As the current nursing practice increases concerns about nursing students' academic performance, there had been high rates of failure among diploma nursing students in their final examinations in Tanzania. The purpose of this study was to do comparative analysis of academic performance of diploma nursing students of public, private and faith based schools. An ex-post facto research design was used in which 116 students were randomly selected from a target population of 1154 pre-service diploma nursing students, who sat for their final examination in July, 2013. A checklist form was used as research instrument and data gathered were analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences 21 version (SPSS) computer software. The findings of this study revealed that public nursing schools admit pre-service students with higher entry qualifications as compared to those admitted in private and faith based …