Family Nurse Practitioner DNP Admissions

Program Prerequisites

If entering with a master’s degree, the equivalent of the following courses must be completed prior to admission or added to your plan of study:

• Research
• Biostatistics/epidemiology

These courses are included in a BSN to DNP plan of study.

Admission Guidelines

Applications are evaluated 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). Rush receives GPA calculations from NursingCAS only after it receives 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 supervisor/manager (a person responsible for your performance evaluation).
  • Two letters must be from people in leadership positions who can speak to your clinical abilities.
  • One faculty member may be used if coursework was completed within the past two years.
  • Choose people who can evaluate your current or prospective clinical and leadership abilities, critical thinking and potential for program completion.
  • Recommendations from friends, relatives or co-workers are not 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. Recent graduates from a BSN or MSN program must submit a U.S. RN license upon matriculation.
• GRE scores are not required.
• TOEFL scores, if required.
• Personal interviews with faculty.

Preference is given to applicants with RN experience in either an inpatient or outpatient setting. There is not a requirement for a specific length of experience, yet it will be considered in the holistic admission.

If you fail to submit accurate or all required information, we will remove your application from consideration for admission.

How to Apply to the Family 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.