Practical nurses can provide quality, cost-effective care in an ever-changing health care setting which is faced with a shortage of nurses. A community college system in the southeastern area of the United States began using the Test of Essential Academic Skills (TEAS) V as part of admission criteria for nursing programs. While Assessment Technologies Institute (ATI) markets the (TEAS) V as being predictive of first semester success, little if any research on the ability of the test to predict completion of nursing programs exists. The purpose of this study was to determine if the TEAS examination successfully identified potential nursing students capable of completing nursing programs based on correlational analysis that established the relationship between the predictor variables, TEAS V score and criterion variables, student completion of a practical nursing program and passing the NCLEX-PN. The convenience sample was taken from archived records of 270 nursing students enrolled in a practical nursing program from fall of 2011 until spring of 2014. Both inferential and descriptive statistics were used to identify if a relationship existed among the variables and success. Binary logistic regression analysis suggest that a relationship does exist between TEAS V scores X[superscript 2] (2, N = 258) = 9.129, p = 0.010, ethnicity X[superscript 2] (3, N = 258) = 19.435, p = 0.000, and success with program completion and NCLEX-PN success. Practical nurse educators could use the data to identify students who would be more likely to complete the program, thereby producing more nurses to help fill the nursing shortage which is predicted to continue into 2020. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]