Yonkers has zero NYSED-approved practical nursing programs within city limits, full stop. Every accredited option inside a reasonable commute sits in the Bronx, lower Westchester, or Manhattan, at places like Monroe College and CUNY's BMCC and LaGuardia campuses; Nassau County's Veeb program serves Yonkers residents willing to commute farther.
That commute reality drives most of the real decisions here: which program's clinical schedule survives a Metro-North or bus commute, what tuition actually costs after aid, and whether a school's NCLEX-PN pass rate justifies the drive time at all.
Jump straight to the program list →
Who Hires LPNs in Yonkers and Westchester County
LPN hiring in Yonkers and Westchester County runs through skilled nursing, post-acute rehab, outpatient clinics, and home health far more than through hospital med-surg floors. If you are mapping a job search, start with the facilities that staff LPNs around the clock, not the acute-care job boards that may post only a handful of practical nurse roles.
Long-Term Care and Post-Acute Set the Pace
Skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers are the region's most reliable LPN long term care employers. Cedar Manor Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Westchester County recently advertised overnight 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. LPN shifts at up to $36.03 per hour with a $3,000 sign-on bonus. Yonkers-area listings also name Regency, Sans Souci, Yonkers Gardens, Adira at Riverside, Elizabeth Seton, and Hudson Hill. Andrus on Hudson offers short-term rehab, long-term care, and memory care3, while The Osborn provides 24/7 nursing supervision4, both natural fits for LPNs who want a stable facility-based role.
Hospitals, Urgent Care, and Community Clinics
Hospital LPN roles exist but are thinner in the inpatient vs. outpatient setting. Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital posts full-time LPN work around $36.22 per hour1, and Montefiore Medical Group hires part-time LPNs in Yonkers through 1199 union positions at about $34.72 per hour. Contract LPN assignments also appear through Montefiore Care Management, often 13 weeks and 37 hours per week. St. John's Riverside Hospital jobs show nursing assistants working under RN and LPN direction, which highlights the supervision chain even where hospital LPN postings are less visible. Outpatient and urgent care hiring is stronger: CityMD in Yonkers lists LPN urgent care roles from $33.99 to $42.50 per hour, and Westmed urgent care, Sun River Health's Yonkers Valentine Lane clinic, and dialysis providers round out the outpatient employer mix.
What a New York LPN Can and Cannot Do
New York LPNs practice under RN direction, with the RN on the premises or immediately available by phone. LPNs can give medications, provide wound care, document, and participate in team care, core licensed practical nurse duties, as allowed by employer policy and state guidance, but they cannot perform nursing assessments, develop nursing care plans, interpret clinical data, or act independently. IV practice is narrow: no direct IV push except saline or heparin flushes, no central line insertion or removal, and no antineoplastic IV administration.2
The Commute Radius
A Yonkers address puts you within practical driving distance of the Bronx, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, White Plains, and Manhattan. Facility directories in Westchester County list Glen Island Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in New Rochelle and Westchester Center for Rehabilitation & Nursing in Mount Vernon among the skilled nursing employers that draw LPN talent5, while the Bronx and Manhattan add more outpatient and post-acute volume even though hospital LPN hiring remains limited.
Online and Hybrid LPN Options for Yonkers Students
No practical nursing program in New York is fully online, and that is not going to change soon: labs and clinical rotations require hands-on supervision that a screen cannot replicate. What gets marketed as hybrid LPN programs locally usually means lecture content delivered in blocks with in-person skills labs and clinical placements layered on top, not asynchronous coursework you complete from home.
What Local Schedule Options Actually Look Like
Southern Westchester BOCES in Valhalla, one of the BOCES LPN Programs in New York, is the closest full practical nursing program to Yonkers and runs two in-person tracks rather than a true hybrid model. Its day program covers 1,161 clock hours over 12 months, Monday through Thursday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The evening track covers the same 1,161 hours but stretches to 16 months, meeting Monday through Thursday from 5:30 to 10:00 p.m. with clinical shifts added on Fridays. Choosing evenings buys flexibility for working students but adds roughly a third more calendar time to completion.
