MSN Nursing Leadership: Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) for RNs Admissions

Program Prerequisites

You must hold a minimum of a bachelor’s degree in nursing from an accredited institution and registered nurse (RN) licensure in the United States. 

Recent graduates from a BSN program must submit a U.S. RN license.

Clinical experience is not required for this program. 

View the curriculum

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.

GRE scores are not required.

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

How to Apply to the MSN Nursing Leadership: Clinical Nurse Leader for RNs 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.