<p>If someone goes to a nursing school as an undergrad, is it possible to go to medical school after they graduate? Is it true that med schools may not accept a nursing student because of the nursing shortage?</p>
<p>It is possible. Vocational majors are admitted at very low rates, however.</p>
<p>Straight from nursing to med school is unusual. Low admissions rates have nothing to do with the nursing shortage. Rather, nursing, like other vocational majors, does not get viewed with much respect as an academic college experience. Many people getting undergrad degrees in nursing are not good enough students to get into medical school anyway, so the anti-nursing bias does not come into play. </p>
<p>Indirectly the nursing shortage probably contributes to not that many people applying to med school- they have tons of job opportunities as soon as they graduate. This makes years of medical school and training less appealing.</p>
<p>On the other hand, those who do very well in nursing school, particularly if they go to a place where they take courses recognized as rigorous with other students headed for competitive professional school admission (Penn for example) and then work as nurses for a few years, can be very desirable applicants. At that point they know much more than the routine premed about what medicine entails. The challenge is getting the academic background and doing well enough on the MCATs to be competitive.</p>
<p>Most nursing students will have taken most if not all of the needed science courses to be competitive for medical school.
Medical residents I work with often have had other careers such as nursing, social work, registered dietician, EMT prior to going to medical school and I work at a Harvard teaching hospital, so all are quite bright and well qualified
Nursing is highly respected in the Harvard system</p>
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Depends on their undergrad school. At my institution, the classes the nursing students take are elementary and would not satisfy the med school prereqs.</p>
<p>That’s the problem. The courses in a nursing curriculum are not necessarily equivalent to those taken by students doing a conventional premed program. That is why I noted potential exceptions.</p>
<p>Also, medical school admissions committees do not necessarily give nursing students credit for the rigor of their studies. </p>
<p>For people who want to go straight from college to medical school nursing can be a risky choice. For those who want to enter nursing, or cannot afford to stay out of the work force long enough to go directly to medical school, it can be a good way to get into the health field.</p>
<p>Agreed, ALL the nursing curricula that I know of do NOT fulfill the pre-med requirements. I know of zero nursing programs which include a full year in organic chemistry or physics (which of course are obviously both needed for pre-med students). Most don’t even include a full year of general chemistry.</p>
<p>I’ve been a nurse for nearly 30 years and have also spent time as a faculty member in a BSN program. I know of no one that has ever been accepted straight out of nursing school into med school. The reasons why are spelled out in above posts. The primary reason is that the nursing science sequences (bio and chem) are not accepted by med schools. No physics or calc is required as a nursing major. Taking the pre-med science sequences instead of the nursing science sequences does not work either - the nursing schools don’t always accept them (but this can vary from school to school). The nursing curriculum is also pretty rigid with little room for extra electives so taking a lot of premed classes is not always realistic. </p>
<p>Having said that, I know of many nurses that eventually went on to med school. But they worked a few years as nurses while they went back to school and got all of their pre-med reqs done.</p>
<p>I am a first-year nursing student at NYU and taking the pre-med sequence and being a nursing student is IMPOSSIBLE. If you want to go to medical school, do yourself a big favor and don’t major in nursing.</p>