Transferring to a different BSN program

Nurses General Nursing

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Hi everyone!

I'm new here, so sorry If I'm posting in the wrong forum.

I am in Iowa at a small private university working on my BSN. Next fall I will start the actual nursing program, and right now I'm working on prereqs. I only moved back to Iowa when the economy crashed, and I'm itching to get out of here! I've heard its best to try to transfer after your first year in nursing school, so thats what I'm planning on. My question is, how hard is it to transfer into another nursing program? Obviously state schools are much more difficult to get into from out of state, so I'd like to focus on private BSN programs. I'd like something in Oregon, Washington, Minneapolis, or Chicago. Right now I'm getting excellent grades, and doing everything I possibly can to make myself competitive. What else should I be doing? Is there anything I should know about transferring, or what obsticles I will be up against?

This forum has a ton of collective knowledge and experience! Someone help! I need out of Iowa!

Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

It will depend on whether or not there is an opening in the degree program. In some programs, like engineering or other fields, they might take as many students as will register. But in nursing school, once you get past the pre-reqs, there are only so many slots. You need to contact the school to which you intend to transfer, talk to an advisor, probably transfer your transcript for them to review, then go from there. Good luck.

Penguin67

282 Posts

Not every course transfers equally from school to school, so be careful, or you may end up creating more course work for yourself. For example, some schools have separate anatomy and physiology courses, and some combine them into A&P I and II. Also, some places micro and patho are pre reqs, and in others it is taken after admitted to the program, causing some students who only need patho or micro to be eligible for admission to only enroll in that course before applying to a nursing program. And it gets even stickier if you end up trying to transfer actual nursing courses, as the content in those can often vary, and you may end up taking some over. For example if adult health is 4 hours at one program and 6 hours at another, then you only transfer 4 credit hours of adult and will end up taking the 6 hour course anyway. Talk with a counselor at the school where you want to transfer prior to doing any paperwork and paying any money to be sure everything is accepted. It may be a more viable option to stay where you are, and move after passing NCLEX.

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