Undergraduate Senior-Year-in-Absentia Programs with Partner Colleges and Universities
The School of Nursing has formalized arrangements with several liberal arts colleges to allow students to combine a baccalaureate degree in liberal arts and a Master of Science in Nursing degree. Students who complete this five year program of study will have had the experience of dividing their academic career between a liberal arts college and the health sciences center of a major university. This unique combination of study on two differently-oriented campuses provides the student with an excellent education, strongly complemented by study in the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences.
While specific details vary in each senior-year-in-absentia program, these programs generally require students to spend three years at their liberal arts college, completing general curriculum requirements for the baccalaureate degree and satisfying the prerequisite courses for admission to the School of Nursing. Students apply for admission to the School of Nursing in the fall semester of their junior year. If accepted, the student enrolls at Vanderbilt in the fall semester of the senior year. After successfully completing the fall and spring semesters of generalist nursing courses at Vanderbilt, the student is awarded a baccalaureate degree from his or her undergraduate school. The student then continues for an additional four semesters (summer, fall, spring, summer) to earn a Master of Science in Nursing.
Presently, senior-in-absentia programs have been formalized with David Lipscomb University, Fisk University, Trevecca University and the Vanderbilt University's College of Arts and Sciences and Peabody College of Education, all in Nashville, Tennessee; as well as Bridgewater College in Bridgewater, Virginia; Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama; Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee; Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia; Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia; Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee; Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia and Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.
In addition, the School has partnerships with Millsaps College, Rhodes College (Memphis, TN) and Sewanee, the University of the South.
Please email the admissions office at
VUSN-Admissions@vanderbilt.edu, for further details.