Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Postdoctoral Certificate Admissions

Program Prerequisites 

You must be a doctorally prepared (DNP or PhD) advanced practice nurse to apply. You also need at least six months of acute care experience.  

We require that you complete the equivalent of our graduate core courses as part of your previous program.

If these courses or their equivalent have not been completed, you may take them as part of your program of study.  

Review of these courses for equivalence and transfer credit will be completed upon admission into the program. 

In addition, you need two years of acute-care full-time experience before starting clinical and management course rotations in your last year. 

Admission Guidelines

We evaluate applicants based on the following: 

• 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. 
• Substantive answers to personal essay questions (included in the Program Materials section of NursingCAS).
• Three professional letters of recommendation.  
  • One letter must be from current manager (the person who is responsible for your evaluation).  
  • Two letters must be from individuals in leadership positions who can speak to your clinical abilities.  
  • One academic faculty member may be used if the coursework has been completed within the past two years.  
  • 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. 
• TOEFL scores if required. 
• Personal interviews with faculty. 
• A Minimum of six months of recent adult critical care or adult acute care nursing experience by the application deadline. 

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

How to Apply to the Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Postdoctoral Certificate 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.