The purpose of this descriptive quantitative study was to obtain data about the admission criteria and its rank importance to graduate nursing programs used by all accredited nursing schools. Accredited schools of nursing were either National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission (NLNAC) or Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) accredited, or both. A three-page questionnaire designed by the researcher was mailed to the deans or their designees of these 339 accredited programs. There were a total of202 respondents for a response rate of 59.6% to the questionnaire. Data was collected and analyzed using the SPSS V -11 ® program. The findings of this study were that the following six admission criteria were critical for selection of graduate nurse applicants: grade point average (GPA); Graduate Record Examination (GRE); essay; interview; work history; and references. In addition, the top three in rank of importance with these criteria were GPA, references, and work history. The exception was nurse educator programs which ranked essay versus work history as the third most important criteria to admission. The conclusion of this study is that grades remain the most important criteria in the admission process. Further implications of this study include the potential to develop correlational studies based upon various graduate nurse programs and specific admission criteria
