A BSN to DNP program takes you from a bachelor’s straight to the
doctorate without stopping at a master’s. It is the longest single
commitment of the three entry routes, and for the right person it is
also the most efficient. 125
accredited institutions say on their own program pages that they run
one, and 125 of them publish
enough federal figures to be scored.
By the Best DNP programs editorial team ·
Reviewed
125Schools Confirming This RouteSchool program pages
It is the longest single commitment of the three routes.Three to four years full-time, and longer around a job. That is the trade: you reach the doctorate without stopping at a master's, and you are inside one program for the whole of it.
2
All 1,000 practice hours sit inside the program.The requirement counts from the baccalaureate, so on this route you bring none with you and the program carries the whole of it. Students entering with a master's arrive with hours already banked.
3
Tuition is multiplied by four here, not by one.Cost carries 45% of the score on this page, more than on the national list, because a gap in the published rate compounds across a four-year stay. The lowest published in-state rate in this pool is $3,239 at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
4
125 schools confirm the route, and 175 are unsettled.This list is the schools whose own pages name a BSN-to-DNP route. The 175 not shown are not closed to you, they are simply not established here, and only 7 institutions positively rule the route out.
How This Ranking Is Scored
Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the
125 institutions on this page and to nothing
else.
45%
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.
20%
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 BSN To DNP Programs In 2026, Ranked
Every school below says on its own site that it runs a BSN-to-DNP route. That is the test for appearing here, and it is a narrower test than "offers one": of the 307 accredited institutions this site holds federal figures for, 125 were confirmed, 7 were found to positively exclude the route, and 175 were not settled either way when their pages were read on 2026-09-08. If the school you want is missing, ask them. Absence from this list is not evidence of anything.
Four years is long enough that the difference between two of these
schools compounds. Each card carries the published figures behind
the score, so you can see which of the three factors is carrying it.
Nebraska publishes its admission floor instead of leaving you to infer it: a 3.0 GPA for full admission across all three entry routes, with applicants between 2.5 and 2.9 eligible for provisional consideration. That is worth knowing before an application fee. Entry is by BSN-to-DNP for nurses with an accredited bachelor’s, MSN-to-DNP for those with an accredited master’s, or a post-graduate track for holders of a master’s or doctorate, and the accrediting bodies accepted for the prior degree are named rather than assumed. Graduates move into advanced clinical roles as nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists and nurse midwives, or into nursing leadership. The school treats those as parallel destinations rather than one being the fallback.
Irvine’s post-master’s DNP is a two-year, primarily online commitment written for working professionals, and the family nurse practitioner track is the heavy one at 98 units and 1,020 hours of clinical practice, though California counts in quarter units, so the load is less alarming than it looks. The useful provision is that the clinical hours attached to the scholarly project can be completed at your own place of employment or another agency suited to the project, which removes the hardest logistical problem in the degree for anyone already working somewhere appropriate. Cohorts are small and the school says it turns away qualified applicants. Nurses employed on a career appointment within the University of California system can apply for a $10,000 scholarship.
4 DNP tracks at this
institution, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing administration, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Oklahoma publishes the conversion most schools leave implicit: one credit hour of practice inquiry equals 64 clinical hours. That single line lets you work out what a given semester actually costs you in time rather than in credits. The degree spans 35 to 51 credit hours and 1,000 to 1,280 clinical hours depending on route, split into 31 didactic credits and 20 clinical. For nurse anesthesia from a BSN the college describes its strongest applicants rather than just its minimum: a grade point average above 3.5, at least two years of critical care, and demonstrated unit leadership through charge roles, preceptorships or governance. The interview runs two to three hours.
Reno’s school of nursing secures your clinical placements for you, which removes the single biggest obstacle in an online doctorate, and then adds the exception in a footnote: you place yourself for the residency component. Both halves matter, and the second is the one to plan around. The program is fully online and open nationwide. Two pathways run, one from a bachelor’s leading to clinical education leadership or nurse executive work, and one from a master’s for nurses already practicing as advanced practitioners or already prepared as educators. If you take the clinical nurse leader master’s here first, a number of its core courses transfer into the doctorate. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 4 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
Utah publishes two MS-to-DNP timetables and what separates them is where you did your master’s. Come from another institution and it is 35 credit hours, five semesters full time starting in fall or seven part time starting in spring. Finish a master’s at Utah recently and the same degree is 30 credits, three semesters full time starting in summer. Either way the clinical requirement is 480 hours. The college counts every clinical, residency and practicum hour you earned during your MSN toward the 1,000 post-baccalaureate hours the degree is built on, so what you still owe depends on what you already banked rather than on a fixed number.
