12 institutions in Massachusetts hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. Published in-state graduate tuition among them starts at $14,723 a year, at University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Massachusetts is a small field.Only 11 schools here carry enough published figures to be scored, so a position says how one compares to its in-state neighbors and nothing about how it compares nationally.
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In-state rates vary enormously here.Published annual in-state graduate tuition among the 11 Massachusetts institutions that report one runs from $14,723 to $59,275, a 4-fold spread inside one state and one reporting year.
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Mostly private institutions.6 of the 11 institutions with federal figures are private, so most published rates here do not turn on residency, and private sticker prices are discounted more heavily than public ones.
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Some are delivered at a distance.4 of the 11 carry the federal distance-education flag, which covers coursework and never the supervised practice hours.
Metro Guides Inside This State
Narrower than this page and organized around a commute rather than a
border. Each one counts a census metropolitan area, so it can cross a
state line where this page cannot.
Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the
11 institutions on this page and to nothing
else.
50%
Published in-state graduate tuition
Institution-level. Average annual tuition for full-time graduate students, 2023-24, from IPEDS. Not a DNP per-credit rate, not including program differentials, and not net of aid.
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.
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.
The Best 11 DNP Programs In Massachusetts, Ranked
Ordered on published in-state tuition, annual DNP conferrals and
institution-wide undergraduate completion, weighted for a state
page so cost leads. Scores are relative to the 11 institutions on this page and
not to the country, the same program carries a different
number on the national list. How this is built.
Every ranked institution in Massachusetts, with what the federal record
publishes for it and how its score was composed.
Amherst answers up front the question most online programs leave you to find out late: it cannot accept DNP students who live in Alabama, Minnesota, New York, Oregon or Washington. If you are in one of those five states, that settles it before you compare anything else. For everyone else the coursework runs entirely online, the clinical side is done through internships where you already are, and the degree ends in a project that puts research evidence to work in a practice setting you choose. The post-baccalaureate route concentrates on psychiatric mental health, so this is a doctorate pointed at one population rather than a general one. You can also take a master’s in nursing on the way through instead of finishing with nothing in between.
Elms publishes its two nurse practitioner timelines plainly: about three years full time if you enter with a bachelor’s, and about two and a half if you already hold a master’s. That six-month gap is smaller than at most schools, where a master’s typically saves a year or more, so if you are MSN-prepared and comparing programs on time saved, this is one where the advantage is thinner than usual. It is a small private college in Chicopee of roughly 1,270 students, and it confers around nineteen doctorates a year, which is a high output for its size and suggests the nursing doctorate is a substantial part of what the college does.
UMass Chan runs a graduate entry pathway into the doctorate, which takes people from outside nursing entirely: a year of prerequisites first, then the doctoral program, and its first cohort entered in 2015. That is a genuine career change route rather than an advancement one, and the school’s own account of it follows someone who spent fifteen years in corporate marketing before switching. Specialty work is additive here, with a palliative care focus requiring a further 90 clinical hours on top of the program. This is a medical school campus of under 1,500 students, and against that size it produces nursing doctorates at the third highest rate in the country.
Lowell publishes a separate degree pathway for master’s-prepared nurses who are not advanced practice registered nurses, a group most schools leave to work out their own plan. If your master’s was in education, administration or informatics, there is a named route here rather than a case-by-case negotiation. The scholarly project splits into three graded courses covering design, implementation, and dissemination with advocacy and policy, so the work is paced across the program instead of saved for the end. Before clinical rotations you work in simulation labs using high-fidelity manikins and trained actors as simulated patients. The catalog publishes a pathway per entry year, so the plan you are held to is the one in force when you start.
