While performing various academic work, such as writing a bachelor’s thesis, are known to be challenging for university students, less is known about students’ expectations in this regard.

Aim: The aim was to describe students’ expectations of the upcoming process of writing a bachelor’s thesis.

Design: The study employed an explorative, qualitative approach with a single, written open-ended question design.

Methods: The data were collected consecutively 2013–2016 in class. A total of 93 final-year students volunteered and provided hand-written accounts which were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

Results: The students’ accounts revealed three generic categories of expectations: Gaining professional knowledge and competency, Planning and organizing the work, and Taking stock of personal resources. Writing a bachelor’s thesis was a new challenge for most of the students and the answers testify to mixed feelings about the upcoming work and its supervision.

Conclusions: The nursing students’ expectations included present and future competencies, skills and abilities. In promoting development of transferable skills and knowledge, educators of future health-care professionals would be well advised to invite students to reflect on and discuss, their expectations prior to writing a bachelor’s thesis and similar academic student papers. This study adds to the research on students’ studying and learning in nursing education by bringing to the fore students’ expectations of academic learning tasks as an important aspect to consider in higher education contexts, both nationally and internationally.