Liberty dropped graduate biostatistics as an admission requirement for its post-master’s DNP, and that removal is worth knowing because biostatistics is the prerequisite that most often sends applicants back to take a course before they can apply anywhere. If yours is missing or stale, this is a route that does not stop you at the door. Alongside it the university runs a post-BSN to DNP with a family nurse practitioner concentration. Liberty is an unusually large institution, over a hundred thousand students, and it confers around fifty-four nursing doctorates a year, so the program is substantial in absolute terms while being small relative to the university around it.
Greensboro publishes the arithmetic that decides whether a post-master’s doctorate is worth starting. The post-master’s DNP runs 30 credits and 1,000 practicum hours, and the hours you already logged in a master’s count toward that total, which is how a full-time student finishes in four semesters, roughly 15 months, entering in the fall and ending the fall after. If your master’s practicum fell short, the school says you make up the difference here rather than waving it through. The nurse anesthesia concentration is a different commitment: 107 credits across nine semesters and 36 months, a May start, and graduate and clinical clock hours averaging about 35 a week. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 3.5 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
Alabama sets clinical hours by concentration rather than by degree, and the spread is wide. The college publishes 1,080 to 1,620 post-baccalaureate hours depending on which concentration you pick, against 540 for a post-master’s entry. A gap that size between two concentrations at one school is worth pinning down before you apply, because at the top end it is most of a year of placement. There is also a transfer rule that can buy time: the direct care core, meaning advanced pathophysiology, advanced physical assessment and advanced pharmacology, may transfer if you took those courses with a B or better within five years of applying. Five years is the part people miss. The doctorate carries no distance flag federally, so plan on Tuscaloosa.
Missouri publishes a hard ceiling on transfer credit for its post-graduate certificates: a faculty advisor may recommend up to three credit hours from an accredited master’s or DNP advanced practice program, and no more. Three hours is one course. If you are shopping post-graduate certificates on the assumption that prior graduate work will shorten the path, this is a school where it barely will, and knowing that early saves an application. It is a large public university in Columbia conferring around forty nursing doctorates a year, so the program itself is substantial even though the transfer policy is tight. Its federal filing carries no distance-education flag, so plan on being in Columbia rather than at a distance.
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.
Southern Illinois Edwardsville quantifies the experience requirement instead of leaving it vague: a year of full-time work, or its part-time equivalent, which the school puts at 1,872 hours, completed before you start the first specialization clinical course. It also wants your registered nurse license current in the state where you intend to do the practicum, not wherever you happen to be licensed now. The post-master’s application asks for a personal statement naming a doctoral project idea that is patient or practice focused, so you are expected to arrive with a problem in mind rather than find one later. Priority deadlines run 1 February for summer, 1 June for fall and 1 November for spring, and every doctoral student attends an immersion in the first days of the fall semester.
5 DNP tracks at this
institution, Adult health, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general), Pediatric, Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
Cincinnati builds its DNP curriculum around evidence-based practice, quality improvement, policy, informatics and leadership, and its family track is explicitly aimed at both national certification exams, the ANCC’s FNP-BC and the AANP’s. The pediatric acute care programs prepare nurses for fast-paced clinical settings and family-centerd care. Two structural details are worth knowing before you plan around it. From spring 2027, advanced health assessment students must complete a three-day on-campus immersion and demonstrate competency before beginning practicum, which for a distance-flagged program means three days in Ohio. And each practicum requires at least two DNP project team meetings, so supervision is scheduled rather than left to you to arrange.
Murray State publishes its curricula course by course, with the credit weight and the clinical hours attached to each one, which is a level of detail most schools keep behind an advising appointment. The post-master’s route shows what that buys you: the doctoral project runs across three sequential courses carrying 180 clinical hours apiece, so 540 hours accumulate through the project itself rather than in separate placements. Bachelor’s entry splits into nurse anesthesia and family practice, and the family sequence front-loads assessment and diagnostics before primary care clinical courses at 180 hours each. If you want to know what a semester will actually demand before you commit, this is a school that has already written it down.
Kentucky runs six specialties inside one BSN-to-DNP option and publishes a plan of study for each rather than one timetable for the degree. Full time is three years. If that will not fit around a roster there are five-year part-time plans and a modified four-year plan built specifically for nurses already working in direct care. Executive leadership sits apart from the clinical specialties with its own full- and part-time sequences. Your specialty decides your certification board as much as your coursework: family primary care goes to ANCC or AANP, both pediatric routes to the PNCB, and executive leadership to the ANCC nurse executive advanced exam or the AONE certified-in-executive-nursing-practice exam.
