Albany Technical College’s Associate of Science in Nursing program was recently ranked number one by a ranking conducted by RegisteredNursing.org. The ranking was based on the student pass rates on the NCLEX-RN exam.

The NCLEX-RN exam is used by all state boards of nursing across the United States to help assess a student’s competency and is required for licensure. Also, many state boards of nursing use the total overall NCLEX-RN pass rate for a school as one of the main ways to approve a school’s ability to provide a nursing education in the state. The pass rates are one of the best ways to determine a nursing program’s student preparedness.

Obtaining five years of information from 2011 to 2015, RegisteredNursing.org’s methodology began with collecting NCLEX-RN exam pass rates for all RN programs (ADN, BSN, Direct-Entry MSN) state by state through several methods, including making a number of Freedom of Information Act requests. Once the data was obtained, they filtered out the programs with the following characteristics:

• Programs that have closed or will be closing at the time of data collecting

• Programs with no pass rate data available for the previous one or two years, depending on the state and number of years of data available

• Programs with only one year of pass rates

In the state of Georgia, 40 schools were analyzed and only 10 schools ranked, with Albany Technical College leading the ranking. Albany Tech started the RN program in 2013 with just 24 students in the first cohort and graduated the first class in 2015 with 100 percent pass rate on the NCLEX-RN.

“I am pleased to say that our ATC Nursing Program is really thriving,” said Dr. Latrona Lanier, Chair of the ASN Program at Albany Tech. “We have a 100 percent Georgia Board of Nursing pass rate and 100 percent of our graduates have received employment throughout the community.”

Lanier attributes these achievements to the devoted nursing faculty, who she says are driven to ensure ATC students succeed and they also motivate students who are eager to learn.

“We provide individualized student learning in our program and it is this attention to detail that earned our nursing program the distinguished honor of being voted the #1 Nursing Program in the state of Georgia,” said Lanier. “We are all thrilled to have such an honor bestowed upon our program.”

The spring semester has brought substantial increase since the program’s inception, with 56 students currently enrolled in the program. With added faculty, the program has been able to expand and add more students to the roster, which has doubled the program’s enrollment numbers over a span of two years.