Full-Time Versus Part-Time Timelines
New York sets a nine-month floor for non-college LPN programs in New York and a two-semester minimum for college-based ones, but those are minimums, not typical outcomes. Full-time day tracks in the region tend to land near 12 months, while evening or part-time structures often run 14 to 16 months or longer depending on how hours are spread. If you are budgeting around a specific finish date, ask any program directly how its current cohort schedule maps to those clock-hour totals rather than assuming the shortest possible timeline applies to you.
Watch Out for Out-of-State "Online LPN" Marketing
Ads promising a fully remote LPN credential are aimed at states with looser rules, and they will not satisfy New York's licensure requirements. If a program cannot document in-person clinical hours supervised by New York-recognized faculty, assume it will not clear you for NCLEX-PN eligibility or state licensure here, no matter how polished the marketing looks.
Nysed-Approved Practical Nursing Programs Within Commuting Distance
A NYSED-approved practical nursing program is one the New York State Education Department's Office of the Professions has registered, meaning the curriculum, faculty, and clinical hours meet the Department's accreditation standards. That registration is what makes you eligible to sit for the NCLEX-PN in New York and, later, to enter LPN to RN bridge programs. National accreditation from a nursing body is a nice signal of quality, but it does not substitute for state registration. If a school's practical nursing program is not on the NYSED list of registered programs, finishing it will not get you licensed here. Check the Office of the Professions inventory before you commit.
Lower and Northern Westchester
The closest cluster sits in Valhalla, roughly 20 minutes north of Yonkers on the Sprain or the Taconic.
- Westchester Community College (Valhalla): A public community college LPN program at 75 Grasslands Road, registered with NYSED. Community college pricing and a campus Yonkers residents already know.
- Southern Westchester BOCES (Valhalla): A registered BOCES adult-education practical nursing program at 65 Grasslands Road, on the same Grasslands campus corridor. BOCES programs are built for working adults rather than degree-seekers.
- Putnam/Northern Westchester BOCES (Yorktown Heights): Registered and located at 200 BOCES Drive.1 It is the longest haul from Yonkers, realistically 40 to 50 minutes by car, and it is a car-only commute.
Bronx and Manhattan
Heading south, Bronx Community College at 2155 University Avenue has an LPN listing but its program is currently suspended as of 2026; a downtown Manhattan practical nursing location operates at 52 Chambers Street. Confirm both directly against the NYSED registered-program inventory before applying, since program listings shift and secondary directories are not authoritative.
Getting There From Yonkers
- Rail: Metro-North's Hudson Line serves Yonkers and Glenwood stations; the Harlem Line runs closer to the Valhalla campuses, with Valhalla station a short walk to Grasslands Road.
- Subway: The 1 train terminates at Van Cortlandt Park-242nd Street and the 4 at Woodlawn, both reachable by Bee-Line bus from southern Yonkers and both useful for Bronx and Manhattan campuses.
- Bus: Bee-Line routes connect Getty Square and central Yonkers to White Plains and the Grasslands campus area.
- Parking: Suburban campuses generally have lots, though permits and fees are common; assume no practical parking for Manhattan sites and plan on transit.
Clinical rotations often start before dawn, so test your route at the actual hour you will travel it.
What LPN Programs Near Yonkers Actually Cost
Published tuition is the starting line, not the finish. The figures below combine in-state tuition and fees with federal net price data (what students actually paid after grants and scholarships, per U.S. Department of Education reporting for 2024), plus the share of students receiving Pell grants and typical graduate debt. Treat net price as an institution-wide average rather than a practical nursing price tag, since these programs are certificates within much larger colleges.
