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Nursing

Two years of science classes, then two years of 12 hour hospital shifts looking after real patients while somebody watches you do it.

Written by the Sidequest team. Reviewed 2026-09-05.

Where it leads

Nursing, almost always. Of every 100 people who finish a health degree like this one and go to work, 64 are doing health work a year later, and fewer nursing graduates end up in work that never needed the degree than graduates of any other major.

The week

About 15 hours a week in class, and 30 more on your own. From the third year a chunk of that turns into 12 hour hospital shifts rather than hours in a room.

What people earn four years after they finish
WEAKEST PROGRAMS$73,921TYPICAL$86,383TOP PROGRAMS$104,672

Where people end up

Out of every 100 health graduates who were working a year after they finished, this is what they were doing.

  • Nurse or health technician64%
  • Salesperson7%
  • Teacher5%
  • Manager4%
  • Accountant or marketer3%

The remaining 17 were doing something none of these five names covers. No other major here sends this many people into the work its own name describes.

What a week is like

You take four to six classes at once, which comes out to about 15 credit hours a semester. It is that same load every semester for four years: 120 credits, eight semesters, done.

About 15 of those hours are spent sitting in class. The other 30 are work you do on your own, two hours behind every hour you spend in a room. Call it 45 hours a week.

It is spread across seven days rather than stacked into five, so you can keep your evenings or you can keep your weekends, not usually both. What it does not leave is much slack in the weeks when two big things land on the same day.

A waking week is about 112 hours. This is the share of it the degree takes.

  • In class15 hours
  • Work on your own30 hours
  • Yours67 hours

What those 45 hours are spent on.

  • with other peoplethe hard part

    You are on a real unit with real patients, and the shifts come in 12 hour blocks rather than in hours: medicine and surgery, then pediatrics, then labor and delivery, then psychiatric care, then a last long placement where you shadow one nurse for fifteen shifts. One large school requires 765 hours of it before it will let you graduate. On the first day you mostly watch.

  • with other people

    What goes wrong in a body, what a nurse does about it, and in what order. From the third year almost everything you sit is one of these, and they are built around cases rather than around chapters.

  • with other people

    Two years of it before anyone lets you near a patient: the body part by part, then the germs that attack it, with a lab attached to each.

  • on your own

    Before a clinical day you look up every drug your patient is on, what their diagnosis does, and what you are allowed to do about it. Turn up without it and you get sent home.

  • on your own

    Nursing exams ask what you would do next, and more than one answer usually looks right, so the studying is practice questions rather than rereading. It is also the rehearsal for the exam at the end that decides whether you can work.

  • on your own

    English, psychology, statistics and every other class the school makes everyone take. In your first two years they are more than half of what you sit.

  • Nursing classes and clinicals20%
  • Anatomy, physiology and other science27%
  • Everything else you still have to take53%
  • Classes you pick yourself0%

Over half of your first year is the classes every student takes, and none of the plan is yours to choose.

How much do you make?

Nursing is the one major here where the money is already there in the first year and then climbs slowly. It starts at $75,093 and reaches $87,000 by your late thirties.

  1. Right out of college

    $75,093

    One year after finishing, the average nursing graduate earns $75,093, and that figure holds only people in work and not back in school.

  2. Midway through

    $87,000

    Between 35 and 45, the average nursing graduate earns $87,000.

  3. At the height of it

    $137,470

    The best paid tenth of registered nurses earn $137,470.

Where you study barely moves it. Four years out the weakest nursing programs land graduates at $73,921 and the strongest at $104,672.

A graduate of the weakest nursing programs earns more than a graduate of the best biology programs, $73,921 against $71,160, and those are the two degrees people pick when they say they like science and want to help people.

The two year version of this degree sits the same licensing exam and gets the same license. In 2024, 84,580 of the 186,760 people who sat it for the first time came through that route, and they passed at 90.6 percent against 91.9 percent for the four year degree.

What each health degree pays four years after finishing.

  • Pharmacy$116,539
  • Nursing$88,910
  • Medical lab work$75,975
  • Public health$58,808
  • Health administration$58,716

Nursing is near the top of its own family, and about $58,000 separates the top of it from the bottom.

The average money still owed on student loans

$23,000

The standard plan clears it in ten years.

Is this you?

Getting into the university is not getting into the nursing major. At many schools you start as a pre nursing student, take two years of science, and then apply a second time to the nursing program itself, with a grade floor, a deadline and no promise of a place. At the University of Houston, being admitted on the pre nursing pathway does not admit you to the nursing track. At Louisville, admission to the lower division does not guarantee admission to the upper division. The two kinds of school look identical from the outside, so ask which one you are applying to.

Tap any that sound like you.

This is probably you if

Probably not you if

What people who did it say

  • Raonna Armstrong, a senior nursing student

    Herzing University, November 2020

    "My start time for my first day of clinical was 6:30 a.m., ending at 3 p.m. That is 8 1/2 hours of being on my feet! I came from a desk job, so standing for 8.5 hours was a huge change for me."

Questions people ask

Is a nursing degree worth it?
On money alone it is the strongest four year degree on this site: $75,093 a year after finishing, $23,000 of debt, and the smallest chance of any major here of ending up in work that never needed it. What the four year version buys you over the two year one comes later: the roles that pay more than working on a ward, and the graduate degrees that let you diagnose and prescribe.
Do you need a four year degree to be a nurse?
No. The two year degree sits the same licensing exam and gets the same license, and in 2024 it produced 84,580 of the 186,760 people who sat that exam for the first time. They passed at 90.6 percent against 91.9 percent for four year graduates.
How hard is it to get into a nursing program?
Harder than getting into the university, and the two are separate. At many schools you are admitted as a pre nursing student first and apply to the nursing program itself after two years, with a grade floor and a deadline, and no promise of a place.
What do nursing students do in hospitals?
They work shifts on a real hospital ward, usually 12 hours at a time, looking after real patients with a nurse or a teacher watching. One large school requires 765 hours of this before it will let you graduate, spread across surgery and medicine, children, labor and delivery, psychiatric care and one final long placement.
How many hours a week is a nursing degree?
Roughly 45 hours in total, but the shape is unusual: from the third year a chunk of it is 12 hour hospital shifts on somebody else’s schedule, plus the hours before each one spent looking up every drug and diagnosis you will meet.

Where these numbers come from

See the other majors