Neonatal Clinical Nurse Specialist DNP Admissions

Program Prerequisites

No prerequisite courses are required to apply.

Admission Guidelines

We evaluate all applicants 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 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.  
  • 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. 
• At least six months of recent neonatal intensive care unit experience (Level 3 or higher) is required by the application deadline. 

GRE scores are not required.

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

Enrollment Restrictions for Certain State Residents

Online courses and programs are restricted in certain states.

We are unable to offer enrollment into our online programs to residents of the following states:

• Louisiana
• Tennessee

We are unable to offer enrollment into our advanced practice specialty online programs to residents of New York.

We are also unable to offer enrollment to residents of Canada.  

If you do not reside in Illinois, contact your state's higher education regulation authority for more details.

How to Apply to the Neonatal Clinical Nurse Specialist 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. 
• 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.