Every ranked institution in Florida, with what the federal record
publishes for it and how its score was composed.
Ranked 1 of 15
Gainesville, FL
98.3 of 100
- CCNE-accredited
- Public
- Doctorate (professional)
- Offered online
Florida runs two routes into the doctorate and gates them differently. The BSN-to-DNP is built around online coursework for nurses moving up from the bedside. The MSN-to-DNP is open only to applicants holding a master’s in nursing and an active Florida APRN license, and that condition settles the question for most people before anything else does: if you already practice in Florida as an APRN, that is your route, and if you don’t, you’re applying to the longer one. Only five public universities in this dataset sit in the national top fifteen on both DNP output and low published in-state tuition, and Gainesville is one of them. If cohort size and an established placement network matter to you, that combination is the argument for it.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 96.6
- Established program 100
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 100
Ranked 2 of 15
Tallahassee, FL
96.8 of 100
- CCNE-accredited
- Public
- Doctorate (professional)
- Offered online
FSU is built for nurses who intend to keep working. Every track runs online, full or part-time, with only minimal on-campus skill practice and testing, though the college is candid that most courses carry a synchronous Zoom component, so evenings are not entirely yours. The executive health systems leadership track is fully online and part-time, and admits experienced nurses holding an MSN, a qualifying master’s, or in some cases a BSN. There is also a post-master’s route for acute care practitioners moving into adult-gerontology. One provision is unique here: a serving preceptor can claim a waiver of six credit hours for every 300 hours of precepting completed, which turns work you may already be doing into progress on the degree.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 96.4
- Established program 100
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 90.6
Ranked 3 of 15
Orlando, FL
94.6 of 100
- CCNE-accredited
- Public
- Doctorate (professional)
- Offered online
UCF states its executive track precisely: 42 credit hours of online asynchronous instruction, two required virtual DNP intensives a year, and 1,000 post-baccalaureate clinical hours. It also admits the thing most online programs gloss: the DNP project itself requires in-person clinical hours, so fully remote it is not. There is deliberately no full-time option for the nurse executive track, because the college assumes those students are already working full-time, which tells you exactly who it is designed for: serving managers, not people stepping out of practice. The family and adult-gerontology acute care tracks run mixed-mode with reduced on-campus seat time, a middle setting between the executive track’s near-total flexibility and a conventional campus program. The family practitioner route runs 73 credits against the executive track’s 42, so the track page is what to compare on rather than the program page.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 96.6
- Established program 100
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 75.5
- CCNE-accredited
- Public
- Doctorate (professional)
USF attaches a geographic condition to the degree that decides it for a lot of applicants: a minimum of 31 credits including at least eight practicum credits and four project credits, all of which must be completed in Florida. If you do not live there, that decides it before anything else does. The plan is lock-step, so the sequence is fixed rather than assembled around your schedule, which is predictable if you want a known end date, inflexible if your work pattern shifts. Practicum hours directly support the DNP project and can include direct patient care or immersion experiences approved by the program director. Both entry routes are open, and the adult-gerontology acute care concentration evaluates prior clinical experience case by case rather than against a fixed threshold.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 96.5
- Established program 100
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 73.6
- CCNE-accredited
- Public
- Doctorate (professional)
FIU’s DNP leans psychiatric, and its practice sites make that plain: community mental health centers, crisis centers, psychiatric clinics and hospital units, correctional health, and private practice. Correctional health in particular is a setting few nursing schools name, and the placements you do are what you end up competent to handle afterwards. The provision worth knowing if you live anywhere else in Florida is that students in the online specialties may complete clinicals beyond the university’s own service area of Monroe, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. Several Florida publics hold their students inside a catchment. This one says in writing that it does not. Its college publishes a plan of study per specialty rather than one for the degree.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 96.2
- Established program 100
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 67.9
Ranked 6 of 15
Jacksonville, FL
92.5 of 100
- CCNE-accredited
- Public
- Doctorate (professional)
- Offered online
North Florida frames its DNP for nurses ready to move from clinical expertise into influence, with emphasis on evidence-based practice, organizational and systems leadership, health policy and quality improvement rather than on adding a clinical population. It is delivered fully online with faculty engagement built into each course, and the post-MSN track admits twice a year, autumn and spring. One change is worth planning around: from autumn 2026 the post-MSN route requires full-time enrollment at nine credit hours a term, closing the part-time option many working nurses rely on. Anyone weighing this program should confirm which cohort they would join, because the version described today and the version starting in 2026 ask for different things. Its nurse anesthesia track is accredited by the COA rather than CCNE, a separate accreditation claim from the rest of the degree.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 97.5
- Established program 100
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 58.5
Ranked 7 of 15
Boca Raton, FL
92.1 of 100
- CCNE-accredited
- Public
- Doctorate (professional)
Florida Atlantic splits the DNP by entry credential. The full-time BSN-to-DNP prepares family, adult-gerontology primary care and psychiatric-mental health practitioners. The post-master’s route runs part-time over eight semesters for APRNs who are already certified, covering leadership, clinical scholarship, nursing theory, cultural competence, population health, strategic healthcare management and evaluation. A minimum of 1,000 clinical hours culminates in a project mapped to the 2021 AACN Essentials. Delivery is four separate choices rather than one: live on campus, synchronous over Zoom, fully asynchronous, or hybrid. That matters because most schools offer a single mode and call it flexible. Its college also charges a per-credit fee on nursing courses on top of tuition, so the published annual rate is not the whole bill.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 100
- Established program 100
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 47.2
Ranked 8 of 15
Fort Myers, FL
88.9 of 100
- CCNE-accredited
- Public
- Doctorate (professional)
Gulf Coast publishes four separate DNP curricula and the credit totals are nothing alike, so the number that matters is the one attached to your entry point. The BSN-to-DNP nurse practitioner route is 81 credits, full time or part time. If you already hold an MSN with an advanced practice focus, you finish in 36 credits over five full-time semesters. Nurse anesthesiology is a different proposition again: 112 credits across nine continuous full-time semesters, 36 months end to end, and it wants a full year of ICU experience behind you before classes start in the summer. CRNAs who already hold a master’s take a 37-credit version over six part-time semesters instead. Anesthesiology is also the one route with a standing campus commitment, once a week from that first summer through to graduation.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 97.1
- Established program 100
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 35.8
- CCNE-accredited
- Private nonprofit
- Doctorate (professional)
Barry gates its post-master’s doctorate on certification rather than a transcript audit. You need a valid, current national certification in an advanced nursing practice specialty, and the school treats that certification as the evidence you have already met the minimum clinical hours for your specialty. That is a cleaner test than counting hours one by one, and it means an uncertified master’s holder is not eligible here however many hours they logged. Barry confers one of the larger numbers of nursing doctorates in the country, both outright and against its size, sitting in the top tenth on each. The program carries no distance flag federally, so plan on Miami.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 46.6
- Established program 100
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 0
Ranked 10 of 15
Jacksonville, FL
50.5 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.
