About 3.5 million people work as registered nurses in the country. Two years of college can get you licensed, and the license works in most states.
Click through it
Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $97,550 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $68,940 at the lower end to about $137,470 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
2 to 4 years after high school, on the usual route.
$8,800 to $48,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
Yes. It is a regulated job, so you need a license or registration before you can work.
Good demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$97,550
Bottom tenth
$68,940
Top tenth
$137,470
The national median is $97,550 a year. The bottom tenth earn $68,940 or less and the top tenth $137,470 or more (2025 federal wage survey). Nursing has its own line in the federal wage survey, so these are not borrowed from a wider group. Pay varies a lot between states.
$140,270 a year
The median in California, the highest of any state
Hawaii is close behind at $136,320, then Oregon at $129,010. The lowest are Alabama and Mississippi, at about $77,100 (2025 wage survey). Nights, weekends and holidays pay extra on top of base.
$137,470 or more
Intensive care, operating rooms, travel contracts, expensive states
Overtime adds to pay, and many hospitals are short staffed enough that it is often available. Travel nurses take 13-week contracts in understaffed hospitals, often with housing, and burn out faster.
Roughly, all in
$8,800 to $48,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is the associate degree in nursing at a community college at in district rates, about $4,150 a year, so roughly $8,300 for the two years, plus the licensing exam at $200 and roughly $300 for the first state license, uniforms, a stethoscope and the background check. The high end is a four year bachelor of science in nursing at an in state public university at roughly $12,000 a year. Note the exam fee rises to $350 on 1 February 2027, and hospitals increasingly prefer the bachelor's degree, so many nurses pay for a bridge program later.
The associate degree route is one of the best value deals in American education: two years of community college for a license in a job with a national median of $97,550. File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) every year, because Pell Grants never have to be repaid.
Tuition help to finish your bachelor's
Many hospitals will pay for a nurse with an associate degree to top up to a four-year degree while working.
Shift and weekend differentials
Extra dollars per hour for nights, weekends and holidays, paid on top of base.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Nonprofit and government hospitals qualify, which cancels what is left of federal loans after 10 years of payments.
Three-day weeks
Twelve-hour shifts mean many nurses work three days and have four off.
A pension at some employers
State hospitals and the Department of Veterans Affairs still offer real retirement plans.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Two routes lead to the same license. One is cheaper, one opens more doors later.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Biology, chemistry, algebra and English. Get a job or volunteer post inside a hospital or care home as early as you can, because admissions committees count it.
Pick your degree
2 or 4 years
An associate degree in nursing at a community college, or a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) at a university. Both end in the same license. Many hospitals now prefer or require the bachelor's for new hires.
Clinical rotations
Built into the degree
Supervised hours on real wards inside your program: medical, surgical, pediatric, obstetric and mental health. This is where you find out whether you can do the job.
Pass the national exam
6 to 12 weeks after graduation
The NCLEX (National Council Licensure Examination) is computer adaptive: it gets harder when you answer well and stops when it knows enough. In 2025, 86.7% of first-time candidates educated in the US passed (NCSBN, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing).
License and first job
A few weeks to a few months
Apply to the board of nursing in your state. Hospitals run new graduate residency programs of 6 to 12 months to get you onto a ward safely.
Biology
Anatomy and physiology in year one is built straight on it.
Chemistry
Drug calculations and body chemistry run through the whole degree.
Algebra
Dosage math is simple but must be right every single time.
Psychology
Half of nursing is talking to frightened people and their families.
Every state has its own board of nursing and issues its own license, but they all use the same test: the NCLEX (National Council Licensure Examination), written by NCSBN (the National Council of State Boards of Nursing). Most states have joined the Nurse Licensure Compact, which turns one home-state license into permission to work across all the member states. That is what makes travel nursing possible. Renewal every two or three years needs continuing education hours.
Community colleges
The cheapest route to a license. Community colleges in every state run nursing programs.
Public universities
The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan and most other state flagships run four-year nursing degrees.
Accelerated programs
If you already hold a degree in something else, some schools run a 12 to 18 month nursing degree.
Hospital-funded seats
Some hospital systems pay your tuition in exchange for two or three years of work afterwards.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Earned after a year or two on the floor, not in school.
CCRN (Critical Care Registered Nurse)
For intensive care work, and widely recognized.
CEN (Certified Emergency Nurse)
Emergency departments. Fast, unpredictable and never boring.
Operating room training
Scrubbing in on surgery. Hospitals usually train you into it rather than hiring for it.
OCN (Oncology Certified Nurse)
Cancer care. Long relationships with patients and heavy emotional weight.
Work as a CNA (certified nursing assistant)
A few weeks of training, then paid hospital work. Nothing tells you faster whether this job suits you.
CPR certification
Cheap, quick and required anyway by the time you start clinicals.
Spanish or another second language
Hospitals hire for it.
Comfort with blood and bodies
Test this early. It is not a small detail of the job.
A license is a starting point, not a ceiling. With a bachelor's degree and a few years on a ward you can go on to a master's and become a nurse practitioner, who diagnoses and prescribes. Nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives, nurse educators and clinical nurse specialists all start with the same license you do. Others move sideways into case management, informatics, school nursing or public health, and out of shift work entirely.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Twelve hours, usually 7 to 7. Handover first: the outgoing nurse tells you about your four to six patients. Then medications, vital signs, dressings, drips and charting, with call bells interrupting all of it. Doctors round mid morning and you tell them what has changed overnight. Someone gets worse and the plan for the day disappears. You eat standing up, or not at all. The last hour is charting what you did not have time to write down.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
In 2025, 86.1% of first-time associate degree graduates passed the NCLEX (National Council Licensure Examination), against 87.6% of bachelor's graduates. Among nurses educated outside the US, 47.3% passed on the first try.
Registering for the national licensure exam costs $200 today. The National Council of State Boards of Nursing has already voted that the fee rises to $350 in the United States on February 1, 2027.
Most states have joined the Nurse Licensure Compact. A nurse whose home state is a member can work in any other member state without applying again, which is why a nurse in Kansas can take a three-month contract in Arizona on short notice.
The Department of Veterans Affairs runs one of the largest hospital systems in the country and hires nurses through USAJOBS (the official federal hiring site). Federal pay comes off a published table, and the work counts toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness from the first paycheck.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Nursing and patient care first, then the rest of the field. See every career in health.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
Tell us about this page. A person reads every message.
No email app on this device? Use Gmail instead: report a mistake in Gmail or say what you like in Gmail.