If your university just told you that you did not get a seat in its nursing program, the easiest nursing program to transfer into is not the one with the highest acceptance rate. It is the one that admits transfer students straight into the nursing courses, where you will not have to win a second competitive admission round. There are two kinds of school that do this. One kind is built for transfers and is cheap. The other kind takes almost everyone, and you pay for that in debt. A BSN pays about the same whichever school it comes from, so the cost is what you should compare.
The trap: transferring into another pre-nursing major
Many universities admit you to the university, but not to nursing. You enter as "pre-nursing", take the prerequisites, and then apply again for a fixed number of seats. Cal State Long Beach says plainly that its BSN "is not a direct entry program". Its pre-nursing students get no priority over outside transfer applicants, because every application is "scored and ranked amongst the entire applicant pool." Many large public universities work the same way.
That is the gate you just failed. If you transfer to another university that also starts you as "pre-nursing", you are applying to the same kind of gate again, and a semester or a year later. The national numbers show how full these gates are. AACN counts 92,672 qualified applications turned away by U.S. bachelor's and graduate nursing programs in 2025, mostly because there were not enough faculty, clinical placements and classroom space. A school's overall acceptance rate tells you nothing about this. Our easiest nursing schools to get into list ranks schools by how easy the university is to get into as a freshman. That is the right list for a high school senior, but not for you.
So before you apply anywhere, ask the admissions office one question: "If I'm admitted as a transfer, am I admitted to the nursing major, or to pre-nursing?" If they say "pre-nursing", the school is not easy to transfer into, whatever its acceptance rate.
Door one: programs where transfers are the normal way in
Some public nursing schools teach only the last two years of the BSN, so almost every student they admit comes from another college. The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center says all of its BSN nursing courses are upper division, so students complete 60 credit hours of prerequisites first, at whatever college they choose. UT Health San Antonio asks applicants to have at least 51 of the 60 prerequisite hours done, with every math and science prerequisite finished, and it admits a class every fall and spring. At schools like these, a sophomore with finished prerequisites is the student they are looking for.
These programs are still competitive, because seats are limited everywhere. The difference is that your previous college does not count against you: you compete with other transfer students for the start of the nursing courses. You are not applying for a pre-nursing slot that comes with another competition later.
They also cost little. Stand-alone health science centers, many of them in Texas and the South, show some of the lowest median debt among BSN programs in the College Scorecard, and their graduates earn first-year pay in line with the rest of the field:
| Upper-division public nursing school | Median earnings, 1 yr after BSN | Median federal debt |
|---|---|---|
| UTHealth Houston | $82,043 | $15,000 |
| Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center | $77,083 | $12,500 |
| LSU Health New Orleans | $76,998 | $21,395 |
| UT Health San Antonio | $70,826 | $17,005 |
| University of Tennessee Health Science Center | $70,619 | $18,000 |
A second version of this door is a state transfer agreement. In some states the public universities and community colleges agree in advance which nursing prerequisites transfer. Texas does this with its Nursing Field of Study curriculum. North Carolina has a Uniform Articulation Agreement covering associate-degree nurses who move into the UNC system's RN-to-BSN programs. If your state has an agreement like this, your credits are more likely to count in full, and the schools in it expect transfer students.
Door two: schools that admit almost everyone, and charge for it
The other schools that are easy to get into for nursing are private, mostly for-profit nursing colleges. Many of them start new groups of students several times a year and will take a qualified applicant without a long competitive wait. Some for-profit online schools on the same lists mostly offer RN-to-BSN programs for nurses who are already licensed, which is a different thing. For a student who just lost a seat and does not want to lose a year, though, the prelicensure colleges are very tempting. The debt numbers show the cost:
| Private for-profit nursing college | Median earnings, 1 yr after BSN | Median federal debt |
|---|---|---|
| Eagle Gate College | $66,420 | $47,150 |
| Provo College | $63,317 | $42,951 |
| Arizona College of Nursing | $85,169 | $40,813 |
| Hondros College of Nursing | $74,394 | $36,700 |
| Galen College of Nursing | $76,234 | $36,303 |
| West Coast University | $95,859 | $34,145 |
Graduates of these colleges pass the same NCLEX-RN and earn about what local hospitals pay new nurses. The difference is the debt, which is often two to three times what the upper-division public schools above leave their graduates with. And these are federal loans only. The College Scorecard does not count private loans or a parent's PLUS loans, so the real total can be higher. Part of the gap comes from the students themselves: for-profit colleges enroll more independent adult students, and those students are allowed to borrow more in federal loans. That makes the debt figure partly a sign of who enrolls, but the cost is real for whoever enrolls.