| School | Location | In-State Tuition & Fees (Published) | Average Net Price | Pell Recipients | Median Graduate Debt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CUNY Bronx Community College | Bronx, NY | $5,206 | $4,462 | 95% | $8,384 |
| CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College | New York, NY | $5,170 | $4,976 | 95% | $7,574 |
| CUNY Hostos Community College | Bronx, NY | $5,254 | $5,297 | 96% | $8,442 |
| CUNY Medgar Evers College | Brooklyn, NY | $7,352 | $5,718 | 91% | $10,988 |
| CUNY LaGuardia Community College | Long Island City, NY | $5,218 | $6,120 | 96% | $7,407 |
| Hudson County Community College | Jersey City, NJ | $5,384 (in-county) | $7,307 | 93% | $10,500 |
| Monroe College | Bronx, NY | $18,464 | $14,522 | 88% | $18,818 |
| Hunter Business School | Levittown, NY | N/A | $23,738 | 79% | $7,937 |
| Mildred Elley-New York Campus | New York, NY | $17,926 | $25,431 | 89% | $19,000 |
| Berkeley College-Woodland Park | Woodland Park, NJ | $29,800 | $27,100 | 83% | $23,251 |
| Capital Area BOCES Practical Nursing (NY reference program) | Albany area, NY | $14,700 total program cost (1,210 clock hours, three terms) | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Erie 2 BOCES Practical Nursing (NY reference program) | Western NY | $14,500 total ($7,500 per semester) | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Admission Requirements for Yonkers-Area Practical Nursing Programs
Practical nursing admissions in the Yonkers area follow a predictable pattern: prove you can handle college-level science, pass an entrance exam, then clear a stack of health and compliance paperwork before you ever set foot in a clinical site. The details differ by school, so read each program's current admissions page rather than assuming one checklist covers all of them.
- High school credential and academic standingWestchester Community College requires applicants to be high school graduates or hold a GED. WCC's nursing program also expects college-ready English and math, with placement testing unless you qualify for an exemption through transfer credit or test scores. A specific minimum entry GPA is not published for either WCC or Cochran School of Nursing, the C+ minimum WCC lists for nursing and anatomy and physiology coursework applies to progression through the program, not to getting in.
- Entrance examWCC uses the ATI TEAS, and the exam must be taken at WCC to count for WCC admission. Cochran School of Nursing accepts either the Kaplan admission test or the TEAS. Neither school publishes a qualifying cut score for the current cycle, so treat the exam as competitive and prepare accordingly. HESI A2 is not currently part of the process at either school.
- Prerequisite courseworkWCC expects biology and chemistry with labs completed within 10 years of applying to sit for the TEAS, high school biology or living environment plus chemistry labs with a minimum grade of 70, or college-level biology and chemistry labs of at least four credits with a C or better. Anatomy and physiology I/II and microbiology do not substitute for that science requirement. Cochran requires prerequisites to be complete before you apply.
- Health clearance and immunizationsWCC nursing students complete an annual medical exam and must document influenza, COVID-19, and MPOX immunization. Cochran requires mumps, rubella, and varicella documentation, a personal health questionnaire, lab reports, and a signed Meningococcal Meningitis Response Form before entrance. Budget time for this, lab turnaround and missing childhood records are the most common reasons students miss a start date.
- Background check and drug screeningWCC requires both a criminal background check and drug screening, standard for any program that places students in Westchester hospitals and nursing homes. Clinical partners set these terms, and a failed screen or disqualifying record can block placement even after you've been admitted. Disclose anything questionable to the program early rather than at clearance time.
- Applying and seat availabilityWCC's Practical Nursing Certificate is handled through the Office of Admissions alongside the college's other health programs. Neither WCC nor Cochran publishes firm 2026 application deadlines, formal waitlist procedures, or cohort seat counts, so contact admissions directly for the current cycle. Practical nursing seats in this market are limited by clinical capacity, apply as early in the cycle as your prerequisites and exam score allow.
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Clinical Rotations at Yonkers and Westchester Facilities
Classroom pharmacology you can study anywhere. LPN clinical rotations you cannot, and that difference shapes how you should pick a program near Yonkers. A school's clinical agreements determine where you spend the second half of your training, how far you drive, and in many cases who offers you your first job.
