Info on NIU

I would take the classes before you start your nursing classes. The English classes can be time consuming with lots of reading and writing papers. Can you take one of the classes at a community college (like Kish, if you live out near DeKalb?) Most of the community colleges in IL have an agreement with the state U's to accept their core curriculum classes (such as the classes you need). A community college would be much cheaper than NIU.

Good luck!

Unless things have changed since I graduated, admission to the nursing program is separate from admission to the university. Once accepted to NIU, you then have to apply for acceptance into the nursing program. When you are accepted into the nursing program, you will be given a start date and placed into a "clinical track", which is a sequence of your clinical courses that you will follow until graduation. If all of your pre-reqs are completed, you will start your clinical track immediately. If not, you will take the necessary pre-reqs, along with some non-clinical basic nursing courses. Since your graduation depends on when you begin your clinical track, it would be helpful to have your pre-reqs out of the way. I agree that taking English at a community college may be more convenient and less expensive than taking it at Northern.

Once you are accepted into the School of Nursing, you should be assigned an academic counselor who is a nursing faculty member. Take advantage of this service by meeting with that person prior to scheduling your classes, and at least once a semester to ensure that you are progressing thru the curriculum properly. The list of pre-reqs and core-reqs can be confusing, as well as the sequence of clinicals. 2 of my classmates graduated a semester late because they did not follow the sequence properly, and were unable to register for their final clinical, due to a deficiency in a non-clinical course.

Good luck!

YOU MUST FINISH THE CLASSES BEFORE YOUR FIRST SEMESTER OF NURSING CLASSES!!! The only classes which you can "save" are PSYC 225 and I believe Stats 208, though you must finish those before your 3rd semester. You don't need all of your humanities and other core classes however in order to start..... first and foremost finish the nursing prereqs!!!