Retaking a pre-req for nursing school

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Hi everyone,

I am new to this website and have found many threads useful and informative. I am currently an undergrad student in New York and will be applying to accelerated Nursing Programs in the New York area for my BSN for the 2011 school year. So far, I am planning on applying to Columbia's ETP program, NYU accelerated Nursing program, and SUNY Downstate Accelerated Program. Unfortunately, due to a horrible microbiology lecture professor, I, as well as about 60% of the class recieved a D in the class. For the microbiology lab, though, I received an A. I retook the lecture and recieved a B+. I also retook Intro to Psychology. It was my first semester in college and I didn't take school as seriously as I should have :uhoh3: and recieved a C+ for it, I retook it and received an A. My grades for the other pre-reqs are as follows: Anatomy and Physiology: B, Chemistry: B+, Statistics: A-, English: A+, Developmental Psychology: A-, Health and Nutrition: A- and the rest of the humanity classes are A's. My overall GPA is a 3.47. I was just wondering if anyone has been in the same situation as me where they had to retake a course or two, and if so, how did this affect your application and acceptance? Thank you very much, I apologize for the length of this!!

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Specializes in MICU.

When I was younger, about twelve years ago, I took about 20 credit hours of pre-requisites for nursing. I was immature and careless, and didn't meet the attendance requirements. This caused me to fail. To compound the problem, I took the F's instead of withdrawing from the classes.

When I went back to school in the Spring semester of 2009, those grades were still there, haunting me, eleven years later.

Since I've been back in school, I have made straight A's with one exception - I made a B+ in one class. After 52 credit hours at my current school, with a GPA of 3.95, I've just recently gotten my all-schools GPA over 3.0.

That didn't matter to my nursing program, because my school has a grade forgiveness policy. In the future, it may matter to other schools, but I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it.

It really is going to just depend on the individual school and how they decide to do things.

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My school accepts nursing students solely on their GPA, so they encourage students to retake classes if they need to boost their grades.

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Thank you so much christyness and mama2five boys! I wish you both success in your nursing paths! Christyness, I'm proud of you for going back getting those grades and acheiving such a high GPA!

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make sure your school will accept the retake grades. Mine will not

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Different schools have different policies, so you will need to check as you prepare to apply for various programs. Some schools are generous, others are horrendous with their policy. Don't pay an application fee without knowing where you stand.

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My school works on a points system. Each student is given a certain number of points depending on, the number of credits they have, their GPA, and their score on the NET. They deduct 1 point from each class that a student failed (getting less then a C is failing for us) and had to retake. So for you my school would deduct a point for Micro, but I'm not sure how they would handle your Intro to Psych since you didn't fail it in the first place. This seems to be a school by school rule so you would be best checking with each school.

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Thank you so much everyone! I called the schools and asked, they said retaking courses will not disqualify me, but I should have other things, such as volunteer experience, etc. to back me up.

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iluvoctober,

I am curious to know why you are considering applying to Downstate? I wrote many posts in other threads about Downstate and my terrible experience there. There are numerous others who have gone through the program and have written about it here on allnurses.

I am wondering why (besides cost) you are interested in Downstate.

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Specializes in ICU / PCU / Telemetry / Oncology.

Stony Brook's ABSN is an excellent program as well. It's out on Long Island, not sure if you're strict on staying within the NYC boundaries.

Most people retake courses (as in my case) because schools require science prereqs to be taken within the last 5-10 years.

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