Baptism

I've had the question come up to me recently,
"Do you have to be baptized in order to be saved?"
I've always felt that it didn't seem to be a
prerequisite to going to heaven until recently.
I was baptized under water when I was a teenager.
I felt then that it was just like a washing away of
the sins of past and that's about it. I didn't know
if there was anything more to it or not. I even got
a little bothered when I read in a study course that
you had to be baptized in order to go to heaven.
Now, it really made me start thinking when I
saw some verses that tried to state that very thing.
Many of those verse I was shown didn't really say
that we had to be baptized to be saved, most of
them said you should believe and be baptized.
Mark 16:16
"Anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved.
But anyone who refuses to believe will be condemned"
Now that tells me that I'm saved if I believe and
am baptized, but it says that I am comdemned only
if I refuse to believe.
Well I found it last night.....
John 3:5
"Jesus replied, "The truth is, no one can enter the
Kingdom of God without being born of water and
the Spirit."
So I see there, I think the only verse in the bible
that states it fully, we must be born of water and
the Spirit in order to enter the kingdom of God.