Neonatal Nurse Practitioner

Hello all,

I am new to all nurses and found it to be very helpful! I am a NICU RN with three years experience and I am currently applying to the NNP programs offered at Duke University and University of Pennsylvania. I know the programs are competitive... Duke mentioned only accepting 8 people per semester at their information session this year. I was hoping for any advice on the application process.... for those who have interviewed or gotten accepted what did it seem like they were mostly looking at? thanks so much! :)

I applied to 3 programs and was accepted to all - didn't seem that it was too competitive. Have you checked out University of Cincinnati? I think that's a pretty good one as well. Right now I'm going to Creighton in Omaha. Edited to add - I had 15 years of experience and a 3.6 GPA in undergrad.

I was under the impression that NNP school admission was not as competetive becuase of lower numbers of applicants?

im not sure.... I hear different things! Some schools I have talked to say that because finding clinical sites is so difficult they can only accept a small fraction of the applicants...

Are you doing an out of state program? My general advice (something I wish I knew) was that not all states will accept clinical sites if it's an out of state school. I was accepted into one program and didn't find out until 4 months later that whoops - Washington state won't accept that school. This may not pertain to you but I'm just throwing it out there.

Hmm that's a good thing to

know... I Live in the DC area....and im applying to Duke at the moment. Nothing on their site mentioned not accepting out of state Clinicals, but I may need to ask about that.. Thanks!

[NICUmiiki, BSN, RN]

Ask your Board of Nursing. Mine is very strict and specifies which school and what programs you can enroll in. A school may have FNP, NNP, ACNP, and so on but if the board of nursing only approves the FNP, then you can't enroll in the others.