Class Load

There is no set standard. One of the schools I looked at has one 9 or 10 credit class per term. Another has 5 or 6 separate classes per term that are mostly 3 and 4 credits each but range from 1 credit to 5 credits.

I start my first semester of nursing school next month and I have 3 classes which are all 3 units. But it changes with each semester. Every program is different though.

I am starting my sophomore year (first clinical year) in a BSN program. I have 5 classes, which include a lab and a clinical. I have classes 3 days a week, 8:30 to 2:30 and clinical/lab on the 4th day. One day off. Most nursing programs I have looked into you have to take certain classes in order to take the next set of classes for the following semester. The school you are looking at should have an example class schedule on their website.

I start the 2nd year of a 2 year program in two weeks. While the student handbook has an outline of the courses taken during each of the four semesters of the program, it has non-nursing classes included in it. Most of my cohorts have taken all the non-nursing classes (gen ends like psych, sociology, English etc) prior to starting the nursing classes. I, myself have only the 4 nursing classes left, two that are taken the Fall semester and two in the Spring semester. The good thing is the way my school has their acceptances most people have very few if any non-nursing classes to take once they are finally in the nursing classes.

I have two nursing class for the Fall semester (the first half of the semester is one class, the 2nd semester is the 2nd class. However one of those class is 6 credits and involves 3 components to it. I have the actual 'lecture' portion of the class which is held twice a week for 3 1/2 hrs each day, the clinical portion where we are on the floor for 8 hours a day for 2 days an then our 'skills/lab' section which is another one day a week class that is 3 hours long. The second class is 5 credits and has a schedule exactly the same as the first with the exception of the skills/lab section which is an hour shorter for time duration.

If given the opportunity and you can do it, my best suggestion is getting all your non-nursing classes out of the way before you start the nursing classes. If time constraints don't allow you to do that, then my other suggestion would be to take as many non-nursing classes (and preferably the harder and more time consuming ones) that you can before you start the nursing classes. Leave the easier ones and take them with the nursing classes. Nothing is more stressful than having a major tes/project/paper coming up for a non-nursing class during the time you have care plans to write, nursing class tests etc.