Jacksonville draws a sharp line between its two routes. Bachelor’s entry to family practice wants a 3.3 undergraduate nursing grade point average, which sits above the usual 3.0 floor, plus a year of professional nursing experience before clinical work begins. The post-master’s doctorate is the flexible one: fully online, with fall and spring starts, and the school states plainly that no campus visits are required. That last point is worth more than it sounds, because plenty of programs call themselves online and then schedule intensives you have to fly to. Your background check may be released to clinical agencies so they can approve your placement, which is routine but worth knowing before you consent to it.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 23.6
- Established program 100
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 24.5
Ranked 11 of 15
Coral Gables, FL
48 of 100
- CCNE-accredited
- Private nonprofit
- Doctorate (professional)
Miami runs its family practitioner route so it can end in either a master’s or the doctorate, with eligibility for family practitioner certification either way, so how far you go is not locked in at admission. Beside the doctorate sit post-master’s certificates in adult-gerontology acute care, adult-gerontology primary care, family practice and oncology. The oncology certificate is the unusual one, because very few schools train advanced practice nurses specifically for cancer care, and it leads to a different job rather than a variation on the same one. The doctorate carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on Coral Gables, and tuition sits near the top of the range on this site.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 0
- Established program 100
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 86.8
Ranked 12 of 15
West Palm Beach, FL
46.4 of 100
- CCNE-accredited
- Private nonprofit
- Doctorate (professional)
Palm Beach Atlantic runs its doctorate as a single practitioner track, adult-gerontology primary care, and the point of that track is the credential waiting at the end. Finishing it makes you eligible to sit the national certification examination through either the American Nurses Credentialing Center or the American Association of Nurse Practitioners. Choosing a school with one track rather than six is a narrower decision than it looks, because the faculty and the clinical placements are all pointed at the same patient population instead of being split across several. The program carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on being in West Palm Beach rather than at a distance.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 36.6
- Established program 66.5
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 32.1
Ranked 13 of 15
Miami Gardens, FL
35.6 of 100
- CCNE-accredited
- Private nonprofit
- Doctorate (professional)
- Offered online
St. Thomas keeps its online DNP compact and regular: 13 core courses totaling 39 credits, with the residency built as three sequential practicum courses rather than one open-ended requirement. Each runs seven weeks and carries three credits, and together they are where the program’s required hours get completed. Nine of the 39 credits sit in that practicum sequence, so close to a quarter of the degree is residency rather than coursework. The seven-week course length is the part worth planning around, because it sets a rhythm you can hold a work roster against, and a stumble in one course costs you weeks rather than a whole semester.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 46.6
- Established program 27
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 18.9
Ranked 14 of 15
Lakeland, FL
34.1 of 100
- CCNE-accredited
- Private nonprofit
- Doctorate (professional)
Florida Southern runs its doctorate as a leadership degree rather than a clinical one, and says so plainly: healthcare policy and advocacy, finance, information systems, project management and organizational leadership. If you want a new patient population, this is not the program. If you want to run something, the coursework aims squarely at that. Everything is online, and the college charges out-of-state students the same rate as everyone else, which removes the residency penalty that shapes the arithmetic at most public universities. Project and practicum work is done against real problems inside healthcare organizations rather than as an academic exercise. It is a post-master’s program, so the clinical core is assumed to be behind you.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 30.6
- Established program 27
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 62.3
Ranked 15 of 15
Tampa, FL
32 of 100
- CCNE-accredited
- Private nonprofit
- Doctorate (professional)
- Offered online
Tampa’s doctorate is one of the smallest on this site, conferring about one degree a year against an enrollment above eleven thousand, so this is a program running at the edge of viability rather than an established pipeline. That cuts both ways: individual attention is close to guaranteed, and a cohort barely exists. The program is filed federally as a distance program. One practical detail the university publishes is that doctoral students are not assessed the student service fee charged on summer sessions, a small saving but a real one if you study year-round.
Scored on
- Published in-state graduate tuition 49.2
- Established program 0
- Institution-wide undergraduate completion 49.1
