Best DNP Programs

Seattle-Tacoma metro

Best DNP Programs In Seattle-Tacoma 2026

Two accredited institutions with federal figures, both private, neither taught at a distance, thirty miles apart at opposite ends of the 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 2.2 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

    Pacific Lutheran University is most of this metro. It conferred 17 of the 19 DNP awards recorded here, which is 89% of them, against 2 at Seattle University. Treat the others as genuinely small programs rather than as alternatives of a similar size.

  4. 4

    Nothing here is distance-flagged. No institution in this metro carries the federal distance-education flag. It records an institutional filing rather than how a program runs, so ask each school directly, but plan on being in the room.

Four Tracks At The Smaller Program, One At The Larger

School-wide average graduate tuition in this metro, which excludes DNP add-on charges, runs from $15,012 a year in state at Seattle University to $32,476 at Pacific Lutheran University, about 2 times apart, in the 2023-24 federal figures.

All two priced institutions are private, and each charges the same rate whatever your residency, so moving here or not does not change the bill.

Pacific Lutheran University conferred the most DNPs in the metro in the reporting year, 17, and charges the highest graduate rate here.

These are average tuition figures for full-time graduate students across each institution, not a DNP price. Some doctoral programs add a tuition differential on top, so ask each school for its DNP rate per credit before comparing.

Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma conferred 17 DNP awards in the reporting year and Seattle University conferred 2. On conferrals alone Pacific Lutheran is comfortably the larger operation of the two measured programs.

Breadth runs the other way, and further than usual. Seattle University files four distinct DNP tracks and Pacific Lutheran files one, so the program conferring two doctorates offers four times the choice of population focus. That is the widest track-to-output gap in this batch of metros and it says the two are built for quite different students.

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. 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.

  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.

The Best 2 DNP Programs In Seattle-Tacoma, 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.

Each card shows what the institution publishes.

Ranked 1 of 2

Seattle University

Seattle, WA

65 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Professional practice doctorate

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

Seattle University files five separate DNP specialties, nurse midwifery among them, which few schools run at all. The midwifery program publishes both of its clocks: three years and 67 to 69 credits if you arrive as a registered nurse, four years and 110 to 112 credits through the immersion route built for people entering nursing from another field entirely. That second number is the honest price of a career change, and publishing it beats quoting a range. None of the tracks carries a distance flag in the federal filing, so this is a campus program in Seattle rather than an online one. By doctoral output it sits in the top tenth of accredited institutions.

Tuition
$15,012
In-state
Tuition
$15,012
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
2
Completion
76%
Undergraduate
About the tuition figures
School-wide graduate average, 2023-24. Excludes DNP add-on charges.

Scored on

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

Visit Seattle University →

Ranked 2 of 2

Pacific Lutheran University

Tacoma, WA

35 of 100
  • CCNE-accredited
  • Private nonprofit
  • Professional practice doctorate

Pacific Lutheran arranges every clinical placement through its own faculty, which is the thing that decides whether a doctorate finishes on time, and it keeps cohorts small on purpose. Three entries run: from a bachelor’s, from a master’s, and from a master’s held by a nurse already working in an advanced practice role, with concentrations in family practice and psychiatric mental health. The core is 42 semester hours, taken full-time or part-time. Two practical points. Admission is capped each year and competitive, and once accepted you have three weeks to confirm with a non-refundable $300 advance tuition payment. The grade point average floor is 3.0 across all college work rather than just the nursing degree, which is a stricter test than it first looks.

Tuition
$32,476
In-state
Tuition
$32,476
Out-of-state
DNP Awards
17
Completion
69%
Undergraduate
About the tuition figures
School-wide graduate average, 2023-24. Excludes DNP add-on charges.

Scored on

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

Visit Pacific Lutheran University →

What This Guide Counts As The Seattle-Tacoma Metro

This guide follows the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA metropolitan statistical area and is one of the few guides here whose institutions sit in two different municipalities: one in Seattle and one in Tacoma, about thirty miles apart. The University of Washington holds accreditation in Seattle without federal figures and therefore cannot appear in the ranked list, which is said here rather than left to be noticed.

Municipalities Included

  • Seattle, WA
  • Tacoma, WA

Deliberately Not Included

  • University of Washington Accredited, in Seattle, and absent from the ranking below. The federal survey publishes no DNP figures for it, so this site can neither score it nor place it in a metro. Its absence here is a limit of the data rather than a description of the city.
  • Bellevue, Everett and Bothell, WA Inside the metro and carrying no institution in the accredited dataset.
  • Spokane, WA Its own metropolitan area on the other side of the state, and Washington State University’s health sciences campus is there rather than here.

Choosing A DNP Program In Seattle-Tacoma

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

Pacific Lutheran University and Seattle University are the whole of the field in Seattle-Tacoma

Pacific Lutheran University and Seattle 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 Washington board of nursing rather than to the school.

Who Licenses You In The Seattle-Tacoma 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.

Washington
Full Practice
Washington State Board of Nursing

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

Washington, designated areas
219
Washington, of those rural
131

These figures cover Washington in full rather than the Seattle-Tacoma 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: Washington.

Studying From Outside The Seattle-Tacoma Metro

the Seattle-Tacoma metro holds 2 accredited doctorates and none of the measured ones carries the federal distance-education flag. That flag is an institutional filing rather than a description of any one program, so the local field may reach further than it looks, but a program run elsewhere is the route to check first. 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 Seattle-Tacoma metro this cycle, and whether it will place you for supervised clinical hours near where you live.

Which Seattle-Tacoma 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: Pacific Lutheran University states that route

Pacific Lutheran University's own pages name a bachelor's entry. Others in Seattle-Tacoma 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: Pacific Lutheran University

Pacific Lutheran 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 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 Seattle-Tacoma 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 Seattle-Tacoma?

2 institutions in the Seattle-Tacoma metro hold CCNE accreditation for the Doctor of Nursing Practice. This guide counts the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA metropolitan statistical area rather than the city limits, so the figure includes institutions in 2 municipalities.

What counts as the Seattle-Tacoma metro on this page?

The Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA metropolitan statistical area. In practice that means these municipalities: Seattle, WA; Tacoma, WA. Places deliberately left out are listed on this page with the reason.

Is it cheaper to study for a DNP in Seattle-Tacoma 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 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 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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