CRNA School NCE Pass Rates: Read the Outcomes Behind the Number

A CRNA program's first-time NCE pass rate tells you how its first-time exam candidates performed. To judge the program itself, you also need to know how many students started, how many finished, when graduates passed and how employment was measured. So match the cohort, the denominator and the reporting window before you compare any two percentages.

The national first-time NCE pass rate was 90.5% in calendar year 2025. That's a national candidate result. It isn't an average of school percentages, and it isn't a prediction of your result. NBCRNA's 2025 report

A school reporting 100% might have a strong result that's worth a closer look. But that percentage alone can't show whether everyone who entered graduated, how much remediation it took, or whether the clinical experience fits your goals. The method below turns published outcomes into specific questions you can ask.

What is the NCE pass rate, and which outcomes should a school publish?

The National Certification Examination, or NCE, is the certification exam administered by the National Board of Certification and Recertification for Nurse Anesthetists. A first-time pass rate measures successful first attempts among first-time candidates. A later or overall pass rate answers a different question: how many people passed within the stated follow-up period, possibly after another attempt.

The Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs, or COA, requires programs to publish outcomes every year for their most recent graduating class. That means attrition, first-time NCE results, and employment as nurse anesthetists within six months of graduation. Section G.3 of its practice-doctorate standards effective January 1, 2026 sets out those public reporting requirements, and the results have to be posted on a website linked from COA's list of accredited programs.

COA also sets a floor. Its pass-rate requirement is 80%, and a program that can't reach it under any of COA's three calculation methods is placed on monitoring, according to the COA's FAQ. One of those methods adds graduates who pass on a second attempt within 60 days of finishing the program. A program can post that version, but it still has to post its first-time rate for the cohort too.

Look for the program's own student-achievement or outcomes page, and open the linked PDFs and footnotes too. Graduation rates, later NCE results and admissions counts can add useful information, but each one is a separate measure. Write down how each one is defined instead of assuming every column follows one standard formula.

Read employment carefully, too. The COA glossary includes both actual work and an offer of work requiring CRNA duties. So a reported employment percentage might include graduates who have an offer and haven't started yet. It doesn't tell you salary, benefits, job satisfaction, or whether graduates are employed in the location you'd prefer.

How are the cohort and reporting year defined?

First, figure out whether a label refers to the admission year, the graduation year or the calendar year of testing. Those can be different groups even when every table says "2025."

The national NBCRNA figure above covers first-time candidates who tested from January through December 2025. A school's Class of 2025 table follows a graduating class, and some of those graduates might test in a later calendar year. Both give you context. But a national testing-year result and a school's graduation-cohort result aren't automatically counting the same people.

The University of Evansville makes the distinction easy to see. Its 2025 outcomes row identifies the cohort admitted in January 2023, and its program outcomes page separates first-time, 60-day and overall NCE results. Keep those labels intact when you compare.

For each school, save the original source and write down:

• The entry cohort and graduation class, if they're identified.
• The exam or employment follow-up period.
• Whether the figure covers one class, several classes or a rolling period.
• The page's update date (if it has one) and the date you checked it.

A recently updated website can still show an older cohort. And the most recent graduating class might still be in the middle of its follow-up period. Before you treat either situation as evidence of a trend, ask when the next disclosure will be out.

What denominator belongs to each measure?

The denominator is the group counted in the rate. First-time candidates, graduates, entering students and applicants are all different populations. Whenever a program gives you raw counts, keep them right next to the percentages.

Treat the table below as a reading framework. You'll need to confirm the definitions for admissions, attrition, completion and overall results with the program that reported them, because the table doesn't claim every school calculates them the same way.

Measure	Numerator	Denominator	Cohort/year	Source to keep	What it can't tell you
First-time NCE pass rate	Candidates passing on their first attempt	First-time candidates included in the report	Testing year or named graduating class	NBCRNA report or school disclosure	How many entering students reached graduation
Overall or later NCE pass rate	Unique people passing within the defined window	The defined group of graduates or candidates	Named class plus follow-up deadline	School disclosure and footnotes	First-attempt performance or unlimited eventual success
Attrition	Students counted as leaving under the program's definition	The stated entering cohort or other defined population	Entry cohort and observation period	School outcomes and explanation	Why an individual left, or whether delayed students are counted
On-time completion	Students finishing by the planned deadline	The specified original cohort	Entry cohort and expected completion date	School completion disclosure	Eventual completion after delays
Graduate employment	Graduates meeting the employment definition	The stated graduate group (confirm exclusions)	Time since graduation	School disclosure, plus COA definition where it applies	Salary, satisfaction, or whether every offer has turned into a started job
Offer-based acceptance rate	Applicants offered admission	The defined applicant pool for that cycle	Same admissions cycle and degree track	Official admissions disclosure	A particular applicant's chance of admission
Enrolled-to-applicant ratio	Students who enrolled	The defined applicant pool	Same cycle and track	Official applicant and enrollment counts	How many offers the program made

A worked example: admission offers are different from seats

Suppose a fictional program gets 200 completed applications for one degree track, makes 40 admission offers and enrolls 24 students in that cycle:

• Offer-based acceptance rate: 40 ÷ 200 = 20%.
• Enrolled-to-applicant ratio: 24 ÷ 200 = 12%.
• Yield, meaning enrolled students divided by offers: 24 ÷ 40 = 60%.

