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Master of Nursing (Graduate Entry)

Master of Nursing (Graduate Entry)


Admission requirements | English requirements | Applying for a master's degree | Costs | Units of study | More information

Pre-registration Student Adviser – Tracey Molloy
T +61 2 9351 0523

The Master of Nursing (Graduate Entry) program is a two-year degree for students with previous tertiary qualifications who wish to become registered nurses. It is also available for students who have completed an overseas nursing degree, are registered overseas, and after consulting with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, are unable to gain registration as nurses in Australia.
It is not a further qualification for registered nurses who wish to pursue a post-registration master's degree.

Read 'Your Guide to Nursing at Sydney Nursing School'

Career opportunities

Graduates can select from a wide and growing range of practice areas in both the public and private sectors including acute care hospitals, trauma and emergency, paediatrics, mental health, community nursing, palliative care, aged care and rural and remote settings. Nurses can also work in the pharmaceutical industry and other health related fields.

Registration

Revised NMBA English Language Skills Registration Standard
The Board has implemented a revised English language skills registration standard to take effect from 19 September 2011. For detailed information on the new English language requirements for registration, please go to the NMBA website.

Clinical placements

The Master of Nursing (Graduate Entry) course requires students to undertake 900+ hours of clinical placements in health care facilities monitored or operated by the NSW Department of Health. More about clinical placements...

View the 2012 clinical hours for the MN(Graduate Entry)

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Admission requirements

QUALIFICATIONS

  • You must have a previous Australian level bachelor degree (or equivalent) in any discipline other than nursing. However, overseas nursing qualifications are acceptable. Please contact the faculty to discuss this further.
  • Qualifications used as the basis of admission must have been completed within 10 years prior to admission.
  • Qualifications older than 10 years will be considered subject to the applicant providing further information substantiating appropriate further education and development. In these cases, admission will be at the discretion of the Dean. If you do not meet this criterion, you will need to undertake a tertiary unit of study prior to admission. Please contact the faculty to discuss this further.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS

  • If English is not your first language – whether you are a local or an international student – you are required to complete an IELTS academic exam. You must achieve a score of 7.0 in each band and an overall score of 7.0. You need to complete your IELTS exam no more than 2 years before you apply for the degree.
  • If you can provide evidence of satisfactory achievement in tertiary study, in which the language of the institution was English, you may not be required to provide further evidence of English proficiency. We require a letter from the Registrar’s office of the university stating that: "The language of the institution (instruction, examination and assessment) was English."
  • The faculty defines satisfactory achievement as:
    A.    a degree of three years or more, completed no more than five years prior to admission; or
    B.    a degree of two years or more, completed no more than three years prior to admission.

Applying for a master's degree

There is one intake of students in March each year. The next intake is March 2013.

Application must be made online. You will also need to upload certified copies of other documentation as part of your online application process. To assist you, there is a checklist of required documents that you will need.

Costs

The Master of Nursing (Graduate Entry) program is a Commonwealth supported course.

Local Australian citizens can obtain a HECS-HELP loan from the Commonwealth or choose to pay their contributions upfront with a 10% discount. This is calculated twice a year before each semester. A HECS-HELP loan is repaid through the tax system once the student is working and their income reaches a threshold. (For the 2012–13 income year, the compulsory repayment threshold is $49,095.)

Local permanent residents or New Zealand citizens are required to pay the fees upfront and undiscounted each semester. Current information on the cost of a degree for both local and international students can be found in the University's Future students website.

Scholarships

The Royal College of Nursing Australia is currently offering the Puggy Hunter Memorial Scholarship Scheme and Aged Care Nursing Scholarships for pre-registration students.

Previously, Human Biology was a prerequisite to gain entry into the Master of Nursing (Graduate Entry) program. In the revised curriculum Human Biology is now included in the first semester. Students will undertake a unit of study similar to the Human Biology units offered by the Faculty of Science. This unit of study (NURS5083 Human Bioscience in Health) will give students a good foundation in Human Biology which will underpin their following units in nursing.

More information

Human Biology

Students who have already undertaken significant recent study in Human Biology (including BIOL1003 at the University of Sydney) will have an opportunity to select a replacement unit. This will need to be discussed with the Master of Nursing (Graduate Entry) Academic Adviser.

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