Best DNP Programs

Dallas-Fort Worth metro

Best DNP Programs In Dallas-Fort Worth 2026

Five accredited institutions across the metroplex, where the second-cheapest option is also the one producing the most graduates by a wide margin.
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Key Takeaways

  1. 1

    One metro, two price worlds. Published in-state rates here run from $5,712 to $61,650, a spread of about 11 times inside one commuting area. Which end applies to you turns on residency and control, not on which campus you can reach.

  2. 2

    2 public, 3 private, and the cheap end is public. The lowest published in-state rate belongs to a public institution, so residency is the lever here. That figure is one school's published year, not a typical cost, and it excludes fees and clinical expenses.

  3. 3

    Output is concentrated in one school. University of Texas at Arlington conferred 86 of the 105 DNP awards recorded across this metro. A number that lopsided says where the cohorts and the placement relationships are, which a ranking position does not.

  4. 4

    3 of 5 reach you at a distance. That many carry the federal distance-education flag, which covers taught content and never the supervised practice hours. Ask for the number of on-campus days and the months they fall in.

The Cheap End Is Also The Big End

The University of Texas at Arlington publishes $9,206 a year and conferred 86 doctorates in the reporting year. That is more than the other four institutions in this metro produce combined, at the second-lowest published price of the five. The usual assumption that a low price signals a small or new program does not hold here, and it is the most useful thing to know before building a shortlist.

Texas Woman’s University is cheaper still at $5,712, with 8 conferrals. So the two publics bracket the question rather than settling it: one is the cheapest and small, the other nearly as cheap and by far the largest. The privates run from $34,608 at Texas Wesleyan University to $61,650 at Texas Christian University, both with single-figure conferral counts.

Three of the five carry the federal distance-education flag, so the metro boundary matters less here than the drive times suggest. What the flag does not cover is the supervised practice, which happens in person wherever you enroll, and in a metroplex this size the placement location is a more practical question than the campus location.

How This Ranking Is Scored

Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the 5 institutions on this page and to nothing else.

  1. 50%

    Published in-state graduate tuition

    Institution-level. Published annual graduate tuition, not a DNP per-credit rate and not net of aid.

  2. 35%

    Established program

    Program-level. DNP conferrals in this CIP and award level in the reporting year, saturating at 25. Above that a program scores full marks and gains nothing further for size.

  3. 15%

    Institution-wide undergraduate completion

    Institution-level and undergraduate. The IPEDS 150%-of-normal-time rate for first-time, full-time bachelor's students.

Nothing is imputed. A program that does not publish a figure is scored on the ones it does publish, with the remaining weights renormalized; below 2 published figures it is listed without a position rather than ranked on a single number. Accreditation is a condition of appearing at all, not a factor that earns points. What the rubric cannot see.

Accredited Schools In The Dallas-Fort Worth Metro, Ranked

Ordered on the same three published figures the state guides use: in-state tuition, annual conferrals and completion rate. One row per institution, not per federal filing.

# Program In-state tuition DNP awards UG completion Score of 100
1 of 5 The University of Texas at Arlington Arlington, TX · Public $9,206 86 54% 90.5
2 of 5 Texas Woman's University Denton, TX · Public · offered online $5,712 8 49% 72.8
3 of 5 West Coast University-Texas Richardson, TX · Private for-profit · offered online $13,903 4 11% 46.9
4 of 5 Texas Wesleyan University Fort Worth, TX · Private nonprofit $34,608 3 32% 28.4
5 of 5 Texas Christian University Fort Worth, TX · Private nonprofit · offered online $61,650 4 86% 19.2

What This Guide Counts As The Dallas-Fort Worth Metro

This guide follows the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan statistical area, and none of the five institutions is in Dallas itself: two are in Fort Worth, with the others in Arlington, Denton and Richardson. That is worth stating plainly, because a reader searching for Dallas will find the field spread across the metroplex rather than concentrated downtown, and the drives between these campuses are long ones.

Municipalities Included

  • Fort Worth, TX
  • Arlington, TX
  • Denton, TX
  • Richardson, TX

Deliberately Not Included

  • Houston, Galveston and Prairie View, TX The Houston metro, four hours south, and the subject of its own guide.
  • Austin, San Antonio and Waco, TX Central Texas metros, separately delineated.
  • Tyler, Abilene and Lubbock, TX Their own metropolitan areas, each with an accredited institution.

