How we rank nursing programs
Six factors, all from public data, with fixed weights. No reputation surveys, no paid placements, and the same formula for every school.
Every ranking on this site comes from the formula on this page. We publish it so you can see why a program sits where it does, and so schools can check our numbers. If a figure about your program is wrong, send us a correction and we will fix it.
What we score
We rank programs, not whole universities. A school with a strong BSN and a weak ADN gets two separate results. Each program is scored only against programs at the same degree level, so an associate degree is never compared with a master's.
NCLEX first-time pass rate (35%)
The share of a program's graduates who pass the licensing exam on their first attempt. It is the clearest public measure of whether a program prepares students for practice, so it carries the most weight. We pool the last three years reported by the state board of nursing (total first-time passes divided by total first-time takers), which keeps one unusual year from swinging the result.
Affordability (20%)
Half of this factor is the school's average yearly net price: the cost of attendance, including housing, books and tuition, minus grants and scholarships, for first-time, full-time undergraduates who receive federal aid (the in-state price at public schools). The other half is the median federal loan debt of the program's graduates who borrowed, from the College Scorecard. Lower is better on both.
Earnings after completion (15%)
Median earnings one year after graduation of the program's graduates who are working and not enrolled in more school, from the College Scorecard's field-of-study data (in 2024 dollars). This shows what graduates of that specific program earn, not the university as a whole.
Graduation rate (15%)
The share of first-time, full-time students who finish within 150% of normal time, from IPEDS. It is reported for the whole institution, not for nursing alone, so it carries less weight than the pass rate.
Programmatic accreditation (10%)
Full points for a program accredited by one of the three nursing accreditors recognized by the US Department of Education: ACEN, CCNE or the NLN Commission for Nursing Education Accreditation (CNEA). Programs with state board approval only get partial points. Accreditation matters later: many graduate programs and some employers require a degree from an accredited program.
Flexibility (5%)
Points for an online or hybrid option and for more than one way in, such as an accelerated track for career changers or an LPN-to-RN bridge. This is a small factor because flexibility suits some students and not others.
How factors become a score
For each factor, a program gets a percentile score from 0 to 100 against the other programs at its degree level nationwide. A score of 80 on pass rate means the program beat 80% of comparable programs on that measure. The six percentile scores are multiplied by their weights and added up to give an overall score out of 100. State pages reuse the national score, so a program's position is consistent wherever it appears.
Programs we flag instead of rank
- Fewer than 20 first-time NCLEX takers across the three years. A handful of results can swing a small program's pass rate by 20 points, so we show its data with a note but leave it out of the ranking.
- Missing pass rate or net price. These two factors make up more than half of the score, so we do not estimate them. The program is listed without a rank until the data is published.
- New programs without a full year of NCLEX results are listed as new.
Post-licensure programs
RN-to-BSN, MSN and DNP students are already licensed, so their programs have no NCLEX pass rate. For these we drop that factor and scale the other five up in proportion:
What we leave out on purpose
- Reputation surveys. Asking deans to rate each other rewards name recognition, not outcomes for students.
- Advertising. No school can pay to be ranked or to move up. If we ever carry sponsored listings, they will be labelled and kept separate from the rankings.
- Selectivity. A low acceptance rate says who a school turns away, not how well it teaches the students it admits.
Data years and updates
Every number on the site shows the year it covers. We rerun the rankings when a major source publishes new data, usually once a year for the College Scorecard and IPEDS, and when state boards release new pass rates. The full list of sources is on our data sources page.