Bowie State nursing graduates achieve 100% pass rate on NCLEX

The achievement places Bowie State’s nursing school among the top programs in the state of Maryland.

Bowie State University’s nursing school has completed the NCLEX with a 100% pass rate for the first time in the school’s history.

The HBCU announced in a press release on July 1 that all 14 of its nursing graduates passed the exam on their first try, placing the nursing school among the top-performing programs in the state of Maryland.

“This result reflects the rigor of our program and the unwavering commitment of our faculty to student success,” Dr. Monique Alston, chair of the Department of Nursing and associate professor, said in a statement. “Our graduates leave Bowie State with the knowledge, clinical experience and confidence needed to succeed as professional nurses from the outset.”

The National Council Licensure Examination, or NCLEX, is the standardized test that nursing graduates are required to pass before becoming legally licensed to practice nursing in the United States.

According to Afrotech, the news comes a year after Bowie State received a $2.2 million grant from the Maryland Department of Nursing in July 2025 through the Maryland Higher Education Commission. The award was the biggest the program has ever seen.

In the new announcement from Bowie State, the university said that this achievement by its nursing graduates will help to address the country’s nursing shortage. According to the National Institute of Health, many factors, such as nurse burnout, an aging workforce (1 million registered nurses are age 50 or older) that will leave the profession in the coming years, and violence against healthcare professionals, all contribute to shortages in the field. The need for nurses will also increase as the Baby Boomer demographic continues to age, and they currently make up the largest number of Americans age 65 or older in U.S. history.

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing also pointed out in 2024 that nursing school enrollment is not growing fast enough to meet the projected demand for Registered Nurse (RN) and Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN) services. In a report the organization published on 2023-2024 nursing program enrollment, it found that U.S. nursing schools turned away 65,766 qualified applications in 2023 due to a lack of resources, citing factors like an insufficient number of faculty, classroom space, and budget constraints.

Bowie State says its nursing program is helping to address this issue, as “graduates are filling essential roles in hospitals, clinics and community health settings, helping to expand access to care, support regional health systems and contribute to a stronger, more resilient healthcare workforce.”