Hours and Settings
New York's practical nursing programs all include supervised clinical experience, though programs publish their hour totals differently and you should confirm the number with each school rather than assume. As a general benchmark, a one-year practical nursing program typically runs somewhere in the range of 600 to 900 clinical and lab hours combined. Expect the bulk of those hours in long-term care and medical-surgical units, with shorter rotations in maternal/child health, community health settings, or clinic settings. Skilled nursing gets the most time because that is where LPNs practice most heavily in New York.
Where Area Students Get Placed
Southern Westchester BOCES in Valhalla places its practical nursing students in area hospitals and healthcare facilities, and Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES runs a comparable program nearby. SUNY Westchester Community College describes its nursing clinicals as real-world placements at area hospitals. None of these programs publish a full partner list publicly, so ask directly during your information session. Regionally, the major employers in this corridor include Northwell Health, WMCHealth, Summit Health, Open Door Family Medical Center, and United Hebrew of New Rochelle, all of which participate in Westchester healthcare workforce pipelines.
Assigned, Not Chosen
You do not pick your site. The program assigns it based on available contracts, and a Yonkers resident may end up commuting to Valhalla, Mount Vernon, or the north Bronx. Shifts can start at 6:30 a.m. or run into the evening, and weekend rotations are common. Public transit does not reliably reach every facility, so a car makes life considerably easier.
Treat every rotation as an extended interview. Skilled nursing facilities routinely hire students they supervised, and nurse managers remember who showed up early and asked good questions.
From Program Completion to New York LPN License
New York does not license you the moment you finish class. The State Education Department's Office of the Professions issues the LPN license, and the sequence below is the order Yonkers graduates actually move through. Already licensed as an LPN or LVN in another state? You follow the endorsement pathway instead: the same online Form 1 and $143, plus license verification through Form 3 or Nursys for every state where you have held a license, not just the most recent one.
NCLEX-PN Pass Rates: What Good Looks Like in New York
A glossy brochure tells you what a program wants you to believe; the NCLEX-PN first-time pass rate tells you what its graduates actually did on exam day. Only one of those two is worth weighing when you compare practical nursing programs around Yonkers with Best LPN Programs in New York City.
The benchmarks to measure against
New York's statewide first-time NCLEX-PN pass rate sits at 83.4% across 2,353 candidates in 2025.1 Nationally, first-time U.S.-educated candidates passed at 86.6% that same year, per NCSBN's 2025 examination statistics.1 Those two numbers are your yardstick. A Yonkers-area program performing at or above the state figure is holding its own; one consistently beating the national average is doing something right in how it sequences what you learn in LPN school and prepares students for the exam.
School-level numbers and the small-cohort problem
NYSED publishes school-by-school practical nursing results, and a few area figures are visible: Borough of Manhattan Community College posted 87.50% in 2025, though that reflects seven passes out of eight test takers. Southern Westchester BOCES shows 100.0% for 2023 on a single candidate.
That is the trap with practical nursing cohorts in this region. Many PN classes graduate a handful of students, so one failure can drop a program from 100% to 75% on paper. Do not read a single year as a verdict in either direction. Look at three to five consecutive years and ask whether the pattern holds.
What to ask admissions, and what a low rate means
Call the program office and request first-time pass rates for each of the last five graduating classes, with the number of candidates attached to each percentage. Percentages without denominators are close to meaningless at this scale. Also ask how many students started each cohort versus how many sat for the exam, since attrition can inflate a pass rate.
A program running below 80% on first attempts for three or more years in a row is signaling a real problem: weak remediation, thin clinical placement quality, or admitting students the curriculum cannot carry. New York holds approved programs accountable for sustained poor performance, but you should not wait for the state to act. Ask the question before you sign an enrollment agreement.
LPN Pay and Job Outlook in Yonkers and Westchester County
LPN pay in Yonkers is set by the wider New York-Newark-Jersey City metro labor market, not by the city alone, and that market pays well by national standards. The most recent wage data for the metro area puts the bottom of the range around $45,670 a year and the top quarter of earners above $67,140, with the highest-paid LPNs clearing $77,870. That is a meaningfully wider spread than the year before, when the same percentiles ran lower across the board, a sign that wages have been climbing rather than holding flat.
