The purpose of this study is to develop a model showing the relationship of academic, socioeconomic, and motivational variables to students' attrition in a community college nursing program, in order to determine the students who pass, or not pass, first semester, generic, and associate degree nursing courses. The theoretical framework used in the study included the following: (1) Tinto's (1975) Student Integration Model; (2) Bean's student Attrition Model; (3) Bean and Metzner Nontraditional Undergraduate; and (4) Stahl and Pavel's Community College Retention Model. The study ends with three conclusions that can be beneficial to faculty and administrators when evaluating attrition and retention of first semester associate degree nursing students. They are as follows: (1) students assessed at college language level had lower attrition rates than students with below college language level; (2) students with pre-semester grade point average of 2.5 and above had lower attrition that students with a grade point average between 2.49-2.00; and (3) the assumption that the three nonacademic variables would affect first semester final course outcomes was not supported and hours planned to work weekly, financial difficulty attending college and achievement tendency were not significant predictor variables. (Contains 15 tables.) (MZ)