Arizona State runs its DNP majors at 84 credit hours and publishes the practicum inside that total rather than alongside it. The primary care pediatric track puts 13 of those credits, 585 clock hours, into practicum in a community setting. The acute care pediatric track goes considerably further at 1,170 practicum hours, which the college notes exceeds what the degree standard requires, and 600 of those must be direct patient care supervised by a nurse practitioner or a physician preceptor. If you already hold a master’s, up to 30 credit hours can be carried across, though that needs sign-off from your supervisory committee and the Graduate College rather than being automatic. Delivery is not uniform either: the education major is online while the pediatric majors sit at Downtown Phoenix.
Arizona publishes a credit total and a clinical total for every specialty, and the ratio between them is the interesting part. The pediatric nurse practitioner route is 64 credit hours with 720 clinical hours. Executive health systems leadership is 50 credits with 630 practicum hours, so the leadership route trades away classroom time while giving up very little time in practice, which is not what most people assume about a track that is not primarily clinical. From a master’s, the post-master’s DNP is 35 credit hours. Setting that against the 64 the pediatric route takes from a bachelor’s is the clearest way to see what the master’s you already hold is worth in time rather than in money.
6 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Maternal/Child Health and Neonatal Nurse/Nursing, Nursing administration, Nursing practice (general), Psychiatric-mental health NP, Registered nursing (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Creighton is unusually direct about what the degree costs you in time. Its own page warns that full-time students may struggle to hold down full-time work, and it puts the scholarly project at roughly 30 to 40 hours a semester on top of coursework, which is the kind of number most schools leave you to discover after you enroll. Coursework across all tracks and specializations runs online, full time or part time. Nurse anesthesia is the exception in scale rather than in format: 2,250 clinical hours spread across large metropolitan hospitals, rural and specialty hospitals and community clinics, so the rotations are deliberately not all in one kind of setting.
Jacksonville State audits your master’s hours before it admits you rather than after. If your MSN carries fewer than 500 clinical practicum hours you are admitted conditionally and referred to an advanced experiential clinical course, and the admissions committee runs a gap analysis to decide how many of those hours, between one and five, you need to reach 500 and move on to the residency courses. Both the family nurse practitioner and the adult-gerontology acute care tracks then carry 700 clinical hours of their own, split between simulation and direct patient care. Entry wants a 3.0 GPA, taken on either your whole baccalaureate nursing program or its last 60 hours, whichever is higher.
Villanova is blunt about what its nurse anesthesia track takes: more than 2,000 hours of clinical experience and no fewer than 700 cases, and the college states plainly that the average weekly commitment may run to 60 hours or more. That is a full-time job with a doctorate attached, and it is the frankest statement of the trade any school on this site publishes. Rotations move you deliberately from simple to complex cases across several sites rather than keeping you in one. The post-master’s track is a different proposition: it starts in early summer with an on-campus residency, so your first commitment is a fixed date rather than a rota you can negotiate.
Oshkosh publishes seven named routes rather than two entries with concentrations bolted on afterwards, and the distinctions between them are real. From a bachelor’s you can go to family practice, nurse anesthesia or psychiatric mental health. From a master’s you can go to family practice, psychiatric mental health, or an executive emphasis aimed at leadership work. There is also a separate route for advanced practice registered nurses moving into psychiatric mental health, which is a different starting point from a general master’s and is treated as one. Naming the routes this precisely means you can tell before applying which sequence you would actually be in, rather than finding out at advising. Nurse anesthesia from a bachelor’s is the heaviest of the seven.
Purdue Global publishes the number most schools keep to themselves: it expects 15 to 18 hours of course work a week. That is the figure to hold up against your roster, and it is more useful than any completion estimate, because an estimate assumes you can find those hours in the first place. The doctorate runs nine courses and averages about a year and a half, taught entirely online. Nine courses is a short structure, which is what a post-master’s route looks like once the clinical core is behind you. This is a public online university of about 45,000 students conferring roughly forty nursing doctorates a year, so the program is real but small against the institution, and your cohort is scattered across the country rather than gathered anywhere.
4 DNP tracks at this
institution, Critical care, Family nurse practitioner, Geriatric, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Maryville publishes the doctoral core as a fixed block and everything else as a variable on top of it, which makes the routes easy to compare. The DNP core and capstone are 11 courses and 33 credit hours whichever concentration you take. From a BSN the whole degree is 74 to 77 credit hours depending on that concentration. The psychiatric mental health option, for instance, adds 21 credits of assessment, diagnosis and management on its own. Courses run fully online with start dates in spring, summer and fall rather than one annual intake, and the college puts its accelerated BSN-to-DNP at as few as 40 months against the three to four years a full-time route usually takes.
