Can You Apply for Nursing in the U.S. Right After High School? What We Learned
The crumpled ACT slip and half-eaten peanut butter sandwich sat on our kitchen table mid-March, when my 18-year-old daughter Lila pushed her phone across the wood grain and asked the question I’d been avoiding: “Everyone says you can’t get into nursing school in the States right after high school. Is that true?” She’d spent her last two years of high school working nights as a certified nursing assistant at a local nursing home, skipped spring break her junior year to shadow a pediatric nurse, and had a stethoscope keychain permanently clipped to her backpack. This wasn’t a passing whim.
I didn’t know the answer offhand, so I called my cousin Mia, who’s an admission coordinator for the nursing department at a public university in northern Ohio. She answered on her 30-minute lunch break, picking at a cobb salad from the hospital cafeteria, and laughed when I explained the question. The rumor that you can’t apply after high school, she said, is just that: a rumor. Half the programs she works with accept students straight out of graduation, it just depends on what kind of nursing degree you want, and what your qualifications are.
That weekend, we mapped out a plan to visit the state college fair held at our old high school gym, which was still just as stuffy and sticky-floored as I remembered from 20 years earlier. We bought lukewarm lemonade from the student council snack table and stopped at three different nursing booths to test what Mia had told us.
The first rep we talked to was from our local community college, a part-time RN who taught clinicals on the side. She told us their associate degree in nursing (ADN) program takes 75 new students every fall, almost all straight out of high school. The requirements were straightforward: 2.75 unweighted GPA, a 60% or higher on the TEAS entrance exam, and that’s it. No prior college credits required. That was well within Lila’s 3.3 unweighted GPA, so we added it to our application list right away.
Next, we stopped at the booth for the regional four-year state university 45 minutes away. Their rep explained that their direct-entry Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program only accepts students with a 3.5 unweighted GPA or higher, top 15% of their high school class, so Lila didn’t qualify for direct entry. But they do have a pre-nursing track that accepts freshmen straight out of high school. You do your first year of general education classes, then apply to the nursing major at the end of the year. So even though you don’t start nursing classes right away, you still apply to the school right after high school. That was a clarification I hadn’t seen online anywhere, so that was a huge win for the trip.
We also got information for Lila’s friend Seo-yeon, an international student from South Korea who’d been asking the same question. When I checked back in with Mia, she confirmed that international students can apply straight out of high school too, but there are a few extra non-negotiable steps. First, the program has to be SEVP-approved to issue the I-20 form you need for a student visa. Second, most schools require a minimum TOEFL iBT score of 80 to 90, even if you attended an English-speaking high school for four years. Third, almost no nursing programs give financial aid to international undergraduate students, so you have to prove you can cover tuition and living expenses upfront to get your visa. Seo-yeon ended up applying to a few programs that meet those requirements, and she’s waiting on decisions this month.
From all that, we put together a concrete application plan that worked for Lila. She didn’t want to wait four years to start working as a nurse, so we applied to three programs: the local ADN, the pre-nursing track at the regional state university, and one direct-entry BSN at a smaller private college just in case. She started studying for the TEAS two months before her test date, used the free ATI TEAS study app and an $18 used study book from ThriftBooks, took it once, and got a 71%—well above the cutoff for the ADN. She got accepted to the ADN program in May, and got into the pre-nursing track at the state school a week later. She decided to go with the ADN: it’s $4,500 a year in tuition, compared to $12,000 a year at the state school, and she can get her RN license in two years, then work while doing an online RN to BSN later if she wants. Most local hospitals will even cover tuition for the BSN once you’re hired full-time, so that saves tens of thousands of dollars.
The only hiccup we ran into was that the ADN program had 300 applicants for 75 spots, so Lila was 10th on the waitlist for a month before a spot opened up. That taught me the most practical tip I pass along to other parents now: always apply to at least one program you’re guaranteed to get into if you meet the requirements, don’t just shoot for the top direct-entry BSN. A lot of kids get rejected from their dream program and have to wait a whole year to reapply, when they could have started a ADN that same fall.
Lila moves into her off-campus apartment next month, and she’s already lined up a part-time CNA shift at the local pediatric clinic to keep her skills sharp. We don’t know yet if she’ll do the RN to BSN right after she graduates, or work for a couple of years first. She’s talked about eventually going back for a nurse practitioner degree, but that’s years down the line. Some days she worries about getting a clinical placement, since a lot of programs have had waiting lists for hospital spots lately. But so far, it’s working out. The answer to the question isn’t a simple yes or no—it’s that yes, you can apply for nursing in the U.S. right after high school, you just have to pick the path that fits your grades, your budget, and what you want out of the job.
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