My Nursing school only has a 55% completion rate for the program

[Slim_Medic]

I was recently accepted into a 1 year transition program from Paramedic to RN ADN @ a local community college for Summer 2018. The program I was accepted to had a 74% completion rate in 2015 and has declined to 55% in 2017.

Several of the other schools within the district all have 85-89% completion rate but I have yet to receive acceptance letters from them. As they start a little later into Fall 2018

Should the low completion rate be worrisome or hold out for a program with a better completion rate?

[elkpark]

Remember that this is not your average RN program, it is a bridge from Paramedic to RN. As someone who has walked that path, we had a lot of people start out and had a relatively high attrition rate (30-40%). Usually it was academic or the realization that paramedic ≠RN as far as scope of practice and thought processes or a combination of both. We still had 92% first pass NCLEX score.

Yes, I did comment on that in my earlier post.

[WanderingWilder, ASN]

Even though other programs in the same college system have completion rates in the 80's

What are their NCLEX pass rates?

[kbrn2002, ADN, RN]

Percentage rates for course completion don't mean much unless you know all the numbers. A high attrition rate can simply be a byproduct of smaller class size. Every student that doesn't finish will represent a higher percentage number than in a larger group. I had a good size class and I'd say we lost about 1/3 of the students that started. Some failed and came back the next year to finish, we had a few of those students that jumped into our class at the midway point.

While NCLEX pass rate is in my opinion a better indicator of class quality a pass rate of 100% does raise a bit of a red flag unless again it's such a small class size that even 1 person failing would drop that percentage significantly.

[Meriwhen, ASN, BSN, MSN, RN]

The nursing program I got my ADN from was highly respected with a NCLEX pass rate in the high 90s, and we lost about 20-40% of the students in each cohort. A lot of the loss was due to the very first class--nursing fundamentals--because the students realized nursing and/or nursing school wasn't what they thought it would be, and so they withdrew from the program.

Those who failed a course once dropped back to a later cohort. Some of those made it through the rest of school; others failed a second time and were out.

[RNrhythm, BSN, RN]

My school was well known for taking marginal students and then culling the herd

near graduation. Those cut from the program paid a lot of tuition before flunking out of the clinical core, and the NCLEX pass rate still seemed decent. I hope you are a self-starter and able to manage your academic load.

[Arya526]

To add on to this-

It also depends on what data they're basing it off of. One school might be going off of NCLEX pass rate which my community college has a 98% passing rate. Another school might be advertising how many started vs. how many ended.

In my nursing school, I would say only about 45 to 50% that are accepted into the program graduate. However our NCLEX passing rate is extremely high at 98%.

Honestly if you aim above average you'll do fine. Good luck

[hope_1992]

Well, our school is 50% of completion of program and this is my end of first semester, and actually program is good, just fact that we only have 30 people in our classes. I think you just need to stidy hard, and believe in yourself~ find the way to pass the class then you will be fine~

in our school 11 people already fell out from class and we only have 19 people in our class.

You just need to study hard and every nursing school is hard and i think if you study hard, you will be fine.

[Rionoir, ADN, RN]

My ADN program is one of the most respected in my area. I don't know the exact completion rate, but we must lose close to half of the students in level one alone. That just means it's a rigorous program. We need a 95% for an A, and an 80% just to pass. Fail a class twice and you're out of the program.

Worry about the NCLEX pass rate - those schools that pass 90% of their students usually have awful NCLEX rates.