Best DNP Programs

Nashville metro

Best DNP Programs In Nashville 2026

Two accredited institutions, both private, and the cheaper of the two publishes $40,560. There is no public option in this metro.
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Key Takeaways

  1. 1

    Price will not narrow this list. The published in-state rates here sit inside a band of roughly 1.6 times, which is tight for a metro. That pushes the decision onto track, cohort size and who arranges the clinical placement.

  2. 2

    Every institution here is private. No public option means residency buys you nothing in this metro. A private institution charges one rate wherever you live, so an out-of-state applicant is on the same terms as a local one.

  3. 3

    Vanderbilt University is most of this metro. It conferred 55 of the 67 DNP awards recorded here, which is 82% of them, against 12 at Belmont University. Treat the others as genuinely small programs rather than as alternatives of a similar size.

  4. 4

    1 of 2 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 Highest Entry Price Of Any Metro On This Site

Vanderbilt University publishes $65,008 and Belmont University publishes $40,560. Both are private, and no public institution in this metro files an accredited DNP, so $40,560 is the floor here. On every other metro guide the cheapest option is lower than that, and on most it is lower by a wide margin.

That is worth stating plainly rather than leaving in the table, because it changes what the ranked list is for. In a metro with a public option, the list helps you weigh price against everything else. Here the price question is settled before you start: staying in Nashville is expensive, and the real comparison is between two private programs and whatever a distance program elsewhere would cost.

The two are not otherwise alike. Vanderbilt conferred 55 DNP awards in the reporting year to Belmont’s 12, files three distinct tracks to Belmont’s one, and is the one flagged for distance education. The larger, broader and more flexible program is also the dearer one, so the trade here is money against almost everything else.

How This Ranking Is Scored

Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the 2 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 Nashville 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 2 Belmont University Nashville, TN · Private nonprofit $40,560 12 71% 50
2 of 2 Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN · Private nonprofit · offered online $65,008 55 94% 50

What This Guide Counts As The Nashville Metro

This guide follows the Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN metropolitan statistical area. Both institutions report Nashville itself as their city, so the two other municipalities in the metro title carry nothing to list.

Municipalities Included

  • Nashville, TN

Deliberately Not Included

  • Murfreesboro and Franklin, TN Named in the metro title and carrying no institution in the accredited dataset. Nothing is being left out; there is nothing there to leave out.
  • Clarksville, TN Its own metropolitan area about fifty miles northwest.

The Best 2 DNP Programs In Nashville, Ranked

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

Ranked 1 of 2

Belmont University

Nashville, TN

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

Belmont’s transfer policy is the reason to look at it. It accepts up to 20 credit hours of prior graduate coursework, where most schools cap transfer at around six, and it publishes worked examples rather than leaving you to ask. An applicant holding a BSN and an MBA can enter the post-master’s track and have that business coursework substitute for health care finance and for leadership and management. If you already hold a graduate degree in something adjacent, that is the difference between starting from scratch and starting a third of the way in. The clinical requirement then depends on track: family nurse practitioner students complete a minimum of 800 hours across the lifespan, and leadership and innovation students complete 700, mapped to the American Organization for Nursing Leadership competencies.

In-State Tuition
$40,560
Out-Of-State
$40,560
DNP Awards
12
UG Completion
71%

Scored on

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

Visit Belmont University →

Ranked 2 of 2

Vanderbilt University

Nashville, TN

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

3 DNP tracks at this institution, Critical care, Emergency and trauma, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.

Vanderbilt attaches a recency window to its experience requirement, and that is the detail to check before anything else: at least one year of full-time work, or the part-time equivalent, as a registered nurse in a critical care setting, and it has to fall within the past five years. Critical care from six years ago does not count however much of it you did. It accepts an unencumbered license as either a registered nurse or an APRN, and explicitly extends that to United States territories and protectorates rather than the fifty states alone, which matters if you trained or practice in Puerto Rico or Guam.

In-State Tuition
$65,008
Out-Of-State
$65,008
DNP Awards
55
UG Completion
94%

Scored on

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

Visit Vanderbilt University →

Choosing A DNP Program In Nashville

What studying in the Nashville metro changes. The questions that apply wherever you study are on the national ranking page.

Belmont University and Vanderbilt University are the whole of the field in Nashville

Belmont University and Vanderbilt University file their conferrals under a specialty classification rather than under Nursing Practice, so the credit total, the entry routes and the clinical hour requirement live on their own pages rather than in the federal columns this page ranks on. Ask them who arranges clinical placements, and take the licensure question to the Tennessee board of nursing rather than to the school.

Who Licenses You In The Nashville 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.

Tennessee
Restricted Practice
Tennessee Board of Nursing

Every institution on this page sits in Tennessee, 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 Tennessee . 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.

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.

Tennessee, designated areas
152
Tennessee, of those rural
109

These figures cover Tennessee in full rather than the Nashville 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: Tennessee.

Studying From Outside The Nashville Metro

1 of the 2 accredited doctorates in the Nashville metro 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 the Nashville metro this cycle, and whether it will place you for supervised clinical hours near where you live.

Which Nashville 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 you hold a bachelor's: Vanderbilt University states that route

Vanderbilt University's own pages name a bachelor's entry. Others in Nashville 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: Belmont University

Belmont University 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: Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University carries the federal distance-education flag. 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.

If residency is out of reach: the private rate does not depend on it

A private institution charges one figure wherever you live, so without residency the comparison is against the out-of-state public rate. In Nashville the cheapest published rate in the state belongs to one of its 2 private institutions.

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 Nashville?

2 institutions in the Nashville metro hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. This guide counts the Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN metropolitan statistical area rather than the city limits, so the figure includes institutions in 1 municipalities.

What counts as the Nashville metro on this page?

The Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN metropolitan statistical area. In practice that means these municipalities: Nashville, TN. Places deliberately left out are listed on this page with the reason.

Is it cheaper to study for a DNP in Nashville 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 Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN 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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