Boston College runs three ways in, and one of them is unusual: registered nurses without a bachelor’s degree can enter directly if they have completed roughly 112 college credits, earning the master’s for practitioner preparation and continuing straight into the doctorate. The other two routes start from a bachelor’s or a master’s in nursing. All three want an undergraduate average of B or better and a completed statistics course, and the school states plainly that AP credit will not cover the statistics. Clinical work rotates across three to six sites rather than parking you at one, and those include Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, so the settings differ from each other in ways that show up in what you see. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the highest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and it is one rate whatever state you live in.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Nursing practice (general), Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
Dartmouth restricts this program to New England and says so precisely. Your registered nurse license must be from Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts or Rhode Island, your permanent residence must be in one of those states, and your supervised clinical hours have to happen there as well. All three conditions, not one of them. If you sit outside that footprint, stop here. For everyone inside it the arrangement is unusually clean: classes are asynchronous and fully remote except for one on-campus day each semester. The adult-gerontology primary care route from a bachelor’s runs on a four or five year plan, and the four-year version totals 1,008 practicum hours. Publishing an exact hour total against a named plan is rarer than it should be.
Bay Path publishes both routes as course counts, which is a more honest unit than years. Bachelor’s entry is 70 credits across 19 courses. Master’s entry is 36 credits across 12 courses. Both carry 1,000 supervised clinical hours, and that is the part worth noticing: holding a master’s halves the coursework here without reducing the clinical requirement, which is not how every school handles it. Everything runs online, the family practitioner track included, so the clinical hours are the only part that happens in a building. Bay Path is small, and against its size it confers nursing doctorates at a rate in the top quarter nationally, so the program is a serious piece of what the university does.
Northeastern’s post-master’s doctorate is 30 semester hours and primarily online. What the catalog shows clearly is how the doctoral work is structured: three sequential scholarly project courses covering design and ethical considerations, then implementation and outcomes, then dissemination. Splitting the project across three graded courses means it gets paced through the program rather than left to pile up at the end. Three of the thirty hours are electives you choose in consultation with a faculty advisor, which is a small amount of real flexibility inside an otherwise fixed sequence. The program sits within a health sciences college rather than a standalone nursing school, so the people around you come from across the health professions.
Boston runs both entries, one from a bachelor’s in nursing and one from a master’s for advanced practice nurses already in the field, and points the degree at systems rather than at a new patient population: health systems leadership, policy development and interdisciplinary work. A post-master’s certificate in psychiatric mental health runs alongside for nurses who want that credential without committing to a doctorate. This is a small doctoral program. It confers only a couple of nursing doctorates a year, which cuts both ways: a cohort of a handful and faculty attention a larger program cannot match, against fewer people to compare notes with.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Simmons publishes its clinical hours per component rather than as one total, which makes the executive leadership route unusually easy to plan against. The doctoral portion carries 252 clinical hours, 29 credit hours and at least 181 hours on the DNP project itself. Come in from a BSN and the master’s leadership stage adds 567 clinical hours and 35 credits ahead of all that. The format is blended, online coursework with in-person elements, rather than either extreme. If you did your master’s at Simmons the route is materially easier to start: a streamlined application, the application fee waived, and up to five credits waived from the standard thirty once you are accepted.
3 DNP tracks at this
institution, Geriatric, Nursing administration, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
This is a graduate health professions school rather than a university with a nursing college inside it, and the doctorate is built for people already running something. The curriculum is modeled on executive MBA programs, which here means online coursework broken up by in-person intensives rather than a fully remote degree. You pick the pace at admission: four semesters or five, with two part-time options beside them, and the choice is framed around what your job will tolerate. Everyone on this campus is in a health profession, so the people in your cohort are clinicians rather than general graduate students. Against an enrollment of about 1,700 it confers nursing doctorates at one of the higher rates in the country, which is what a specialist campus looks like in the federal data.
This program holds current CCNE
accreditation. It files its DNP
conferrals under a specialty classification rather than under
Nursing Practice, so the federal tuition and conferral figures
used above are not available for it and
it is not scored.
