If you're still in class and already watching those windows, you're on time. Waiting until after boards is the usual miss. You can still fix it this semester.
Most hospitals run the same sequence: apply, interview, offer, pass boards, start. Memorial Hermann publishes it in the open. May grads apply in February and start in July. Some windows last a week. UCLA Health opened its Spring 2027 cohort for seven days, six months ahead.
Who is running programs right now
1,020 active postings welcome new grads. 244 of those name a residency, a fellowship, or another structured cohort. A handful of systems run most of them.
Systems running named programs
Christus has 49. VHA 14. Piedmont and Hackensack Meridian 13 each. Huntsville 11, Loyola 8, Mayo 7. You don't need to watch the whole internet. You need a short list.
The welcomes aren't only med surg. ER has 44. Psych has 43. ICU has 31. OR has 25. The unit school warned you away from may be hiring your cohort. If you're choosing between units, the pay spread inside a specialty is usually bigger than the gap between specialties.
Where the welcomes concentrate
Texas has 132 welcoming postings. Florida and New York sit at 53 each. That isn't the same as better pay. Across 21 priced Texas welcomes, the median posted floor is $68,016. The national welcoming median is $78,368. Count both before you move. Pay by state is here.
Residency and direct hire are both paths. A named program usually means a curriculum and a cohort. It can also mean a two-year commitment and a repayment clause. Residencies aren't a scam. Contracts can be. Read the commitment line before you sign.
What to do this semester
Work backward from a start date. A summer cohort was taking applications in winter. A February start is reading applications in the fall.
Pick five to ten systems
whose programs fit the units you want. New Grad Radar watches the new-grad lane.
Write down each window.
Application dates, interview month, start date. They barely move year to year.
Read the requirements section twice.
What a posting is telling you before you take yourself out.
Build the resume from clinicals.
Unit, patient population, skills signed off.
Ask instructors for references now.
Everyone asks the week they graduate.
Next: the waiting game is still a job hunt. Nurses one step ahead are in The job hunt.
Notes
- Counts of new-grad-welcoming postings, named structured programs, unit and state concentration, and Texas floor medians: Nursing Mastery job corpus, read 14 August 2026. Active nursing postings, n=14,094.
- A posting counts as welcoming only when its own text says so or names a structured new-grad program. Pay figures are advertised floors in a $40,000–$300,000 annual band. Texas n=21 is small and stated so you can weigh it.
- Memorial Hermann cycle table and UCLA Health window length are the hospitals' own published calendars, not corpus figures.
- Live openings for new grads appear in the open-roles module below, drawn from the same corpus.
