RN to BSN Programs

Guides

RN to BSN Guides: Five Questions Our Rankings Cannot Answer

Written and edited by , Editor B.A. Psychology, University of Washington Seattle · B.S. Computer Science, Oregon State University

Last updated

A ranked list is good at a narrow job. Ours compares 290 confirmed RN-to-BSN completion programs on the two things the federal file actually holds — in-state tuition and the institution's graduation rate. It cannot tell you whether the degree pays, how long it will take you specifically, or what accreditation is protecting. Those five questions get a page each.

Choosing a route

BSN vs RN to BSN

The same bachelor's degree reached two different ways — which one you can enroll in is decided by whether you already hold an RN license, and the federal file does not separate them.

Cost and value

Is an RN to BSN Worth It?

The cost of the degree is documented to the dollar and the pay return is not documented at all, so the answer turns on the price of your program and on what you want the credential to open.

Answers: Does the degree pay?

Time to finish

How Long Does an RN to BSN Take?

Few ranked programs publish a completion time and the ones that do disagree by years, so your timeline comes from transfer credit, general education, course load and start dates instead.

Answers: How long will it actually take?

Choosing a route

Nursing Bridge Programs

LPN to BSN, RN to BSN and RN to MSN admit different licenses and end at different awards, so which bridge you can enter is settled by the license you already hold rather than by price.

Answers: Which bridge does my license fit?

Accreditation

CCNE vs ACEN Accreditation

Both bodies accredit baccalaureate nursing and a program holding either one is accredited — what actually differs between them, what accreditation protects, and how to check a program yourself.

Answers: What is accreditation protecting?

A woman in a white shirt writes in a tabbed notebook at a glass-topped table against a brick wall, holding a printed page up in her other hand, a closed laptop at her elbow

What the Ranking Pages Do, and Where They Stop

The rankings on this site start by removing programs a licensed nurse cannot enroll in. The federal survey files an RN-to-BSN completion track and a traditional pre-licensure BSN under one code, so ranking that code straight produces a list of four-year campus degrees for people who are not nurses yet. We checked every program in it against the school's own page instead: 362 are confirmed completion tracks, 290 of those carry enough federal data to be scored across 24 states, and 72 more are listed below the ranking on their state page because an input the score needs is absent from the federal file.

What the score contains is exactly two factors — in-state tuition at 55% and the institution's graduation rate at 45%. That is a real comparison and a limited one. Nothing in it speaks to the return on the degree, because no federal file separates nurses' pay by degree. Nothing in it sets your timeline, because that is decided by your transcript rather than by the program's catalog. And nothing in it scores accreditation, because we have not sourced the accreditors' directories and will not print a guess about which body accredits which program.

Each guide below takes one of those gaps and says plainly what is known, what is not, and which questions you can get answered yourself before you pay a deposit.

Where to Go Next

Methodology

How completion tracks are separated from pre-licensure BSN degrees, and the factors we deliberately do not score.

Rankings

The 290 ranked completion programs, by state, on cost and graduation rate.

Online programs

Which schools state that the track runs online, which say the coursework is asynchronous, and what it means when a school says nothing.