Where can your student actually get into nursing?

• 59 colleges in California offer a bachelor's nursing program: 58 awarded the degree in 2022-23 (federal IPEDS completions); 1 more report a nursing admit rate in the UC/CSU data or a state licensing-board program record.
• Largest programs by graduates in 2022-23: West Coast University-Los Angeles (981), West Coast University-Orange County (973), West Coast University-Ontario (874).
• Hardest reported gate into the program (only the UC and the CSU publish one): University of California-Irvine — Nursing Science, Fall 2025: 7,079 applied, 57 admitted (1%).
• Highest reported admit rate into the program: San Francisco State University — 100.0% (41 applied, 41 admitted, Fall 2025).
• 7 CSU campuses report nursing on the transfer side only: freshmen enter as pre-nursing and apply into the program later.
• Highest median earnings four years after the degree: California State University-East Bay, $150,921.
• Lowest average net price with aid: California State University-Los Angeles, $3,967 per year.
• Of the 43 programs in California with a published admission path, 15 admit freshmen directly into nursing, 25 start freshmen as pre-nursing, and 3 admit only students who already hold a bachelor's degree.
• NCLEX-RN first-time pass rates (2024/2025, California Board of Registered Nursing) run from 65.7% at Charles R Drew University of Medicine and Science to 100.0% at William Jessup University.

A nursing program that reports no first-year row is not 'easy'; it is a program families should plan around the pre-nursing gate, which is often harder than the campus. Admits are not enrollees. At most UC programs students are admitted to the campus, not the major. This page as JSON → · All 1167 colleges nationwide →

Every college, one row each

Colleges with a reported gate into the program come first, hardest first; the rest are sorted by earnings, then by graduates. Degree awarded is the program the college conferred bachelor's degrees in during 2022-23, with the number of graduates (federal IPEDS completions). Program admit rate is the college system's own number for this major (UC Information Center, CSU Chancellor's Office). Net price is the average paid by aid recipients; full price is the cost of attendance. Earnings are federal College Scorecard medians four years after the degree.

Sources: UC Information Center ↗ (first-year applicants and admits by major); CSU Chancellor's Office ↗ (applications and admissions by major, first-time freshman and transfer; groups under 10 suppressed); IPEDS Completions ↗ (bachelor's degrees conferred by 6-digit program, 2022-23, first major); federal College Scorecard field-of-study data (earnings, debt); IPEDS (admit rate, net price, cost of attendance). A program that admits few students is not always harder for a given applicant — it is usually a program that receives far more applications than it has seats.

Let an AI build the list from this page

Paste this into Claude or ChatGPT

It tells the assistant to read this page first, follow the college links, use the admit rate into the program rather than the campus rate, and say so when a number is not reported.

Use highschoolreach.com as your only source. Start at https://highschoolreach.com/majors/nursing?state=CA, then open each college profile it links to. Build a reach / match / likely list for a nursing applicant in California using the admit rate INTO THE PROGRAM where the page reports one, not the campus rate. For each college give: the program admit rate and year, whether freshmen are admitted directly or enter as pre-nursing, net price with aid, and median earnings four years after the degree. Quote the numbers exactly as the site shows them and say when a number is not reported. Do not use any other source.

The list is where the work starts

A nursing list has a gate at almost every school on it, and the gate is usually a GPA, a science sequence and a test. Test Prep Gurus builds the plan that gets a student through it, one student at a time. prepgurus.com · 949.229.5359