The Best 5 DNP Programs In Dallas-Fort Worth, Ranked

Every scored institution above, with what it publishes and what it does not.

Ranked 1 of 5

The University of Texas at Arlington

Arlington, TX

90.5 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Public
  • Doctorate (professional)

Arlington states something almost no school puts in writing: you must carry medical insurance covering emergency department evaluation and follow-up treatment for needle-stick injuries and blood-borne disease exposure, and the university will not cover that treatment itself. The requirement comes from the UT System Board of Regents. It is not a large cost next to tuition, but it is a real one, and knowing which risks sit with you rather than with the school is worth more than most brochure copy. The college runs a wide graduate ladder beside the doctorate, including practitioner master’s routes in adult-gerontology acute and primary care, psychiatric mental health, and pediatric acute and primary care, plus registered-nurse bridges into most of them.

In-State Tuition
$9,206
Out-Of-State
$26,838
DNP Awards
86
UG Completion
54%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 93.8
  • Established program 100
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 57.3

Visit The University of Texas at Arlington →

Ranked 2 of 5

Texas Woman's University

Denton, TX

72.8 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Public
  • Doctorate (research)
  • Offered online

Texas Woman’+A+’s requires 540 practicum hours in your chosen area of clinical expertise plus a scholarly project, and it assesses at admission how many hours a post-master’+A+’s student is bringing forward. That assessment is the thing to settle early, because it decides how much of the 1,000-hour requirement you still owe. Provisional admission exists for applicants at or just above a 3.0: the first 12 credit hours must be passed at B or better, at least six of them in nursing. At $5,712 the published in-state rate is among the lowest of any public on this site, and the program carries a distance-education flag.

In-State Tuition
$5,712
Out-Of-State
$15,552
DNP Awards
8
UG Completion
49%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 100
  • Established program 43.3
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 50.7

Visit Texas Woman's University →

Ranked 3 of 5

West Coast University-Texas

Richardson, TX

46.9 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private for-profit
  • Doctorate (professional)
  • Offered online

West Coast runs its DNP entirely online and puts the fastest route at 20 months, which is at the short end of anything published by a school on this site. It also advertises no waitlist, and that matters more than it sounds. A lot of programs admit once a year into a fixed cohort, so a place can still be twelve months away after you have been accepted. The curriculum is built around strategic leadership and project management rather than around a clinical specialty, with the final four credits varying by the specialty you enroll in. It is a for-profit institution and its Texas campus confers a small number of doctorates a year, so this is a compact program rather than a large one, whatever the flexible format suggests about scale.

In-State Tuition
$13,903
Out-Of-State
$13,903
DNP Awards
4
UG Completion
11%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 85.4
  • Established program 11.9
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 0

Visit West Coast University-Texas →

Ranked 4 of 5

Texas Wesleyan University

Fort Worth, TX

28.4 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Doctorate (professional)

2 DNP tracks at this institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.

Texas Wesleyan frames its DNP around what the degree does to a career rather than what it adds to a transcript: staying close to direct patient care, moving gradually into leadership, or combining clinical work with teaching, policy and quality improvement. The college is candid that the executive endpoint is about shaping an organization rather than running a single unit, and that what it pays varies widely by health system size and region rather than by the credential. Six doctorates a year from a private university of 2,487 in Fort Worth makes this a small program by design. Up to 500 practice hours from a qualifying master’s can be transferred toward the 1,000 the degree requires.

In-State Tuition
$34,608
Out-Of-State
$34,608
DNP Awards
3
UG Completion
32%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 48.3
  • Established program 0
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 28

Visit Texas Wesleyan University →

Ranked 5 of 5

Texas Christian University

Fort Worth, TX

19.2 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Doctorate (professional)
  • Offered online

4 DNP tracks at this institution, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general), Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.

TCU runs something most nursing schools do not: a bridge from the practice doctorate to a research PhD, for nurses who already hold a DNP and want to move from implementing evidence to producing it. That route wants a 3.5 grade point average, with provisional admission considered at 3.0. It matters if you think you might eventually teach or lead research, because it means you are not choosing between the two doctorates permanently when you pick this one. The psychiatric mental health route from a bachelor’s takes three years and asks for a single year of nursing experience, which is a low floor for a psychiatric track and makes it reachable earlier in a career than most.

