Nursing School Rankings

Nursing is one of the most popular degrees today. The job outlook is expected to be excellent, and median pay is around $63,000 annual. There are a variety of nursing programs at many schools, online or traditional. The discipline of nursing is wide and varied. You could be a clinical nurse, midwife nurse, mental health nurse, anesthetic nurse, pediatric nurse, or geriatric nurse. You could embrace the hero in you, become Super Nurse, and save all the kids from the awful horror of…gulp…no lollipops. Just kidding! Sorry to crush your lifelong dream, but it’s not for real. Luckily even regular old nursing skills are extraordinary, but maybe you could go throw yourself into some gamma rays and see if you get superpowers.

How to Find Top Schools

Ranking schools requires a combination of opinion surveys and other statistics. Faculty and/or students assess the excellence of their school’s programs, quality of campus, and may also describe their favorite pizza joint near campus. These results are blended with statistics, like standardized test scores, years of accreditation, financial aid offered, and acceptance rates. The news sources then put the package together, tie a ribbon on top, and give it to you for Christmas.

Two major news sources publish rankings for schools: U.S. News & World Report and National Institutes of Health. If you’re considering online education, another source is the Nursing Online Education Database (NOEDb). Students Review at www.studentsreview.com is a fourth great resource where you can read ratings directly from peers.

Publisher Top 5 How they rank schools More Info
U.S. News
1. Johns Hopkins University
2. University of Pennsylvania
3. University of Washington
4. University of California – San Francisco
5. University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
†peer assessment surveys sent to deans, other administators, and/or faculty‡ †rated academic quality of programs on a 5-point scale‡
www.usnews.com

NIH
1. Johns Hopkins University
2. University of Pennsylvania
3. University of California – San Francisco
4. University of Washington
5. University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
ordered according to medical schools that received the most funding in 2010 by NIH
www.nih.gov

NOEDb (online)
1. Kaplan University
2. Liberty University
3. South University
4. Grand Canyon University
5. Chamberlain College of Nursing
most popular online degree programs for nursing
noedb.org
oedb.org

Take it Further

Your research process doesn’t end here. After all, there’s no way to perfectly rank schools. Different sources disagree. Otherwise we’d all know where The Best College was, and pay piles of money to enter a lottery to take a test to determine eligibility to obtain an interview to get on the list to spin a roulette to be enrolled. You’re lucky to have many options, but it requires some work to narrow down the best ones for you. Consider other factors as you try to find the ideal school to become a nurse. Some key aspects to consider are location of campus, student-faculty ratio, financial aid programs and scholarships, and anything else you find important in an educational institute.

Now grab a lollipop and go save the world!