philippines or us?

Hoosier_RN, MSN · Jan 8, 2016

Wherever you plan to work is where you should go to school. Some states, esp CA, have concurrency issues with Phillipine trained nurses

JustBeachyNurse, LPN · Jan 8, 2016

Go to nursing school in the country where you plan to live and work. Cheapest and most direct route.

While tuition is cheaper the assessments and remedial classes that may be required when applying to the US may cost you twice that in extra classes, fees and testing.

MikeeMikes26 · Feb 28, 2016

It wouldn't be wise to go back to the Philippines and take nursing here. You may be able to finish 4 years of nursing school, pass the Nurse Licensure Exam but the toughest part is getting an experience as a nurse. There is a surplus of registered nurses in the Philippines but very limited openings in hospitals and the competition to get in is tough.

Why not take another course for now, finish it, get a decent job that pays good salary and then fund your own education if you really want to be a nurse?

akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P · Feb 28, 2016

As others have said, you should go to school where you want to work. This provides you the most trouble-free pathway to getting licensed and a job. However, you should be very cognizant of the local job market where you do intend to work. It very well could be that you may end up getting licensed as an RN in the Philippines but if there are no jobs and many nurses that are equally licensed as you would be, you might just end up begin licensed as an RN with no future prospects.

If you do want to get a job in the US (particularly California due to high salaries here) then you absolutely should go for schooling in the US, and in California specifically as it'll be easiest to get a California RN license if you have gone to school in California. Because of the requirements that California has for licensing, it's also easier to get licensed elsewhere in the US than the reverse.

There are many threads here about the problems that Philippine BSN grads have with getting licensed as an RN in California. It's incredibly difficult, the laws/regulations have been around for decades, and the strict scrutiny that your application would go through as a "foreign" grad is thanks to some people fraudulently applying for licenses.

So, it all goes back to the original sentence: go to school where you desire to work.

steppybay · Mar 5, 2016

One other major issue is the NCLEX-RN passing rate of a US educated vs internationally graduate...it's a known statistics that 80-85% of US grads pass on their very first time and that's without having to take additional nursing courses on how to take the exam or subscribe to NCLEX prep services.

The passing rate for the international applicants is between 30-35% and that percentage drops with every re-take. If you wander off to the NCLEX forum here, you'll find the 65-70% of the mostly failed applicants asking for additional help.

Yes, there are those who have taken it a second time or more and finally passed, but there are those who post and post on their re-takes but rarely post back that they actually passed so it's probably they are the ones who have become part of the 80-90% that will never pass the NCLEX and thus will not be able to work as an RN. So if you should fall in that 80-90% of unable to pass the NCLEX for the umpteenth time, what's your option to work as an RN?