CUW clinical deadlines, counted back from your first clinical day

What CUW publishes, and where the working dates come from

The 2026-27 catalog assigns the roles: you find and secure the preceptor, graduate faculty judge the preceptor and site for appropriateness, and the Graduate Clinical Coordinator is there to assist. What it leaves out is timing. Neither the catalog nor any current program page names a paperwork deadline or a contract lead time.

The dates students plan around come from older CUW documents. CUW's undated proposal form, archived in 2023, wants a separate copy for every preceptor and site in every semester, in hand at least 4 weeks before the clinical start, and cautions that a contract can need as long as 12 weeks. The 2014-15 NP clinical handbook puts a brand-new contract at 8 to 12 weeks and pushes any rotation with late paperwork into the next semester.

Treat those figures as the floor of your plan, and ask your course faculty for this term's actual dates. The proposal form guide covers what the form asks for.

2027 term dates with the archived cutoffs applied

Here are CUW's published start dates for 2027 sessions with the two archived lead times counted back. They assume your clinical begins on the first day of the session; if your preceptor starts you later, the dates slide with it. Fall 2026 is already under way, so the table begins with spring.

Two details deserve attention. The spring 4-week cutoff lands on December 14, the first day of CUW's Christmas break (December 14 to January 10), so aim to be done before the break begins. Also, the MSN progression plans from February 2024 list each primary care clinical as 8 weeks long, but the catalog's sample plan leaves the clinicals untagged, as if they ran all 16 weeks. Ask which session your clinical sits in, because a Session II start pushes every cutoff roughly two months later.

Admission dates and term rules that touch clinicals

Admission timing sets your runway. MSN and CAGE applicants choose between a fall start (apply by July 1) and a spring start (apply by November 1). The doctoral programs and the PMHNP certificate start in fall, and each lists July 1, as a deadline or, for the Post-MSN DNP, a priority date. In the catalog's sample MSN plan, the three primary care clinicals fall in semesters 5, 7 and 8, so an FNP or AGPCNP student has real time to line up sites before the first one.

Inside the clinical sequence, two catalog rules shape the calendar. The clinicals chain together (NURS 7152 lists NURS 7151 as its prerequisite, for example), and a student who registered early but did not pass the prerequisite loses the seat, so one lost semester ripples through the rest. Incomplete work also runs on a short clock: three weeks past the end of the term, six at most in some cases, before the grade can turn to an F. Add and withdraw dates are on the semester calendar.

Why CUW students choose us to run the calendar

We start from your course start date and work backward, the same way this page does, then add the dates that belong to your particular site: its contract status, any health system window and its onboarding steps. The first question we answer is whether the site already has a CUW contract, because that single fact decides whether you have months or weeks. When a preceptor's start date moves, we rework the cutoffs with you right away.

Because we plan all three clinicals together, the search for your next site begins while you are still logging hours at the current one, and every proposal reaches CUW's graduate faculty complete and ahead of the cutoff. Tell us your start term and we will map your dates.