The Impact of Secondary Coursework on the Post-secondary Academic Performance of First-Year Nursing Students

Abstract

Faced with the arduous task of identifying and recruiting the most viable candidates for admission into nursing education programs, admissions committees have come to rely upon predictability factors synonymous with program success when making these difficult acceptance decisions. In anticipation of the upcoming national licensure examination emphasis on critical thinking, many programs have incorporated factors that ascertain the student’s ability in this vital component. The purpose of this quantitative retrospective correlational study was to determine if the type of coursework a student completes in the secondary setting influenced their performance during the first year of an undergraduate baccalaureate nursing program. The researcher identified several significant correlations by utilizing online student surveys and the academic records of 83 undergraduate nursing students at a private southeastern university. These correlations were found between high school course genre, the Kaplan Nursing School Admissions Examination indicators, and the student’s final first-year GPA. From these findings, inferences suggested students who completed differing high school preparation coursework entered the nursing program with varying degrees of measurable performance on admissions examination indicators. Specifically, students completing Advanced Placement and Dual-Credit–Dual-Enrollment coursework tended to outperform others on the Kaplan indicators of science and math. However, students who completed Career and Technology Education surpassed their classmates in attaining a higher final first-year GPA. These findings add to the existing literature, which supports the effective nature of utilizing admissions predictability factors during the selection process of nursing school admissions.