LVN/LPN Programs Ranking Methodology

(Click Badge to Enlarge)

Welcome to our 10th Annual LPN/LVN Program Rankings - 2024 Edition!

Through our mission statement, we believe providing students with better transparency in regards to practical and vocational nursing programs throughout their state allows them to better match the right school accessible to them. This is the reason we have developed our LPN & LVN Programs Ranking based on NCLEX-PN exam passing rates.

The NCLEX-PN exam is used by state boards of nursing around the country for testing proficiency and granting licensure. Many state boards of nursing use the combined NCLEX-PN exam pass rates for each school as one of the primary ways to approve or deny a school's ability to provide practical and vocational nursing education. To this end, NCLEX-PN rates are one of the best ways to determine how well a school is preparing their students for a career in practical nursing, and that is why we have chosen to rank them in this manner.

Our ranking methodology began with retrieving NCLEX-PN pass rates from all the LPN & LVN programs state by state through various methods, including making Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Our requests were for the previous 5 years of information available.

Once this data was obtained, we filtered out the programs with the following characteristics:

• Programs with no pass rates for the previous 1 or 2 years, depending on the state and number of years of data available
• Programs with less than 2 years of pass rates
• Programs that are no longer are operational

Upon filtering out programs, the ranking process is as follows:

1. Pass rates were analyzed going back to the most recent years of data available up to 5 years. Each state may have varying years, please see the data sources table below for each state's analysis.
2. School pass rates were averaged together and weighted by the recency of the exam, e.g. pass rates in 2021 count more towards overall rankings than scores from 2019. The weighting cofactor values table used:

   Number Years of Data Available	Weighting Cofactors (Most Recent First)
   5 Years	0.37,0.27,0.17,0.12,0.07
   4 Years	0.4,0.3,0.2,0.1
   3 Years	0.45,0.35,0.2
   2 Years	0.65,0.35
   1 Year	1
3. If schools had the same overall NCLEX-PN pass rates after being ranked, additional program characteristics were then analyzed, including (1)
   number of students taking the NCLEX-PN, with the higher the number the greater the ranking position, and (2) number of years of test data available - the schools with more years of NCLEX-PN pass rate data receive a higher ranking position.

The table below lists information by state, including the years of NCLEX-PN pass rate data analyzed, the number of schools in each state, and the number of top ranked programs.

We do realize there is far more in deciding which school provides the best education and training for practical and vocational nurses, but we felt that providing this information for students can add one more thing to consider prior to choosing which school to attend. Our recommendations would be to use our rankings list as a supplemental tool in helping find the right school.

Please send comments, questions, or correction requests via our contact form