Across all 33 for-profit BSN programs in the College Scorecard, median federal debt is $28,874. The figure is $19,500 for public universities and $25,000 for private nonprofits. If a for-profit is the only place that will take you this year, the year you save has a price. For many students that price is $15,000 to $25,000 in extra loans, on a salary that will be no higher.
Why the school's name should carry little weight
A BSN from a less famous school pays almost the same as one from a famous school. Every new nurse takes the same licensing exam, and hospitals mostly pay new graduates on set pay scales for the region. The College Scorecard shows how small the gaps are. Median first-year earnings for BSN graduates are $74,926 at public universities and $73,588 at private nonprofits. At schools that admit fewer than half their applicants the median is $75,009. At schools that admit 80% or more it is $74,422, a difference of about $600 a year. We looked at this in more detail across 875 programs in Does Nursing School Prestige Matter?, and the answer did not change.
This should make your choice easier. You do not have to find the "best" nursing school that will take a transfer. You have to find the cheapest one with a real seat and a good licensing-exam pass rate. Where you live matters more than the school's reputation, because nursing pay depends heavily on the region. The best nursing schools by ROI ranking can be filtered by state for exactly that reason.
Five checks before you send a transfer application
- Nursing major or pre-nursing? Get the answer in writing. Ask what share of last year's nursing class came in as transfers. If the school will not tell you, assume transfers are rare.
- Will your prerequisites count? Many programs require anatomy and physiology, microbiology and chemistry to have been taken within the last five to seven years, and some will not accept a science course with a grade below C. Ask for a course-by-course credit evaluation. A general "most credits transfer" is not enough.
- NCLEX first-time pass rate. State boards of nursing publish pass rates for each program. A program well below your state's average is a risk, whatever its price: a degree that leaves you unable to get licensed is worth very little. NCSBN runs the exam that every prelicensure graduate takes, whether they hold an ADN or a BSN.
- Accreditation and board approval. The program needs approval from the state board of nursing so you can sit the NCLEX. It should also hold nursing accreditation from CCNE, ACEN or NLN CNEA, because graduate schools and some employers check for it.
- Net price for your family, and what you would borrow. Compare the remaining two years, not four. Our most affordable nursing schools list shows net price by family income. If a parent would need to borrow, note that new Parent PLUS loans are capped at $20,000 a year from July 2026. The Parent PLUS cap post shows where that leaves expensive schools.
When transferring is not the best move at all
If you have finished your prerequisites and live near a community college with an associate-degree nursing program, that may be the quickest way to a nursing license. ADN graduates take the same NCLEX-RN. Many then finish a BSN online while already working and paid as an RN, and some employers pay toward it. Whether this works depends on your area. Some hospitals, especially ones going for Magnet status, hire mostly BSN nurses, so check job postings in the city where you want to work before you choose this route.
The other choice is to stay at your university and apply again. This makes sense only if the school publishes how many re-applicants it admits and your application score was close. If neither is true, you are betting another year on a gate that has already turned you down.
Whatever you choose, judge the next school by whether it admits you straight into nursing and what it will cost. How selective or famous it is matters much less, because the job you get at the end will pay about the same.
Questions readers ask after this
Will employers see my BSN as worse because I transferred?
No. Your diploma and license do not show that you transferred, and hiring for new graduates mostly depends on the license, your clinical placements and the region. The earnings data supports this: BSN pay at upper-division schools, where nearly every student is a transfer, is in line with the national median.
Is a for-profit nursing college ever worth it?
Sometimes. It can make sense when it has a strong NCLEX pass rate, no public program within reach has a seat for a year or more, and you have planned how to repay $35,000 or more in federal loans plus any private loans. Starting a year earlier as a working RN can cover part of that cost. Do the calculation with your own numbers before you sign.
Should I take any open seat now or wait a semester for a cheaper program?
Compare one extra semester of waiting with the debt difference. If the cheaper program starts in spring and the for-profit costs $20,000 more, waiting usually wins, because a few months of a new nurse's pay will not make up $20,000 of extra borrowing.
Data: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, field-of-study file, registered nursing (CIP 51.38), bachelor's level. Earnings are median earnings one year after completion for federally aided graduates. Debt is median federal student loan debt at completion and excludes private and Parent PLUS loans. Where the Scorecard reports one set of earnings for a whole university system, we count the system once. See our methodology. Acceptance rates are for the whole school's freshman admissions, not for the nursing major. A school's figures can include RN-to-BSN graduates where it offers that program.