ADN GPA vs BSN GPA for CRNA School: Who Counts What

Updated September 2026

On the ADN GPA vs BSN GPA CRNA school question, the honest answer is: it depends who is doing the math. In our database of 154 accredited programs, 104 calculate a cumulative GPA across all of your undergraduate coursework, so your ADN grades count. 27 use a last-60-credits GPA, where an older ADN usually drops out entirely.

Does my ADN GPA count for CRNA school if I already have a BSN?

So let's get the scary part out of the way first. Yes, at most programs it counts. They're going to ask for every transcript from every school, every college. The community college where you did the ADN, the four year school where you finished the BSN, that one semester of a business degree you tried at 19 and would like to forget about. All of it.

And I'm not saying every single program adds it all up the same way. They don't. But the default across our 154 programs is cumulative, which means the 2.8 and the 3.87 go into one pot and come out as one number somewhere in the middle. That's the math, and it isn't personal.

But here's what people get wrong. They assume the BSN is a fresh start because it felt like one. It felt like a different school, different life, different you. But the application does not care about the feeling. It cares about the paper, and the paper doesn't forget.

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Types of GPA Calculation

How programs actually calculate cumulative, last-60, nursing and science GPA, and which one your target schools use.

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How many CRNA programs actually look at all my undergrad grades?

So let me count this out for you, because the numbers are the whole point of this post.

Number one, 104 cumulative schools. That's the big group, and if you do nothing else with this post, go look at your list and assume most of it is in that bucket until you confirm otherwise.

Number two, 27 last-60 schools. Small group. Loud impact, though. I'll come back to those in a second because they're the whole strategy for a lot of you.

Number three, and this one trips people up, 62 of our programs run through NursingCAS. That's a separate thing from how they calculate. NursingCAS pulls every transcript from every college you ever attended. The school still decides what to do with it, but they've got it all sitting there. So the ADN is not hidden from anyone at those 62, even if they end up using last-60.

I'm not saying those buckets never move. Programs update requirements, and a school that was cumulative two cycles ago might not be now. That's exactly why you check the program's own page before you build a plan around any of this.

What happens to a 2.8 ADN and a 3.87 BSN at a cumulative school?

Okay. Real scenario, because this is literally a question we got in our chatbot: 2.8 ADN, 3.87 BSN, ten years in a MICU. What are the chances?

So at a cumulative school, the committee sees a blended number and a very obvious upward trend. And the trend is the thing. A 2.8 from ten years ago followed by a 3.87 and a decade of ICU is a completely different story than a 2.8 last spring. Committees are made of humans who've also been 20 years old and bad at chemistry.

But I want you to be realistic too. Some cumulative schools have a hard floor, like a 3.0 cumulative, and a blended number that lands under the floor gets screened out before a human reads the trend. That's not a judgment on you. That's a filter, and filters are dumb by design. I'm not saying the committee wouldn't have liked your story. They just never got to read it. Email the program and find out where their floor actually sits.

But the good news is the fix is boring and it works. Go down the list, see what you got a B minus or below in, and retake those at a higher level. Focus the effort on science, not on your overall. Chemistry, anatomy, physiology, statistics, the ones they'll pull out and calculate separately anyway.

Which CRNA programs ignore an old ADN GPA?

The last-60 schools. All 27 of them in our database, and they're the single most underused strategy I see.

These schools are great for you to apply to if you are one of those people who did not do so good your first year or two of college. If your ADN finished more than 60 credits ago and your BSN plus any recent retakes fill that window, a last-60 calculation can quietly hand you a 3.8 instead of a 3.3. Same transcripts. Different math.

Now, a caveat, because I don't want you building a whole list out of 27 schools and calling it a day. Last-60 is not a loophole and it doesn't erase the ADN from the application. They still have the transcript. They can still read it. It just doesn't land in the number they screen on.

And I'd say the same thing I'd say about any narrow filter. Don't apply to a program only because the math flatters you. You've still got to want to go there, and you've still got to be able to move there or commute there for three years. That part doesn't change.

How do I list an ADN and a BSN on my CRNA application?

Reverse chronological. Most recent first, then work backward.

So on your resume that's: your recent retakes or any post-bacc coursework at the top, then the BSN, then the ADN. Not because you're hiding the ADN. You're not hiding anything, they have the transcripts. It's because the first thing a reviewer's eye lands on should be the most recent and strongest version of you, and the 2.8 should be the last thing they read, not the first.

And a few messy things people forget:

• Every college. Not just the nursing ones. That one summer class you took at a community college while you were home counts as a school you attended.
• Transcripts take time. Weeks sometimes, especially from a school that's since merged or changed systems.
• If a school closed or changed names, start early and call. Seriously, call.
• Don't self-calculate and submit your own GPA as fact. Report what your transcripts say and let them do their thing.

And if you're wondering whether the ADN route disqualifies you at all, it doesn't, but that's a whole separate conversation. We covered the eligibility side over here: can you become a CRNA with an ADN.

How should I build a school list around this?

Okay. This is the part that actually changes your outcome.

So take your list. Split it in three. The cumulative schools where your blended number has to clear their floor. The last-60 schools where your recent work does the talking. And the ones you can't figure out from the website, which is more of them than you'd expect. Way more.

For that third pile, email them and ask. One sentence: do you calculate cumulative undergraduate GPA or last 60 credits, and do you recalculate retakes or average them? And the retake question matters as much as the first one, because a school that averages a retaken C with a new A gives you a very different number than a school that replaces it.

People apply to nine cumulative schools with a blended 2.95 and then wonders why they went nine for nine on rejections. That's not a competitiveness problem. That's a list-building problem, and it's fixable in an afternoon.

If the overall number is the thing keeping you up, we went deep on that here: applying to CRNA school with a low GPA. And if you want the mechanics of each GPA type, our breakdown of GPA types and NursingCAS walks through all of them.

Our Final Thoughts

Your ADN isn't a stain. It's a semester of a 21 year old's life sitting in a file, and a decade of ICU has already answered the question it raised. And the work now is administrative, not emotional. Find out who counts it, retake the sciences that hurt, and put your list together on purpose instead of vibes. That's the whole job.