We cannot interview every applicant, therefore the quality of this statement is a crucial to your portfolio as it offers insight into your professional goals and expectations and provides the Admissions Committee a first-hand example of your writing skills, your ability to present ideas in a clear, logical and coherent manner, and your personal perspective on your professional contributions, strengths as a student, current skills and abilities, and prior experiences. Please take your time developing it and proofread carefully!
PART 1: Professional Goals and Background Essay (3 pages maximum, double-spaced, 12 font, APA format):
Describe your professional career, including populations served, roles held and settings in which you practiced.
State your short and long-term professional goals.
BSN–DNP only: Explain why you have chosen a specific advanced practice area/population foci for the DNP.
Discuss relevant areas of your background and how each prepared you for doctoral study, such as prior coursework, earned degrees, continuing education, practice history, and professional activities. It is important to include information on:
Scholarship activities (Publications, Presentations)
Research experience (specify)
Service activities (local community, global and/or professional)
Honors and awards
Language fluency other than English
Leadership activities
Military service
Describe how obtaining the DNP degree from this School of Nursing will help you attain your goals.
Identify clinical and academic strengths and areas of improvement that may impact your doctoral studies.
Address any aspect of the program’s admission criteria for which you do not meet minimum requirements and provide an explanation for your situation (e.g., an explanation is needed if GPA < minimum).
Share any other information you feel is pertinent to your application that you wish the Admissions Committee to know (e.g. overcoming personal and/or professional adversity, etc.).
PART 2: Scholarly Interest (4 pages, double-spaced, references must be in APA format):
Identify an important practice-based problem that you would like to examine during your DNP studies. Provide a clear and comprehensive evidence-based review of the literature supporting why this problem requires further exploration. Include details about prior work on the topic (if any), the importance of the problem in healthcare delivery, and how you would study this problem during the DNP program. You must provide sufficient references from scholarly sources to support your argument.
MSN to DNP applicants are to identify a member of the School of Nursing faculty who would be a good match for their scholarly interests. You may find a list of doctoral faculty with their research interests here.
