Best DNP Programs

New Orleans metro

Best DNP Programs In New Orleans 2026

Two accredited institutions, one public and one private, separated by nearly seven times in published tuition and by a factor of eighteen in doctorates conferred.
A narrow street lined with balconied buildings and cast-iron railings, cars parked along the curb and people walking in sunlight
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Key Takeaways

  1. 1

    Every one of the 2 is inside the city itself. This guide counts the New Orleans-Metairie, LA metropolitan area, which reaches further than the city, but no accredited institution in it sits outside New Orleans. So the metro definition costs you nothing here and the commute is the city's, not the region's.

  2. 2

    1 public, 1 private, and the cheap end is public. Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center publishes $7,020 in-state, against $47,390 at the next option up. Residency is the lever here, and that figure is one school's published year rather than a typical cost: it leaves out fees, insurance and what reaching a clinical placement costs.

  3. 3

    Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center is most of this metro. It conferred 71 of the 75 DNP awards recorded here, which is 95% of them, against 4 at Loyola University New Orleans. 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.

An Academic Health Center And A Liberal Arts University, Answering Different Questions

Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans conferred 71 DNP awards in the reporting year and publishes $7,020 in-state. Loyola University New Orleans conferred 4 and publishes $47,390. The gap in both figures is large enough that the pair rarely appears on the same shortlist.

The difference is institutional type rather than quality. LSU Health Sciences Center is a public academic health center whose entire enrollment is health professions students, and its DNP sits among medicine, dentistry and allied health. Loyola is a private comprehensive university where nursing is one school among several, and it files two DNP tracks to LSU’s one.

Loyola is also the one flagged for distance education. For a nurse already working in the region, that is the practical distinction: the public program is cheaper and larger and expects you on campus, and the private one costs considerably more and does not.

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 New Orleans 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 Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans New Orleans, LA · Public $7,020 71 Not published 100
2 of 2 Loyola University New Orleans New Orleans, LA · Private nonprofit · offered online $47,390 4 59% 0

What This Guide Counts As The New Orleans Metro

This guide follows the New Orleans-Metairie, LA metropolitan statistical area. Both institutions report New Orleans itself as their city. Hammond is a separate metropolitan area to the north and the institution there appears under its own, not here.

Municipalities Included

  • New Orleans, LA

Deliberately Not Included

  • Hammond, LA The Hammond metropolitan area, separately delineated. Southeastern Louisiana University is there and is therefore not in this list, although it is about an hour north.
  • Metairie and Kenner, LA Named in the metro title or inside it, and carrying no institution in the accredited dataset.
  • Baton Rouge, LA Its own metropolitan area eighty miles upriver, and the state capital rather than part of this field.

The Best 2 DNP Programs In New Orleans, Ranked

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

Ranked 1 of 2

Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans

New Orleans, LA

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

LSU’s health sciences center publishes its DNP as course tables rather than description, including a distinct adult-gerontology acute care sequence, so what the program emphasizes has to be read off the curriculum rather than a summary. One thing it does state plainly is that clinical hours and the three Ps, meaning advanced pathophysiology, pharmacology and physical assessment, are verified at admission rather than assumed, so applicants carrying credits from an earlier master’s should expect them to be audited before enrollment rather than after. This is a small, health-professions-only campus of 2,750 people, which means a cohort you will recognize rather than a faculty you queue to see.

In-State Tuition
$7,020
Out-Of-State
$15,495
DNP Awards
71

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 100
  • Established program 100

Visit Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans →

Ranked 2 of 2

Loyola University New Orleans

New Orleans, LA

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

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

Loyola runs five routes and splits them cleanly by delivery: family practice and the executive leadership doctorate are online, while acute care, nurse anesthesia and the dual acute care plus anesthesia option are hybrid. The anesthesia program is 87 credits with practicums stacking at a minimum of 200, then 400, then 400 hours, and its semesters run continuously, with holidays and time off scheduled individually rather than falling on a shared calendar. That is a demanding structure, and the school describes it plainly instead of burying it. The executive route needs 30 or more credits and uses a personal transcript evaluation to credit the supervised practicum hours your master’s already covered, which can cut the coursework down. A dual anesthesia and acute care credential is rare.

In-State Tuition
$47,390
Out-Of-State
$47,390
DNP Awards
4
UG Completion
59%

Scored on

  • Published in-state graduate tuition 0
  • Established program 0

Visit Loyola University New Orleans →

Choosing A DNP Program In New Orleans

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

Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans and Loyola University New Orleans are the whole of the field in New Orleans

Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans and Loyola University New Orleans 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 Louisiana board of nursing rather than to the school.

Who Licenses You In The New Orleans 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.

Louisiana
Reduced Practice
Louisiana State Board of Nursing

Every institution on this page sits in Louisiana, so one board licenses all of them and AANP classifies the jurisdiction as reduced 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 Louisiana . 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.

Louisiana, designated areas
178
Louisiana, of those rural
111

These figures cover Louisiana in full rather than the New Orleans 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: Louisiana.

Studying From Outside The New Orleans Metro

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

Which New Orleans 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: Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans

The lowest published in-state rate among New Orleans's publics, at $7,020 a year. An annual rate, not a program total, and it assumes residency.

If you are moving to New Orleans: settle residency before you apply

Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans publishes a $8,475 annual gap between its in-state and out-of-state rates, the widest of the 1 New Orleans public publishing both. Start with the registrar, not admissions.

If you hold a bachelor's: Loyola University New Orleans states that route

Loyola University New Orleans's own pages name a bachelor's entry. Others in New Orleans 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 cannot relocate: Loyola University New Orleans

Loyola University New Orleans 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.

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 New Orleans?

2 institutions in the New Orleans metro hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. This guide counts the New Orleans-Metairie, LA metropolitan statistical area rather than the city limits, so the figure includes institutions in 1 municipalities.

What counts as the New Orleans metro on this page?

The New Orleans-Metairie, LA metropolitan statistical area. In practice that means these municipalities: New Orleans, LA. Places deliberately left out are listed on this page with the reason.

Is it cheaper to study for a DNP in New Orleans 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 New Orleans-Metairie, LA 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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