Undergraduate admission is open-enrollment for most programs, a high school diploma or GED plus a guided process with an admissions rep. Nursing and health sciences add an entrance exam, with some health programs wanting scores of 75 to 85 percent dated within 24 months, and the E102 Pathways to Patient Care Seminar. Graduate programs need a bachelor's; the MSN-NP tracks want a 3.0 GPA. The lever to pull hard is credit you already own: associate students transfer 24 credits on average, bachelor's students 81, most programs accept up to 67 percent of requirements through Knowledge Credit, and $149 self-directed assessments let you test out of eligible courses outright.
The gates, honestly mapped
| Program family | The gate | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Most undergraduate | Diploma or GED, guided enrollment | Rolling starts year-round; the rep drives the paperwork |
| Nursing and health sciences | Entrance exam + E102 seminar; some programs want 75 to 85 percent within 24 months | Prep for the entrance exam is a service we quietly do a lot of |
| Master's | Accredited bachelor's | All master's courses run 11 weeks, solely as CBE |
| MSN-NP | 3.0 GPA + RN licensure path requirements | NP tracks do not meet APRN educational requirements in AL, ID, MD, or PA; check your state first |
The credit sweep: run it before anything else
- Send every transcript; reviews come back in about one business day, and bachelor's entrants average 81 credits accepted
- Knowledge Credit covers up to 67 percent of most programs: transfer, military training (17 credits on average), professional certifications, and course waivers all stack
- The $149 self-directed assessments, available across dozens of programs, let motivated students test out of eligible courses entirely, the catalog's cheapest credits by an order of magnitude
- RN-to-BSN entrants typically arrive with around 90 credits' worth of standing from the RN itself
The sweep matters double here because of how tuition works: under the subscription option every course you did not have to take is term-time returned to you, and under per-credit it is cash kept outright, the tuition manual runs both columns.
Sequencing a smart start
Credit review first
Never pick courses before the Knowledge Credit results land; a day of patience routinely deletes a quarter of a program.
Entrance exam prep where gated
Nursing hopefuls: the 75-to-85 band is beatable with structured prep, and the 24-month freshness window means timing the attempt matters. Send your target program and we will scope the prep honestly.
Choose billing deliberately
Subscription rewards throughput, per-credit rewards caution; your calendar decides which is cheaper, not the brochure.
Start on a term you can win
Rolling starts mean the next quarter is never far; begin when your first eleven weeks are livable, and map the term in week one.
Enrolling this quarter or next
Send your program and transcript situation. The credit-sweep plan and first-term map come back free.
Sources and verification
Facts on this page come from official and independent sources, and anything that matters is worth checking against the originals:
- www.rasmussen.edu/student-experience/empowered-learning: Rasmussen's official Empowered Learning pages, source for the CBE project structure
- www.rasmussen.edu/tuition: official subscription and per-credit tuition published by Rasmussen
- www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/course-catalog: the official course catalog, source for grading scales and course codes
- www.hlcommission.org: Higher Learning Commission, the institutional accreditor
- www.ccneaccreditation.org: Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, the nursing accreditor
- apastyle.apa.org: APA Style, the official style authority behind the formatting rules