am not doing BSN I am going the RN route first. Then I will finish my BSN online. If you have good grades in your prior degree St. Kate's will most likely take you. I looked into their school for a bit and it's one of the easier programs to get into. Just know that the tuition there is 3x the cost of one of the community colleges. I definitely second jcadler82, if you decide to go the St. Kate's route try to take as many classes as possible at the community colleges, save you a bundle, especially if you have student loans from your first BA, like I do, ugh!.

Fishkabob · Jul 22, 2011

I'm in the same boat as you, except for that I started my pre-req's back in 2008. My one word of advice, although you already have your bachelor's do not let this at any moment make you over confident in your ability to complete the pre-req's... even if you are taking them at one of the local community colleges! I went to the University of MN for my bachelor's degree but I did the majority of my nursing pre-reqs at Normandale, where they pride themselves on the high caliber expected of any biological science courses. One semester I took on way more than I could chew, taking Physiology and Microbiology, both with lab components in the same semester. Holy smokes, I was floored with the amount of work required of me and I ended up getting average grades in these courses which has now screwed me over in terms of being accepted into any sort of accelerated program.

So, in short, take your time if you must, even if you think you have more academic experience than others out there. It seems a high GPA and a little experience is really all that matters in terms of getting into ANY nursing program in the metro area here.

m4howie, ADN, BSN · Mar 26, 2019

Hi Megstudent7 ,

I am curious to know what you decided to do and how it turned.