In-State Tuition
$61,650
Out-Of-State
$61,650
DNP Awards
4
UG Completion
86%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 0
  • Established program 11.9
  • Institution-wide undergraduate completion 100

Visit Texas Christian University →

Choosing A DNP Program In Dallas-Fort Worth

What studying in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro changes. The questions that apply wherever you study are on the national ranking page.

Settle your residency before you compare anything else

Across the 2 public institutions in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro publishing both rates, the out-of-state rate runs a median of 2.9 times the in-state one. At The University of Texas at Arlington the gap is $17,632 a year on its own. Residency is decided by the state under its own rules and a distance program does not confer it, so for an out-of-state applicant this one question is worth more than the difference between most of the programs on this page.

The Texas board of nursing decides the license, not the diploma

No doctorate confers authority to practice or prescribe. That authority comes from an advanced practice license the state issues and the national certification behind it, which is why a DNP-prepared and a master's-prepared nurse practitioner on the same license prescribe the same things. What varies between states is the licensure requirement itself, so take it from the board rather than from a program page, and take it early: several programs want an active license in the state where your practicum will happen rather than wherever you hold one now, and licensure by endorsement runs to months. What the degree does and does not grant sets out the distinction.

Texas Christian University, Texas Woman's University and West Coast University-Texas carry the distance flag

3 of the 5 measured institutions in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro carry it. That flag records only that taught content can be delivered at a distance. It says nothing about campus days, and nothing about the supervised practice hours, which happen in a building with a preceptor present wherever you enroll. Ask for the number of on-campus days and the months they fall in, because that is what you hold against a roster. Online DNP programs ranks the distance-flagged field nationally.

A metro is a commute, and Texas is the field

This page covers the institutions inside the Dallas-Fort Worth area because a campus you can reach on a weekday is a different proposition from one you cannot. It is a narrower field than the one you are actually choosing from: DNP programs in Texas carries every accredited institution in the state, and for a program you would attend at a distance the metro boundary means nothing at all.

Who Licenses You In The Dallas-Fort Worth Metro

Practice environment from AANP’s own state fact sheets, read 2026-09-08; AANP last revised the classification 05/2026. Boards from the NCSBN member directory, read 2026-09-08.

Texas
Restricted Practice
Texas Board of Nursing

Every institution on this page sits in Texas, so one board licenses all of them and AANP classifies the jurisdiction as restricted practice. The school does not grant practice authority and never has; the license and the certification behind it do.

The board detail, the full AANP definition and the license verification route are on the state guide: DNP programs in Texas . AANP is reading state statute rather than issuing a federal designation, and statutes move each legislative session, so confirm with the board before you rely on it.

What The Work Pays In The Dallas-Fort Worth Metro

BLS OEWS, May 2025, metropolitan area cut for Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX, read 2026-09-09. BLS classifies by occupation, not by credential: there is no DNP wage series, and every figure here covers everyone in the occupation regardless of which degree they hold.

OccupationMedian, Dallas-Fort Worth metroEmployedNational median
Nurse practitioners29-1171$130,9807,310$132,300
Nurse anesthetists29-1151$218,6501,290$236,590
Registered nurses29-1141$101,42076,680$97,550
Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary25-1072$98,9701,180$80,250

Nurse practitioners in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro have a median of $130,980, across about 7,310 of them, which is within $1,320 of the national $132,300.

A median is the midpoint of what people in the occupation are paid, so half earn less and half earn more; it is not a starting salary and not an offer. The metropolitan cut is a different survey area from the state one, so these figures will not reconcile with the state page and are not meant to. How BLS defines these areas .

Shortage Areas, And The Debt Relief Attached To Them

HRSA designated primary-care Health Professional Shortage Areas, read 2026-09-08. These are state counts, not metro ones.

Texas, designated areas
402
Texas, of those rural
264

These figures cover Texas in full rather than the Dallas-Fort Worth metro specifically. HRSA publishes designations at the level of the individual area, and rolling them into a metro needs a county crosswalk this guide does not hold, so the state count is what is shown and it is shown as a state count. What follows from it still applies here, because eligibility never attached to a jurisdiction in the first place.

Both federal loan repayment routes open to advanced practice nurses require working at an approved site inside a designated area, and the area’s score sets funding priority when applications outrun the money: Nurse Corps Loan Repayment Program and NHSC Loan Repayment Program. HPSA primary-care scores run 0-25; funding priority for loan repayment follows the score.

