Nursing pre-requs

[cookderosa]

That is all consistent with my research and experience as well.  A college (especially a community college) will have their overall policies (like accepting CLEP) but a nursing department sets its own admission standards.  Unlike community colleges, nursing programs are not open enrollment. They will be competitive admissions and almost always rank applicants based on GPA.  Since there are no CLEP exams for A&P or Microbiology, it's moot, but for the schools that want intro bio / intro chem as A&P prereqs, you can *probably* use CLEP because it isn't part of your prereq package at most schools.  

I looked at this problem backwards and forwards for several years- I took every science via distance learning.  I took *extra* because I wasn't 100% sure at the time if I was going into nursing or medicine (turns out, I did neither) but even having a degree didn't give he a big advantage because I needed ALL the sciences.  It took a long time and cost a lot of money- so to do them twice scrambles my brain.

The differing policies between schools always causes a headache. I've only looked at the nursing programs that are available in my area, so I'm not sure what the norm is. UNCW calculates the GPA of your prereq courses in order to rank you for admissions. They will let you CLEP out of a prereq. The course simply won't be calculated into your relevant GPA. As you said, there is a limit to this anyway because only prereq courses like Life Span Development, Psychology, and a few Humanities courses have CLEPs available for them. It also puts you at a bit of a disadvantage to CLEP out of the fluff courses because you can't use the higher grades in those courses to offset grades in courses like A&P.

Even the community college programs in my area are competitive and have fairly long waiting lists. With the growing shortage of nurses, I'm surprised they aren't opening up more programs. WGU has a decent program, but they're limited to the handful of areas where WGU has hospitals willing to do clinicals with their students.

I think they have opened up more programs, but you'll see a huge surge in MSN and BSN online programs - even NP programs can be done mostly online. What they simply don't have enough clinical sites/teachers for is the run of the mill RN program. And no matter how you slice it, you need the RN someway-somehow. Every, and I mean EVERY, nurse practitioner I talked to over the 2 years that I thought I would go into nursing school told me over and over to get my RN as cheaply and quickly as possible -that you need to get to work yesterday, and you can chase degrees for the rest of your career, but only after you hvae some experience. Even though I earned acceptance to an accelerated MSN program for non-nurse-BA-holders at a very swanky school, no one thought that was a good idea. (which is a good thing, I'd still be paying off those loans).
But, I think the end result is that you'll need a BSN- now or later, but the barrier for most people are the prereqs (like A&P) as well as just GETTING THROUGH the RN program (no matter what school.)
I think programs continue to add prereqs and remain selective because they can. I'd have to dig up my posts from around 2010-11ish, but I can remember sitting in one orientation and being told that the CC program was going to get 500 applications and would accept like 60 students in the first round. I got in on the first round (I withdrew my application) but I had TONS of CLEP and 100% online sciences - but I also had all A's (40 science w/lab credits) and a nearly perfect HESI score.
Not a small detail, but both my A&P classes had a dozen open book quizzes and final (still very hard) and I can tell you I still struggled in those classes - really, they were HARD. If I scored in the 80's it was a good day, and I used ALL THE TIME allowed. Closed book? For sure I'd have failed, no question. A&P I & II is no joke - it keeps people out of nursing school.