Where the Pay Gap Comes From
Setting matters as much as experience. Skilled nursing and long-term care facilities, which employ a large share of Westchester LPNs, tend to sit in the middle of the range and often add shift differentials for nights, weekends, and holidays. Home health work can pay similarly but with more variable hours. Hospital and outpatient clinic roles, where LPNs are scarcer, often land at the higher end, and per-diem or agency shifts can outpace either when facilities are short-staffed. New York does not publish Westchester County figures separately from the metro, so treat county-level claims you see elsewhere with some caution.
Why Demand Is Holding Steady
Westchester's aging population is the biggest driver of ongoing hiring. Long-term care facilities operate under staffing minimums that require a steady pipeline of licensed staff, and turnover in nursing homes and home health agencies is chronic enough that openings recur even without net job growth. New York's occupational outlook data doesn't break out a hard number for new LPN positions statewide, but the LPN career outlook points toward continued, dependable hiring rather than a boom or a bust.
A Quick Reality Check
Most practical nursing programs serving Yonkers run in the mid five figures once tuition, fees, and supplies are added up. Against that, a full year of LPN work even at the lower end of the metro wage range can come close to covering total program cost, which is a reasonable payback window compared to many other credential paths.
How LPN Wages Spread Across the New York Metro
Top LPN Programs Serving Yonkers and Westchester Students
Below are the top practical nursing programs serving Yonkers students, ranked by completion data, accreditation status, and fit for Westchester commuters. No LPN program is currently located inside Yonkers city limits, so every option here means a commute into the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island, or northern New Jersey. Each entry notes what the school is known for and how far you would travel from the 10701 area.
How we ranked these
- Median debt of graduates
- Institution-wide graduation rates
- Accreditation status of programs
- Fit for Yonkers commuters
- Availability of practical nursing programs
- IPEDS institutional survey data from NCES covering graduation rates, retention rates and student-faculty ratios — nces.ed.gov
- College Scorecard graduate earnings — collegescorecard.ed.gov
- Internal program database
- Independent editorial research
Holy Name Medical Center-Sister Claire Tynan School of Nursing
A hospital-run school of nursing in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, that has been preparing practical nurses since the early 1970s. Its 60-week diploma blends theory, skills lab work, and clinical rotations in long-term and acute care, and students earn 17 college credits that transfer through Saint Peter's University. Licensure here runs through the New Jersey board, so students who plan to practice in New York should confirm how that fits their timeline. From Yonkers the campus is roughly 15 miles south, most easily reached by car over the George Washington Bridge or by NJ Transit bus into Englewood Cliffs.
- 60-week diploma program
- ACEN accredited
- 17 transferable credits through Saint Peter's University
- Clinicals in long-term care and acute care settings
- Approved by the New Jersey Board of Nursing
- QSEN competency-based curriculum
- Graduates eligible to seek LPN licensure
Practical Nursing, Certificate or Diploma — On-Campus
Hunter Business School
A private career school on Long Island whose practical nursing program moves students from classroom to clinical floor in about 13 months. The curriculum covers patient care, anatomy, medication administration, and communication, with evening study options built for adults who are still working. It is approved by the New York State Education Department and prepares graduates for the NCLEX-PN and New York licensure. Levittown sits roughly 35 miles east of Yonkers, so a car or a Long Island Rail Road trip to the Hicksville area plus local transit is the realistic plan.
- About 13 months from start to completion
- Classroom instruction paired with hands-on clinical practice
- Prepares graduates for the NCLEX-PN exam
- Approved by the New York State Education Department
- Evening study options for working adults
- Graduates work in nursing homes, hospitals, clinics, doctors' offices
Practical Nursing (LPN) Program, Certificate or Diploma — On-Campus
Western Suffolk BOCES
A regional BOCES program with unusually heavy clinical volume: more than 15 placement sites and 1,350 total program hours. Day students finish in 13 months and evening students in 18, and the school accepts military benefits and financial aid. It also reports a Northwell employee partnership, a full ATI testing partnership, and transfer pathways into area RN programs. Northport is about 45 miles east of Yonkers, best managed by car or by the Long Island Rail Road's Port Jefferson branch.