MCPHS runs a two-year online doctorate, and it lets you slow down on purpose: you may drop to one course a semester, and the program administrator works out an individual sequence with you rather than pushing you out of a cohort. The clinical requirement is 1,000 hours, of which the DNP project alone carries nine academic credits and 500 experiential clinical hours, so half your practice time sits inside the project rather than around it. The electives are unusual for a nursing doctorate and worth knowing about: you can take work in healthcare business, and MCPHS also offers acupuncture, which reflects what the college teaches beyond nursing.
Choosing A DNP Program In Massachusetts
What studying in Massachusetts changes. The questions that apply wherever
you study are on the national ranking page.
Settle your residency before you compare anything else
Across the 5 public institutions in Massachusetts publishing both rates, the out-of-state rate runs a median of 1.8 times the in-state one. At University of Massachusetts-Boston the gap is $18,434 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.
With 12 to read, cut on the track before you cut on the school
That is more institutions than anyone reads properly, and the cut that removes most of them is the population focus rather than the ranking. A university with a strong doctorate may not run the specialty you want, and a track can be closed to new applicants while the rest of the program keeps recruiting. Decide the specialty first, then read what is left. The ranking above orders what remains on published tuition, conferrals and completion.
The Massachusetts 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.
The distance flag here records delivery, not your week
4 of the 11 measured institutions in Massachusetts 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.
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences files conferrals under a specialty classification rather than under Nursing Practice, so the federal columns this page ranks on do not exist for it. It carries the same CCNE accreditation as everything in the ranking above. A missing figure here is a filing convention rather than a verdict, and reading it as one would put a real option out of your reach for no reason. The notes beside the name come from the school's own pages.
Nursys, the national
license verification system operated by the boards themselves
AANP places Massachusetts in its full practice category,
which it defines this way: state law lets nurse practitioners evaluate patients, diagnose, order and interpret tests, and initiate and manage treatments including prescribing medications and controlled substances, under the exclusive licensure authority of the state board of nursing.
A degree confers no prescriptive authority. It comes from a state advanced practice license and the national certification behind it, so a DNP-prepared and a master’s-prepared nurse practitioner holding the same license prescribe the same things.
So the thing to settle with the board is the licensure route itself: what
it accepts as an equivalent program, which certification it recognizes for
your track, and how long endorsement takes if you are licensed elsewhere.
Endorsement runs to months, and it is the step people leave until after
they have accepted a place.
Practice environment from AANP's Massachusetts fact sheet, read 2026-09-08;
AANP last revised the classification 05/2026. It is AANP's reading of
state statute rather than a federal designation, and statutes move each legislative
session, so confirm it with the board before you rely on it.
Board details read from the NCSBN member directory on 2026-09-08.
Licensure requirements change by legislative session, so treat anything
you read here as a pointer to the board rather than a substitute for it.
What The Work Pays In Massachusetts
BLS OEWS, May 2025. 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.
Nurse practitioners in Massachusetts have a median of $142,440, which ranks 7 of the 51 jurisdictions the survey publishes a median for, across about 8,070 people in the state.
Paid near the top of the national range across a workforce this size, which is the combination that gives a practitioner somewhere to move to without leaving the state.
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.
Every row is one federal series, ranked against every jurisdiction that
series covers. Nothing here is a job-board average. DNP salary sets out the
national picture.
Shortage Areas, And The Debt Relief Attached To Them
HRSA designated primary-care Health Professional Shortage Areas, read 2026-09-08.
Designated areas
64
Of those, rural
10
Median score
14
Highest score
19
Unusually, most of the designated shortage in Massachusetts is not rural.
Only 10 of the 64 designations are, so the
approved site that qualifies you is as likely to be a city clinic as a
country one. A designation is a statement about how many primary-care providers
serve a defined area relative to its population. It describes supply,
not hiring.
Priority varies between them: a median score of 14
against a highest of 19. Worth asking what a specific
site scores rather than assuming the state figure applies to it.
