How to get started with nursing school?

[ravishinglylow]

Hi everyone,

First post here - I am relocating back home next month, which is in Richmond. I have decided to go to school to become an RN, and would like to start as soon as possible, however I have a few questions I hope to get answered:

Prerequisites....your Algebra, Chemistry, etcetera....I assume these need to be completed before applying to any Nursing schools? Do any Nursing schools offer these before hand? After I graduated high school back in 2001, I went to about a weeks worth of classes at Thomas Nelson Community College in Newport News, through the nursing program at Riverside Hospital and my prerequisites were scheduled first, then once they were completed I would start the RN program. (Unfortunately, I dropped out a few weeks later.)

A few of the schools I've been looking into (Bon Secours/J. Sargeant Reynolds, VCU) all seem to require the pre-requisites to be taken during high school, and that there are different types of qualifications to meet in order to be accepted. Are there any schools in the Richmond area where I can maybe take my pre-reqs online, then apply to the Nursing program? How does this stuff work?

I am moving back to Richmond from Chicago next month, and I would much prefer to get my pre-reqs done online, that way I can work as much as possible before starting nursing school.

I hope this makes sense, and if not, just kick me. Thank you! :)

[anonymurse]

Here's the whole thing in one package at VCU, which is probably the cleanest and neatest way to enter nursing:

http://www.nursing.vcu.edu/program_tradbs.shtml

One of the problems of VA community college ADN programs is a hidden delay. Many are so backed up they have to resort to prerequisite points evaluations, where you take your prerequisites from the community college, then when you apply to their RN program, you receive points for prerequisite courses completed and are compared to others.

If you don't have enough points, you wait (you would need to see how many times a year their RN program starts students off). You can take more courses to improve your points while waiting. But in essence, this means you can never really know before starting exactly when you'll finish, and you'll never know what courses are truly prerequisite.

The long route, and my personal choice because I am a hands-on learner, is take the prerequisites at a community college, where they're cheapest, then go to a diploma school for the hard-core clinicals (where hopefully they won't let you go until you can take your preceptor's full pt load), then work for a while, then take a BSN at a leisurely pace, applying your experience to add depth to your studies as you go.