For prospective students
What to expect your first year
The first year of nursing school is mostly foundations: how to think like a nurse, how to do the math nurses do every day, and how to assess a patient from head to toe. These three free prep tools give you a head start on the skills that matter most on day one — right here in your browser, no sign-up needed. Your progress on these tools is saved on your device only.
Dosage-calculations primer
The part future nurses fear most — broken into three small, learnable moves: convert, set up, check. Worked examples plus low-stakes practice with instant feedback.
Start the primer → Prep tool 2Head-to-toe assessment checklist
An interactive walkthrough of a full nursing assessment, step by step, with "normal findings" hints so you know what healthy looks like. Track your progress and print it.
Open the checklist → Prep tool 3Pre-nursing study schedule builder
Tell it when your program starts and how much time you have each day, and it builds a week-by-week plan covering the first-year foundations. Save it, print it.
Build your schedule →What the first year actually covers
Before you start, the highest-value ground is: anatomy & physiology review (the body systems you'll assess), medical terminology (the language everything else is taught in), math and dosage basics (the skill nurses practice daily), infection-control concepts (standard precautions from day one of clinicals), and study skills (nursing school tests ask for application, not memorization). The tools above cover three of these directly, and the schedule builder maps out all five.
Already looking at programs? Build your school profile so Nick can coach you against the real admissions picture, or prep for nursing-school interviews next.