First Cohort of St. John’s Nursing Students Excels in Licensing Exam

Eighty-four percent of St. John’s University’s first graduating cohort of nursing students have passed the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX), the challenging standardized test used to license registered nurses in the United States. 

Twenty-one of the 25 students who comprised the first cohort of graduates in St. John’s resurrected nursing program passed the rigorous exam. Many are now working professionals, including Emma DerGarabedian ’26CPHS, student speaker at the Nursing Pinning Ceremony in May and now part of the nursing residency program at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in Manhattan, NY.

“As a proud graduate of St. John’s inaugural nursing cohort, I am excited about this next chapter at HSS,” Ms. DerGarabedian said recently. “I am incredibly grateful to everyone at St. John’s who supported me throughout the journey.”

Ms. DerGarabedian, from Baldwin, NY, serves patients in the hospital’s critical care, pediatrics, and postanesthesia care units. She is joined at HSS by classmate Andrea Lin ’26CPHS, who also passed her NYCLEX exam and works as an acute care nurse resident.

“My four years at St. John’s were filled with challenges, growth, and experiences that shaped me into the person I am,” Ms. Lin said. “It was especially meaningful to be part of the inaugural cohort.”

All nursing students must pass the NCLEX to become a licensed registered nurse. The exam covers a range of topics, including medical-surgical nursing, mental health treatment, obstetrics, pediatric care, pharmacology, and more. The exam tests more than a candidate’s ability to recall knowledge; it requires a candidate to apply knowledge to real-world circumstances, make clinical judgments, and prioritize patient care.

Candidates must complete between 85 and 150 multiple-choice questions in fewer than five hours. For every question answered correctly, the NCLEX’s computerized adaptive testing formula follows with a more challenging question. For each incorrect answer, the formula follows with an easier question. 

Rather than a fixed passing grade, NCLEX’s adaptive scoring measures whether a candidate’s responses remain above an established standard. The goal is to establish the standard in as few questions as possible. Ms. DerGarabedian needed only the minimum of 85 questions to establish her qualifications.

Other Class of 2026 graduates to pass the exam include Esther Babalola ’26CPHS, who now works at The Center for Developmental Disabilities in Woodbury, NY; Ariana Milom ’26CPHS, who works in the postsurgical oncology and cardiology unit at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, NY; and Carolyn Moglia ’26CPHS, who works in the pediatric intensive care unit at Cohen Children’s Medical Center, also in New Hyde Park, NY. 

Nursing has been part of the educational tradition at St. John’s since 1937, when a Department of Nursing was formed within The School of Education. The department became a separate School of Nursing Education in 1942, helping to train nurses for service during World War II. In 1958, the school was again made a department of The School of Education, before being discontinued in 1966.

St. John’s initiated a bachelor of science degree program in nursing in 2022. Members of the initial cohort began studies scattered in several buildings across the Queens, NY, campus. They found a home with the opening of the state-of-the-art St. Vincent Health Sciences Center in September 2024.

“When you committed to St. John’s, you put a lot of faith in us,” Simon G. Møller, Ph.D., Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, told members of the first cohort at the pinning ceremony in May. “We were figuring things out together. My hope is that you will take the essential values that have been instilled in you and approach your patients through that lens.”