What Are Nursing Prerequisites? The Standard Course List

The short answer

Nursing prerequisites are the college courses and supporting requirements you must complete before a nursing program will consider your application. Across most US pre-licensure programs the academic core is anatomy and physiology, microbiology, chemistry, nutrition, psychology, human development, statistics, and English composition. The non-course items — immunization records, a background check, a CPR card, an entrance exam — are usually verified around the point of admission rather than before you apply.

The academic core most programs expect

Anatomy and Physiology I and II — usually two sequential courses with labs, and almost always the heaviest prerequisite by workload. Nearly every later nursing course assumes this material.
Microbiology — with a lab. Covers organisms, transmission, and the basis of infection control.
General, introductory, or applied chemistry — sometimes required outright, sometimes only for BSN programs, sometimes satisfied by a one-semester chemistry-for-health-sciences course.
Human nutrition — a single course, frequently available online because it has no lab.
Introduction to psychology — the standard social science entry point.
Human growth and development across the lifespan — often listed as developmental psychology.
Statistics — introductory or elementary statistics, required by most BSN programs and many ADN programs.
English composition — one or two semesters, sometimes paired with a speech or communication course.

Summary: eight to ten courses cover the great majority of published prerequisite lists.

Courses that vary by program type

Two-year ADN programs tend to publish the shortest lists, concentrating on the sciences. Four-year BSN programs add general education requirements — humanities, a second social science, sometimes a second math — because those credits also count toward the bachelor's degree. Accelerated BSN programs, built for people who already hold a degree in another field, typically require only the science core but enforce tight recency rules on it. LPN/LVN programs usually require the least coursework, sometimes only basic anatomy plus placement testing.

Summary: the degree you are heading toward, not the school, drives most of the variation.

Requirements that are not courses

Alongside the transcript, programs commonly ask for:

A minimum prerequisite GPA, often stated separately from your cumulative GPA.
An entrance exam such as a standardized nursing admission assessment, with a published minimum composite score.
Immunization and health documentation required by the clinical sites the school partners with.
A criminal background check and drug screening, driven by the same clinical affiliation agreements.
Basic life support certification at the healthcare-provider level.

These are clearance items. They rarely affect whether you are competitive, but missing one can delay a seat you have already earned.

Why this particular list

The course core is not arbitrary. Licensure in the United States runs through the NCLEX examination, and the NCSBN publishes the NCLEX test plans that define the content categories the exam measures — including physiological adaptation, pharmacological therapies, and safety and infection control. Nursing curricula are built to prepare students for that content, and the curricula in turn assume the prerequisite sciences are already in place.

The professional side of the list comes from the role itself. The American Nurses Association's description of nursing scope of practice sets out the nursing process — assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, evaluation — as the framework registered nurses work within. Assessment work rests on anatomy and physiology; evaluation work rests on being able to read data, which is where statistics earns its place.

Summary: prerequisites are the foundation the nursing curriculum skips over, because it expects you to have it.

Before you build your schedule

Pull the catalog page for every program you might apply to and list the prerequisites side by side. You will usually find one combined list satisfies all of them, with one or two outliers. Check course numbering carefully: a course titled Anatomy and Physiology at one school may be a survey course that a nursing program will not accept in place of a two-semester sequence with labs.