Acute Care Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Postgraduate Certificate Admissions

Program Prerequisites

The program is available to advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) with master’s or doctoral degrees. Acute care pediatric experience is required. 

You must have at least two years of full-time pediatric experience before starting the clinical portion of your program.  

In addition, you must have taken the equivalent of RUSH’S graduate core courses as part of your previous graduate program. You also need to take specified additional courses listed for each certificate program.  

If the following courses or their equivalent have not been completed prior to admission, they may be taken as part of the program of study.  

Area of focus: acute care pediatric nurse practitioner

• Advanced pathophysiology 
• Advanced pharmacology/applied pharmacology 
• Advanced physiology 
• Advanced health assessment/diagnostics 
• Palliative care Training: ELNEC pediatric, palliative care certification, or palliative care coursework to be completed prior to 557A 
• Advanced primary care of the child (didactic) 
• Transition to the APRN role

Admission Guidelines

We evaluate all applicants on the following:

• A graduate degree in nursing that qualifies the applicant to sit for APRN certification. 
• GPAs of 3.0 or higher (on a 4.0 scale). RUSH receives GPA calculations from NursingCAS after it has received all of your official transcripts. 
  • Cumulative GPA — all college-level coursework. 
  • Prelicensure nursing GPA — only nursing courses before licensure. 
• Substantive answers to personal essay questions (included in the Program Materials section of NursingCAS).
• Three professional letters of recommendation.  
  • One letter must come from current manager (the person who is responsible for your evaluation).  
  • Two letters must come from individuals in leadership positions who can speak to your clinical abilities.  
  • Choose recommenders who know you well and can evaluate your abilities, critical thinking and potential for successfully completing graduate school. 
  • Recommendations from friends, relatives or co-workers will not be accepted. Your application will be delayed or denied.  
• Resume or CV that includes the following information: 
  • Community service. 
  • Educational, leadership and professional organization activities. 
  • Scholarly activities, including publications, presentations, research, honors and awards. 
  • Work experience. 
• Registered nurse (RN) licensure in the United States. 
• Personal interviews with faculty. 
• A minimum of two years of recent acute care pediatric nursing experience before the application deadline. 

If you fail to submit accurate or all required information, we will not consider you application for admission. 

Enrollment restrictions for certain state residents

Contact the program director to learn if the program is available in your state and locale.

How to Apply to the Acute Care Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (AC PNP) Postgraduate Certificate (PGC) Program

Applications are submitted through NursingCAS, the centralized application service for nursing.

NursingCAS collects and processes your application documents and verifies transcripts. We receive the information from NursingCAS and use it to make our admission decision.

How to apply:

• Submit a completed application to NursingCAS. 
  • You will be asked to enter the specific program. 
  • You may apply to only one RUSH program and one admission term. 
• Pay the non-refundable $80 fee to NursingCAS. 
• Complete the brief RUSH supplemental application, which will be sent to you after submitting your application to NursingCAS. The supplemental application fee is $40.

We recommend that you complete your application and have all official transcripts sent to Nursing CAS well before the application deadline. It can take several weeks for NursingCAS to verify and process your transcripts. 

We will not consider your application if it is inaccurate or incomplete.