Acute Care Pediatric Nurse Practitioner DNP Admissions

Program Prerequisites

For MSN to DNP for APRN applicants:

The equivalent of the following courses must be completed prior to admission or added to the plan of study:

• Advanced Health Assessment Across the Lifespan/Diagnostics for the APRN 
• Advanced Physiology and Advanced Pathophysiology 
• Advanced Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapeutics 
• Advanced Primary Care of the Child Didactic 
• Biostatistics/Epidemiology  
• Transition to the APRN Role 
• Research

Contact the program director for a detailed program of study.

Admission Guidelines

We evaluate applicants based on the following: 

• A minimum of a Bachelor of Science in nursing from an accredited institution. 
• GPAs of 3.0 or higher (on a 4.0 scale). 
  • 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 from individuals in leadership positions who can speak to your clinical abilities.
  • A letter from your current manager, who is responsible for your evaluation, is strongly preferred. 
  • Choose individuals in leadership positions who know you well and can evaluate your abilities, critical thinking, and potential for successfully completing graduate school. 
  • One academic faculty member may be used if the coursework has been completed within the past two years.
• 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. 
• TOEFL scores if required. 
• Personal interviews with faculty. 
• A minimum of six months of recent acute care pediatric nursing experience by 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 DNP 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. 
• 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.