The Short Version

• The 86.7% figure is the first-time, U.S.-educated NCLEX-RN pass rate for all of 2025, and it's down from 91.2% the year before (NCSBN, Research Brief Vol. 96, June 2026).

• For retesting, the pass rate is 52.7%, and internationally educated first-timers passed at 47.3%.

• The rate slid across the year, running 88.4% in the first quarter and dropping to 81.2% by the fourth, so the timing of your exam may matter more than you'd think.

• BSN and ADN first-timers passed within a point and a half of each other, 87.6% against 86.1%, a far smaller gap than the one between a first attempt and a retake.

• NCLEX-PN first-time U.S.-educated candidates passed at 86.6%, while PN repeat candidates passed at only 41.7%, so the same pattern shows up on both exams.

The 86.7% Belongs to One Cohort, Not Automatically to You

86.7% describes one very specific group under one very specific condition, which is everyone sitting for the NCLEX-RN for the first time, educated inside the United States, across the entire 2025 calendar year. It's also four and a half points lower than the year before, when the same cohort passed at 91.2%, and a four and a half point drop in a single year is worth talking about.

The Quarter You Test In Shows Up in the Data

First-time, U.S.-educated pass rates ran 88.4% in the first quarter of 2025, climbed slightly to 89.1% in the second, then dropped to 84.0% in the third and 81.2% in the fourth, an eight-point gap between the strongest and weakest quarters of the same year. NCSBN doesn't explain why the numbers slid the way they did, and the published statistics don't record how long after graduation any given candidate actually tested, so treat the pattern as something worth noticing rather than a cause you can point to with confidence.

You're allowed to treat your own test date as a real decision instead of whatever slot your Authorization to Test happens to hand you: schedule the exam for whenever your own preparation is genuinely at its peak, not for the earliest available date just to get the whole thing over with. A program that pushes everyone toward testing the weeks after graduation, regardless of how ready any individual student actually feels, has told you something about its own priorities.

Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Set a Test Date

You're allowed to treat this exam like a big decision instead of a formality you get scheduled into. These are the questions I'd want an honest answer to before locking anything in.

1. Attempt number. Are you sitting for the first time, or is this a retake, because the pass rate you should be measuring yourself against changes completely depending on the answer?

2. Preparation peak. Is your test date actually set for when your own readiness peaks, or did you just take whatever slot your Authorization to Test happened to offer first?

3. Degree pathway assumptions. Are you assuming your BSN buys you a meaningfully easier path through this exam, when the 2025 data puts that particular gap at a point and a half, not the wide margin some programs imply?

4. Exam type. Are you accidentally comparing your own NCLEX-PN numbers against NCLEX-RN figures, since the two exams report entirely separate pass rates every single year?

5. Quarter timing. If you have any real flexibility in your test window, are you factoring in that the fourth quarter of 2025 posted the lowest first-time pass rate of any quarter that year?

Preparation and timing are two things you actually get to control here, and everything else in this data is a description of the group you're already in, not a prediction about what you specifically will do.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the 2025 NCLEX-RN pass rate for first-time U.S.-educated candidates?

It was 86.7%, down from 91.2% the year before, according to NCSBN's 2025 NCLEX Examination Statistics (Research Brief Volume 96, June 2026). That figure covers only first-time, U.S.-educated candidates across the full 2025 calendar year, not repeat test-takers or internationally educated candidates.

Is the 86.7% pass rate my number if I'm retesting?

No, that headline number stops applying once you're testing again. Repeat U.S.-educated candidates passed at 52.7% in 2025, a meaningfully different number than the first-time rate. Planning your prep against the headline figure instead of the repeat-candidate rate is a common way a second attempt turns into a third one.

Does the quarter I test in actually matter?

The data suggests timing might matter, though NCSBN doesn't explain why. First-time pass rates ran from a high of 89.1% in the second quarter of 2025 down to a low of 81.2% in the fourth. NCSBN doesn't explain the pattern, so treat it as worth factoring into your timing rather than as a guaranteed cause.

Does a BSN give me a real advantage over an ADN on pass rates?

Only a small one, and a smaller gap than most people assume. The 2025 data shows BSN first-timers passing at 87.6% against 86.1% for ADN first-timers, a point-and-a-half gap. The much larger gap in this data sits between a first attempt and a repeat attempt, not between degree paths.

How does the NCLEX-PN pass rate compare to the NCLEX-RN?

NCLEX-PN first-time, U.S.-educated candidates passed at 86.6% in 2025, close to the RN first-time rate of 86.7%. PN repeat candidates passed at just 41.7%, showing the same first-attempt-versus-repeat pattern that shows up on the RN exam.

Sources

All pass-rate figures come from NCSBN's 2025 NCLEX Examination Statistics, Research Brief Volume 96, published June 2026 and checked 3 September 2026. The first-time, U.S.-educated NCLEX-RN cohort covers 192,916 candidates, of whom 167,272 passed, for the 86.7% figure. The year-earlier comparison of 91.2% comes from the 2024 edition, Research Brief Volume 94, published July 2025. These are annual cohort pass rates, meaning observed outcomes for a defined group of test-takers, not an individual candidate's personal probability of passing, and a difference between two cohorts or two years in this data does not by itself explain what caused that difference.