Nursing School Transfer

If you would like to transfer from another nursing program in Canada, you may do so by completing the same application process as all University of Alberta applicants and supplying the requested documents by the applicable document deadline. Students also must meet the required post-secondary admission grade point average for the year they are applying to receive admission.

Once the faculty has all your documents, a comparison of your education will be made. To help this process, you will likely also need to submit course outlines for your previous nursing program. Because of the level of assessment that needs to be done, admission for transfer students will take longer and an admission decision might not be received until August.

Bachelor degrees in nursing across Canada are similar in terms of the overall content of the full degree because of the guidelines programs are required to follow in the education of registered nurses. However, every school packages the content of that education differently over the years of study and it is difficult to piece together the content from one year at one school to the same year of another school. As such, you may or may not transfer into the same year in the U of A's nursing program as you were in your previous nursing program, depending on how differently the two programs are structured.

The scope and sequence of the content from your former nursing course/program may not align with that of the BScN program requirements at the University of Alberta. Our BScN programs are designed to scaffold your learning and develop your nursing knowledge and skills in all areas and settings (theory. lab. clinical) in order for students to be successful. Every school creates, delivers, and assesses the curricular content and outcomes of nursing education differently over the course of the program. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that one would receive credit in order to begin our nursing program beyond the first year. To avoid any gaps in required nursing knowledge and skills and support learning in subsequent courses, we will not grant credit or allow students to progress through the program without first satisfying each course requirement in its intended scope and sequence.

Transferring into Year 4 specifically is not possible because a student could not complete enough courses at the University of Alberta to meet the U of A Residence Requirements. In Year 4, a student would need to be admitted as a Visiting Student (Refer to Classification of Students in the University Calendar) and would need permission from their school to take the U of A Faculty of Nursing's Year 4 courses for transfer credit back to their own program.

Regardless of advanced standing or transfer credit received for courses, the length of the Collaborative and Bilingual programs remains as four years since all nursing courses within our programs are intentionally delivered sequentially.

Off-Campus Site Students

Although the 4-year BScN Collaborative program is offered at 4 individual sites, once enrolled, students are meant to maintain enrollment at their original program site. Students in our off-campus sites (Red Deer, Grande Prairie, Fort McMurray) are intended to complete Phase One (the first 3 years) of the BScN program and then apply to the University of Alberta for their 4th and final year of the program for which the University of Alberta would grant your BScN degree upon successful completion. Please note, regardless of the final year transfer, all 4 years are completed at your home site. 

The only transfer credit agreements in place for this BScN off-campus collaborative program are honored upon completion of the first 3 years. As a result, Nursing courses are not considered transferable to the program should you transfer prior to completing Phase One in its entirety. This means that if you are currently enrolled at one of our off-campus sites having not completed their entire first three years of the program, ,and you apply to transfer to the University of Alberta BScN program for a Fall term, you will not be eligible to simply resume your nursing studies at the new collaborative site in Years 1-3. With the exception of non-Nursing courses such as English and Electives, you would be required to retake the courses beginning with the 1st year of the program. Due to the Collaborative agreements in place and program capacity limitations to transfer part-way through Phase One of the BScN program, we are not able to accommodate a direct transfer to anything but Year 1 of the 4-year program.