Can I do Pre-Med* and Nursing at the same time?  

*or Pre-PA, etc.

Currently, this is hard to do if what you mean by Nursing is the traditional 4-year Nursing Bachelor's degree (but there's another option).  Here are the difficulties of combining pre-med with traditional nursing:

1. Nursing students most often take versions of Biology and Chemistry that are not acceptable to any of the other Health Profession schools.  For example: Nursing students take Chem 101-102 which is not acceptable for med, dent, PA, or pharm schools. 

2. Nursing students have heavy course loads from about the 4th semester of college onward. There just isn't time in the Nursing curriculum to complete the Organic Chemistry and Physics courses (for example) that are required for admission to nearly all the other Health Profession schools.

3. In theory, you COULD design a program where you took all the PreHealth courses first (e.g. Organic Chem, Physics, Calculus), then took the traditional Nursing curriculum second, and full-time as intended. That would take about 6 years for most students to complete; perhaps less for those starting college with some CAPP credits or other advanced standing in SCIENCE courses. On the hypothetical 6-year plan, you'd take the entrance exam for med school (or whatever) in the summer before your last year of Nursing school (i.e. between the 5th and 6th year of college). This is do-able, but bear in mind, it would have been 2-3 years, at that point, since you would have had some of the courses tested in the entrance exam, so you'd have a lot of studying to do.  The Nursing curriculum keeps you pretty busy...

There's a new option at UW Oshkosh that should be considered, however. Students who have an earned Bachelor's degree, especially with a PreHealth track, have proven to be competitive for admission to UW Oshkosh's Accelerated Nursing Program. The Accel program is intensive and lasts 12 months, earning your Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree in 5 years (4-year Bachelor's in a related field, such as Biology or Chemistry, plus 1-year Accel).  With this "hedge your bets" plan, you would apply to the Health Profession school and the Accel program more or less simultaneously, in the Junior or Senior year of college. 

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Last updated on 07/20/2007.  Contact webmaster.