Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) are institutions developed to educate minority students. Several HBCUs expanded and opened nursing programs to educate more minority nurses in the nursing profession. The challenge of HBCUs is to consistently meet the Board of Nursing requirements; this warranted further exploration of reasons HBCU nursing schools were not meeting the requirements. Schools of nursing must meet the national success pass rate or the schools will continue to be monitored or eventually closed. This qualitative phenomenological study focused on the perceptions of 25 minority 2009 nursing graduates of a South-Atlantic Region nursing program. An interview was conducted, and the resulting data was entered into a spread sheet and later NVivo software for analysis. The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore the perceptions of the 2009 nursing graduates at a South Atlantic Region HBCU. The intent was to present useful, valuable, up-to-date information that will assist nursing students and faculty to improve first attempt success on the NCLEX-RN. The graduate's perceptions indicated that repeated practicing of NCLEX-RN questions, effective coaching sessions, effective and knowledgeable faculty, decreasing work hours, more clinical hours, organized, well structured courses, and strategies to improve testing, influenced passing the NCLEX-RN on the first attempt. After the interviews, the graduates' perceptions were interpreted and several themes emerged. The themes were a) coaching, b) examinations, c) courses, d) faculty, and e) working. [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://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]