- 1,350 total program hours
- Day session finishes in 13 months; evening option takes 18 months
- More than 15 clinical placement sites
- TEAS entrance exam required
- Military benefits and financial aid accepted
- Full ATI partnership included
- Northwell employee program partner
- Transfer pathways into area RN programs
Practical Nursing, Certificate or Diploma — On-Campus
AMG School of Nursing
AMG runs a two-year, 53-credit LPN program in Brooklyn that pairs liberal arts and science coursework with nursing classes in pharmacology, medical-surgical care, maternity, pediatrics, mental health, and geriatrics, finished by a capstone. Credits are designed to transfer, and graduates can continue into AMG's RN program. Instruction is aimed at New York City healthcare employers, which suits Yonkers residents who expect to work in the five boroughs. Brooklyn is roughly 20 miles south, reached by Metro-North into Grand Central and then the subway, or by car.
- Two-year program, 53 total credit hours
- Capstone course required
- Coursework in pharmacology, medical-surgical, maternity, pediatrics, mental health, geriatrics
- Credits transfer to other colleges
- Graduates may continue into AMG's RN program
- Brooklyn campus near NYC hospital employers
LPN Program, Certificate or Diploma — On-Campus
Veeb Nassau County School of Practical Nursing
VEEB has been training practical nurses for more than 60 years and runs an accelerated 11-month program that mixes classroom instruction with supervised clinical experience across hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and home care. The school is licensed by the New York State Department of Education, holds New York State Board of Regents accreditation, and carries articulation agreements that ease the move into RN study. Financial aid is available for eligible students. Hicksville is roughly 30 miles east of Yonkers, and the Long Island Rail Road's Hicksville station is a major Main Line hub for that commute.
- Accelerated 11-month program
- Licensed by the New York State Department of Education
- New York State Board of Regents accreditation
- Articulation agreements support transfer into RN programs
- Financial aid available for eligible students
- More than 60 years training healthcare professionals
Practical Nursing Program, Certificate or Diploma — On-Campus
Monroe College
Monroe College's Bronx campus is the closest school on this list to Yonkers, which makes it the most commute-friendly option for a Westchester student. Its progressive nursing option moves students from a practical nursing certificate to an associate degree and then a BS in Nursing across nine full-time semesters, with clinical experiences in New York, Pennsylvania, and Haiti. Practicing LPNs may enter directly at the associate level. Admission is holistic with a limited number of seats, and a background check and physical exam are required.
- Progressive option: certificate, then associate degree, then BS in Nursing
- Nine semesters across three full-time academic years
- Clinical experiences in New York, Pennsylvania, and Haiti
- LPNs may enter directly at the associate level
- Holistic admission review with limited seats
- Background check and physical exam required
- Fall start with a June application deadline
Practical Nursing, Certificate or Diploma — On-Campus
Best Care College
Best Care College in East Orange, New Jersey, runs a 52-week licensed practical nursing program with about 1,500 hours of academic and clinical coursework on a trimester calendar. Class sizes cap at 40 students and clinical groups run at roughly 1:10, and admission requires a high school diploma or GED, a TABE assessment, and a criminal background check. Licensure follows the New Jersey pathway, so New York-bound students should plan for that. East Orange is roughly 30 miles southwest of Yonkers, usually reached by car over the George Washington Bridge and Interstate 280 or by NJ Transit from Manhattan.
- 52-week program with 1,500 total hours
- Trimester academic calendar
- Maximum class size of 40 students
- Admission requires a TABE assessment and background check
- Small clinical groups with a 1:10 instructor ratio
- School reports an 85% licensure pass rate
- Financial aid options available
Licensed Practical Nursing Program, Certificate or Diploma — On-Campus
CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College
BMCC is a CUNY campus offering a 46-credit practical nursing certificate across five semesters, with clinical experience starting in the first term. Coursework covers parent-child nursing, medical-surgical nursing, mental health, gerontology and rehabilitation, pharmacology, and lab skills, and admission requires prerequisite courses plus the HESI A2. As a CUNY school, it places Yonkers residents in the out-of-city tuition category rather than the New York City rate. The campus is in lower Manhattan, about 18 miles south, reached by Metro-North to Grand Central and then the subway.