In a metro that is mostly urban the practical consequence is that eligible sites are a smaller share of the employers you are likely to interview with than the state count suggests, and they are usually federally qualified health centers, public hospital systems and university clinics rather than private practices. Whether a particular employer counts is settled by the program rather than by the designation, so check the site before you take the job.

HRSA’s shortage-area data portal maps the designations to the address. Paying for a DNP covers the routes that do not depend on where you practice, and the state guide breaks the designations down further: Texas.

Studying From Outside The Dallas-Fort Worth Metro

Most of the measured field here is distance-flagged, 3 of 5 accredited doctorates in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro, so the question is less whether you can study at a distance and more whether an out-of-state program offers anything the local ones do not. Either way it turns on one thing this site cannot answer for you.

Authority to enroll a distance student is set per institution and per state, and the federal flag this page counts records delivery rather than permission, so only the school can answer it. Ask two things before tuition enters the conversation: whether the program can enroll a resident of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro this cycle, and whether it will place you for supervised clinical hours near where you live.

Which Dallas-Fort Worth Option Fits Your Situation

Each of these routes to a published figure or a named institution. None is a recommendation, and none is a statement about whether a school will admit you.

If the published price is what decides it: Texas Woman's University

The lowest published in-state rate among Dallas-Fort Worth's publics, at $5,712 a year. An annual rate, not a program total, and it assumes residency.

If you are moving to Dallas-Fort Worth: settle residency before you apply

The University of Texas at Arlington publishes a $17,632 annual gap between its in-state and out-of-state rates, the widest of the 2 Dallas-Fort Worth publics publishing both. Start with the registrar, not admissions.

If you hold a bachelor's: Texas Christian University states that route

Texas Christian University's own pages name a bachelor's entry. Others in Dallas-Fort Worth may take bachelor's entrants too: this site records a route only where the school states it, so an absent name means unread rather than closed.

If you already hold an advanced practice credential: West Coast University-Texas

West Coast University-Texas publishes a post-master's route, the shorter way in when your master's already carries supervised hours. Ask how many transfer; the ceilings differ sharply.

If you cannot relocate: 3 institutions here carry the distance flag

Texas Christian University, Texas Woman's University, West Coast University-Texas carry it. The flag covers taught content only. Supervised hours still happen near you, and campus days are the school's to set, so ask for the count and the months.

What The Figures On This Page Are

Tuition is the institution’s published annual graduate rate, not a per-credit price and not a program total. Awards are conferrals in the reporting year. Completion is the federal undergraduate rate, the weakest input in the model, and no federal series reports DNP completion. Wages are the metropolitan cut of the federal survey, a different survey area from the state one. How this site scores programs sets out each input and its weight in full.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many DNP programs are there in Dallas-Fort Worth?

5 institutions in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. This guide counts the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX metropolitan statistical area rather than the city limits, so the figure includes institutions in 4 municipalities.

What counts as the Dallas-Fort Worth metro on this page?

The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX metropolitan statistical area. In practice that means these municipalities: Fort Worth, TX; Arlington, TX; Denton, TX; Richardson, TX. Places deliberately left out are listed on this page with the reason.

Is it cheaper to study for a DNP in Dallas-Fort Worth than online?

Neither is reliably cheaper. Published in-state tuition at a public institution is usually the lowest figure available to someone who qualifies for it, and distance programs charge a single rate to everyone regardless of where they live. Which comes out lower depends entirely on whether you hold in-state status somewhere, so compare the published rates rather than the format.

Do these figures include fees and clinical costs?

No. Every tuition figure on this page is the published rate an institution reports to the federal government, which excludes fees, health insurance, textbooks and the travel a clinical placement can require. Treat it as a floor for comparison between institutions rather than a total cost of attendance.

Related Pages

Sources

  1. 1 CCNE Directory Of Accredited Programs Which institutions hold accreditation.
  2. 2 IPEDS Published tuition, conferrals and completion.
  3. 3 Metro Definition The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX metropolitan statistical area, rolled up to the municipalities listed above. Institutions are matched on city and state.

Every federal figure on this site is read from the administering agency’s own page, never from a secondary aggregator, and the reading date is recorded beside it.

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