Top Nursing Schools & Universities 2009/2010 - College Rankings

The best nursing schools in the 2009 rankings published by US News and World Report align somewhat with the top medical schools. Many are established and respected universities that have large medical teaching and research programs. The public schools on the top 25 nursing schools list include the state universities North Carolina, California at San Francisco and Los Angeles, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Texas, Wisconsin and Virginia.

A few of these schools do offer an associates degree in nursing, which is still the degree of choice for over 40 percent of nursing students today. Those include Indiana, Illinois, and among the ranked private schools, Rush University. Many of the top online colleges offer the full range of degrees in nursing including the clinical nursing degree. However these courses won't prepare you for the RN exam because licensure as a registered nurse requires clinical experience as a student - something you cannot accomplish online.

Some of the specialties in nursing available online include a degree in forensic nursing (from Kaplan University); the enormously popular RN to BSN degree that virtually all online nursing schools and traditional universities offer; and a substantial selection of master's in nursing programs at the University of Phoenix that includes degrees in health informatics and in health administration.

ITT Tecg University offers a hybrid associate's degree in nursing through any of its 100 campuses nationwide. Online nursing courses are a staple, but the clinical and laboratory teaching is organized by each campus in partnership with a local facility.