Passed Pre-reqs (Bio) but it's not enough!!

[sunkissedd]

Hey there,

I'm new at this, but I thought I'd get some thoughts from other nursing students and pre nursing students about my situation. I'm planning to apply for the Sept 2012 entry at UBC. But my pre req mark for the biology requirement is not high enough. I passed the course in first year with a 50, at the time I was not planning to go into nursing, but after volunteering in the ER and seeing what nurses do, I'm want to become a nurse. The problem is I'm worried about this mark and I'm not sure whether I should retake it at UBC (I'm at UBC right now doing my bachelor's degree) or whether I should take it at another college or not? Any thoughts?

[Dela RN]

A 50% in Biology isn't ideal but depending on your school and your situation it may not matter. Are you only considering UBC? Are you using your high school grades? You mentioned first year so are you thinking about transferring? The reason I'm asking is because these answers change the admission requirements.

Things may have changed, but a couple of years ago for the accelerated track program at the UofC, the cut off GPA was said to be around 3.7 for the previous year and it was the GPA of your 10 most recent half courses. http://nursing.ucalgary.ca/undergradprogram/bn-degreeholder

So basically this means two things:

1. Since it was a competitive admission, it depends on the people that are applying when you are applying. There is no set mark you had to have even though higher is obviously better.

2. It was the GPA of your 10 most recent courses... well if bio wasn't one of your 10 most recent then they wouldn't use it to calculate your GPA which can bode well for you.

To give you more hope, the UofC site said the cutoff GPA of the previous year was 3.7, well when I got in it was only 2.7! (Which in my opinion isn't that high) Depending on your school and how they calculate GPA, that could range from 65-72% http://careers.mcmaster.ca/students/education-planning/virtual-resources/gpa-conversion-chart

And this is the average of your 10 most recent courses. So even if your bio mark was 50, it's still possible according to how the UofC calculates it's requirements to get a GPA of higher depending on how you did on your other courses.

This is for the accelerated track for people who already have degrees but if you don't have a degree. Here is a link: http://www.ucalgary.ca/admissions/competitive_admission_avg

It shows the admission AVERAGES of 2009 and 2010 which means people with a lower GPA of 2.7 or 75% if coming from high school can still get into nursing at the UofC!

That was just an example using the UofC but my point being, a bio mark of 50 isn't the best but there are ways around it. Hopefully this long winded answer makes sense.

[flyingchange]

I upgraded my high school marks from an average of ~60% in high school (I wasn't a very focused student) to an average of ~90% in one term by taking high school courses through the college. They're pretty easy. 4 months and I was well over the admissions average.

[joanna73, BSN, RN]

Perhaps it depends on where you live. In ON, all schools wanted Chem, Math, English, Bio as your prerequisites, whether you were applying as a mature student or not. So, in that case, a grade of 50 percent in Bio would definitely matter. Also, you may find University Anatomy and Physiology more of a challenge. Not saying you won't get accepted somewhere, but it may limit your options.