That 12% ratio isn't the offer-based acceptance rate. Planned seats are one more step removed, because capacity can differ from actual enrollment. If you can't find the number of offers, label the ratio you do have accurately and leave the offer-based rate as unknown. The acceptance-rate guide covers that admissions question on its own.

How should I read pass rates and attrition together?

Read them together to see which part of the student pathway each one covers, then dig into the underlying counts and policies. Two percentages can't tell you why students left, whether an admissions process picked stronger candidates, or whether teaching caused an exam result.

A high first-time pass rate with low attrition describes good reported results for the groups identified. It still leaves questions about clinical breadth, support, delayed graduation and the student experience. A lower first-time rate, higher attrition or a change across cohorts calls for an explanation and a longer view. None of those, on its own, proves misconduct or a specific teaching failure.

Completion needs its own check. In a separate fictional example, 20 students enter, two leave, one stays enrolled past the planned finish and 17 graduate on time. Attrition is 2/20, or 10%, under that example's definition. On-time completion is 17/20, or 85%. If you subtracted attrition from 100%, you'd get 90%, and that wrongly counts the delayed student as an on-time graduate.

Ask the program how its reports handle leaves, delayed progression, transfers, withdrawals and dismissals. Ask for aggregate explanations that protect individual students' privacy. A pass-rate table can't give you those details, and a correlation between schools' percentages wouldn't explain why any one student left.

How can small cohorts affect apparent changes?

One candidate changes the pass rate by 10 percentage points in a group of 10. In a group of 40, that same candidate moves it 2.5 points. So small groups make year-to-year percentages more sensitive to individual results. The counts still mean something, but the percentage needs that context.

Ask for several consecutive cohorts with consistent definitions. Check that a reported trend follows the same campus, track, degree and reporting window. And ask what changed in teaching or support, without assuming that change caused the next class's result.

Be careful with averages. In a fictional two-cohort example, 10/10 candidates pass in the first year and 18/20 pass in the second. The combined candidate pass rate is 28/30, or 93.3%. If you average the two annual percentages instead, 100% and 90%, you get 95%, which weights the smaller and larger cohorts equally.

The same problem shows up nationally. An average of collected school percentages isn't automatically the national candidate pass rate. Missing schools, different reporting years and unequal cohort sizes can all change what that number represents. Use the NBCRNA candidate report for the national benchmark and each program's own dated disclosure for its results.

Which missing data should prompt a question?

Ask whenever a rate is missing its cohort, raw counts, observation period or definition. While you look into it, mark the cell "not found yet." A blank isn't zero, and it isn't 100% either.

A program that hasn't graduated a class yet might not have any graduate outcomes. That's a different situation from an established program whose results weren't on the page you checked. A school might also publish the figures in a separate PDF. Search its official materials and ask for the direct disclosure before you decide the results aren't available.

Good questions are specific enough to get a checkable answer:

• "Which entering cohort produced this graduating class, and how many started?"
• "How many graduated on schedule, are still enrolled, withdrew, or were dismissed?"
• "Does this NCE figure mean first attempt, passage within a deadline, or another measure?"
• "Who's included in the employment denominator, and does the result include job offers?"
• "Can you share the same measures for the two cohorts before this one and point out any changes in reporting?"

An unanswered question leaves an evidence gap. Write the gap down and follow up, and don't assign a motive to the person answering. A slow response, a missing webpage and a confirmed adverse outcome are different facts.

How should I compare outcomes alongside training fit?

Outcomes are one part of your program decision. Even strong published results leave practical questions about clinical placements, supervision, remediation, travel, tuition and whether you can complete the schedule.

Run the same five-step review for each school on your shortlist:

1. Open the original disclosure. Save the source, cohort and date. Use the program directory to organize your shortlist, then go back to the official school materials to verify.
2. Trace the student pathway. Separate the entering cohort, on-time graduates, first-time exam candidates, later successful candidates and the employment group. Leave any count you can't find blank.
3. Compare like with like. Line up first-time results and follow-up windows. Look at several cohorts and the raw counts before you read anything into a change.
4. Look at the support behind the numbers. Ask about academic help, clinical feedback, remediation, progression rules, and what happens if graduation or certification gets delayed. Read the written policies alongside the program's explanation.
5. Test the fit for your own life. Look at rotation geography, housing and transportation, clinical learning opportunities, total costs and the support available. A pass-rate percentage can't answer any of that.

Bring whatever questions are left to an information session or an admissions conversation. What you're building is a source-backed comparison with clear limits, and a ranking built from whichever percentage looks best won't get you there. Short version: read the percentage, then go find the counts and definitions behind it. The guide to choosing a CRNA program helps you carry that comparison into the rest of your decision.