- 46-credit certificate across five semesters
- Clinical experience begins in the first semester
- HESI A2 entrance exam and prerequisites required
- Coursework in parent-child, medical-surgical, and mental health nursing
- Gerontology and rehabilitation course included
- Transition to Practice course in the final term
- CUNY campus; out-of-city tuition applies to Yonkers residents
Practical Nursing Certificate — On-Campus
CUNY LaGuardia Community College
LaGuardia's practical nursing certificate compresses training into 10 months and 48 credits covering health teaching, counseling, and restorative care for chronic and acute settings. The program is approved by the New York State Education Department and admits a single fall cohort each year, which keeps the group sequenced and small. Yonkers residents fall into CUNY's out-of-city tuition category. Long Island City is about 17 miles south, typically a Metro-North ride to Grand Central followed by the 7 train to Court Square.
- 10-month, 48-credit certificate
- One fall start each year
- Approved by the New York State Education Department
- Cohort-based format for adult learners
- Coursework in health teaching and restorative care
- Prepares graduates for the NCLEX-PN
- CUNY tuition categories apply to Yonkers residents as out-of-city students
Practical Nursing Certificate — On-Campus
Hudson County Community College
Hudson County Community College runs a 15-month practical nursing certificate built on foundations of nursing, maternal child health, and complex care, capped by a practical capstone. The program is approved by the New Jersey Board of Nursing, and graduates can apply to HCCC's RN program afterward. Admission requires prerequisite coursework and the TEAS entrance exam. Jersey City is roughly 25 miles south of Yonkers, reachable by car across the George Washington Bridge or by NJ Transit and PATH through Manhattan.
- 15-month certificate program
- Capstone required in the final term
- TEAS entrance exam required
- Prerequisite coursework required for admission
- Approved by the New Jersey Board of Nursing
- Graduates may apply to HCCC's RN program
- School reports an 82% licensure pass rate and 90% job placement
Practical Nursing Certificate — On-Campus
LPN-To-RN Bridge Pathways From Yonkers Programs
Once you're licensed and working, two realistic ladders lead upward: an LPN to ADN advanced placement track at a community college, or a longer route that pairs an associate bridge with a later RN-to-BSN completion. No local program currently packages LPN licensure straight into a BSN, so plan on stacking credentials rather than finding a single shortcut.
Where LPNs Get Advanced Standing
Westchester Community College runs the most structured option. Its Nursing A.A.S. program admits licensed LPNs through a prior learning assessment: you take a written exam and a skills performance test, and scoring at least 75% on both earns roughly 8 to 9 credits and placement directly into the second-semester nursing sequence (ADN 131) rather than starting at square one. Fall short and you begin at ADN 102 and ADN 120 without the credit, so brushing up on fundamentals before testing matters.
Monroe College, with campuses in the Bronx and New Rochelle, offers a dedicated LPN to RN bridge that's built for working nurses: three full-time semesters on campus rather than a full two-year associate degree. Cochran School of Nursing in Yonkers is a private two-year ASN program with articulation agreements to schools like Pace University and Chamberlain for later BSN work, but it does not currently advertise a formal LPN advanced-placement track, so anyone considering it should confirm directly with admissions before assuming credit for licensure.
Why the Jump Is Worth Planning For
Moving from LPN to RN in New York typically comes with a meaningful pay increase across the New York metro, plus broader clinical authority, charge-nurse eligibility, and more paths into specialty units. That gap is usually the deciding factor for LPNs weighing the time investment.
Sequencing Tip
While still working as an LPN, knock out general education prerequisites (anatomy, physiology, psychology, English composition) at a community college on your own schedule. Walking into a bridge program with those already done can shrink an 18-month track closer to 12.