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.
Whether a particular employer counts as an approved site is settled by
the program, not by the designation, so check the site before you take
the job rather than after. HRSA's shortage-area data portal
maps the designations. Paying for a DNP
covers the routes that do not depend on where you practice.
Studying From Outside Massachusetts
4 of the 12 accredited doctorates in Massachusetts carry
the federal distance-education flag, which leaves most of the local field
expecting you in the room and makes an out-of-state program a real
comparison rather than a fallback. 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 Massachusetts this cycle, and whether it will place you for supervised clinical
hours near where you live.
What The Figures On This Page Are
Tuition is the institution's published annual graduate rate. It is
not a DNP per-credit price, it is not a total program cost, and
it is not what anyone pays after aid. A DNP taken part-time over
four years does not cost four times the annual figure, because
most programs bill by the credit.
DNP awards are conferrals in the reporting year at that
institution. The figure says a program is running and how much
of it is running; it does not say the program is better than a
smaller one, and the rubric stops rewarding volume above 25
conferrals for that reason.
Undergraduate completion is exactly that, the federal
150%-of-normal-time rate for first-time, full-time bachelor's
students at the institution. It is the weakest input in the model
and carries the smallest weight. No federal series reports DNP
completion, so nothing on this site claims one.
Of the 11 institutions with federal figures here,
5 are at public institutions. In-state tuition at a
public school is available only to residents; the out-of-state
rate is frequently two to four times higher and is the figure an
out-of-state applicant should be reading.
4 institutions here
are flagged by the federal survey as
offered at a distance. That flag records how the coursework is
delivered. It does not mean the clinical hours are remote, and
it does not mean a student never travels to campus.
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers specific to Massachusetts. The degree-wide questions are answered on the guides.
How many DNP programs are there in Massachusetts?
12, which is more than anyone reads properly. The cut that removes most of them is the specialty rather than the score: a strong institution may not run the track you want, and a track can be closed to new applicants while the rest of the school keeps recruiting.
How much does a DNP cost in Massachusetts?
Published in-state rates run $14,723 to $59,275, a spread of about 4.0 times inside one state. At that width the ranking matters less than knowing which end you are looking at, and the cheap end is usually public and usually conditional on residency.
Is a DNP cheaper in Massachusetts if you live there?
Yes, by $18,434 a year at the widest of the 5 public institutions publishing both rates. Enrolling in a distance program does not confer residency; the state sets it under its own rules.
Can a nurse practitioner practice independently in Massachusetts?
AANP puts Massachusetts in its full practice category, the least restricted of the three: state law lets nurse practitioners evaluate, diagnose, order and interpret tests and prescribe under the board's own licensure authority. That is AANP reading the statute, not a federal designation, and legislation moves it.
What do nurse practitioners earn in Massachusetts?
A median of $142,440, $10,140 above the national $132,300. That is a state figure for the occupation, and the cost of living behind it is not in the number.
Does federal loan repayment apply in Massachusetts?
It can, and unusually it is not a rural question here: only 10 of the 64 designations are rural. The approved site that qualifies you is as likely to be a city clinic as a country one.
Can you study for a DNP online in Massachusetts?
4 of the 11 measured institutions carry the flag. It covers taught content and nothing else, so the number to ask each school for is on-campus days and the months they fall in.
Sources
Two datasets produce every figure on this page, and the institutions those figures describe are listed under them. Nothing here is compiled from a school's own marketing material.
1CCNE Accredited Program Directory It decides which institutions appear on this page at all: the 12 in Massachusetts below are the ones it lists as holding current accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice.
2IPEDS Published tuition, annual conferrals, institutional completion and the distance-education flag.
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.
The Institutions Behind These Figures
Every institution the two datasets name in Massachusetts, alphabetically.
A link is the web address that institution reports to the federal
directory, the school’s own site, not a page about the
doctorate.