Northern Kentucky puts a hard experience gate at the door rather than partway through: one year minimum of full-time critical care experience as a registered nurse, within the past two years, with employer verification on a form. Recency is the part that catches people out, because intensive care work from five years ago does not count however much of it there was. From a BSN the degree is 106 credit hours over nine semesters, three years exactly. The post-master’s nurse anesthesia route is 37 semester credits over six semesters instead. Between 106 credits and 37, the master’s you already hold is worth roughly two years here.
Illinois Chicago admits once a year, in fall, and that single intake is the first thing to plan around. The degree runs anywhere from two to six years depending on focus area, entry route and whether you study full or part time. From a master’s it is usually two to four. From a BSN it is 77 credit hours. Delivery is hybrid in the real sense rather than the marketing one, with some courses online, some blended and some on campus. The clinical requirement is 1,000 practicum hours, and in the adult-gerontology acute care focus 675 of those sit inside the specialty itself. One structural point: the college charges the same per-credit rate to residents and non-residents, so an Illinois address does not change what you pay.
Eau Claire requires a Wisconsin registered nurse license, and it puts a date on it. Post-master’s students need it at least two weeks before the program starts. Bachelor’s-entry students need it by 1 July immediately following admission. Licensure by endorsement takes time, so if you are out of state, start that process when you apply rather than when you are accepted. Both routes want a 3.00 grade point average and degrees from programs accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, the National League for Nursing or the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing, plus a statistics course passed at C or better. After admission come health records, a criminal background check and current CPR certification.
Clemson delivers all of its DNP coursework online and sets a floor rather than a target on length: a minimum of six semesters, which is two years if you run straight through. A minimum is a useful thing to be told, because it is the number a school cannot talk you below, whereas an advertised completion time usually assumes everything goes right. Its federal filing does carry a distance-education flag, so the online description holds up rather than being a partial one. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the middle third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures.
George Mason splits its delivery by what you are learning rather than applying one format to everything. Coursework runs on the Fairfax campus in a flexible hybrid or executive format, while clinical skill development happens the traditional way, in person and supervised. The clinical requirement is 1,000 precepted and mentored hours, and the doctoral work takes the shape of two practice inquiry project courses across two semesters rather than one long capstone. Tracks cover family primary care, psychiatric mental health and adult-gerontology, each built around a different patient population, and the coursework is named accordingly: clinical psychopharmacology and individual psychotherapy in the psychiatric track, pharmacotherapeutics and advanced pathophysiology in the gerontology one.
5 DNP tracks at this
institution, Adult health, Critical care, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing administration, Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
Winona State scopes its post-master’s doctorate narrowly: your master’s has to be in nursing with a focus in administration or leadership. A clinical practitioner master’s is not the intended input here, which makes this a leadership doctorate in substance as well as in name. A year of clinical nursing experience in a master’s-level role is recommended on top of that. The provision worth knowing before you commit is that you can take up to 12 credits as a non-degree student and transfer them in once you are accepted. That lets you test the program and the workload against your life before carrying a full application, which very few schools allow.
Missouri St. Louis does not run its doctorate alone. The program is delivered online cooperatively with the Kansas City and Columbia campuses, so the course pool is wider than one college could staff and its shape is set by all three communities. Coursework is distance learning with a three-day on-campus intensive. Two conditions decide eligibility before anything else. The university cannot admit online students from every state, so check yours against its authorization list first. And your grade point average is calculated on the last 60 hours of the bachelor’s, floor 3.0, which helps if you finished stronger than you started. The acute care pediatric tracks want a year of inpatient pediatric nursing behind you.
UCLA attaches a freshness rule to one prerequisite that quietly rules people out: the statistics course has to have been taken within five years of when you matriculate. A course from your bachelor’s a decade ago will not carry, so budget for retaking it. The pediatric practitioner focus is scoped precisely, newborns through young adults up to age 21, which tells you the patient population instead of leaving pediatric to mean whatever you assume. The doctorate carries no distance flag in the federal filing, so this is a Los Angeles program rather than a remote one. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the middle third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures.
East Tennessee State publishes a semester count for every combination, which is rarer than it should be. Bachelor’s entry runs nine semesters full-time or fifteen part-time. Master’s entry runs four semesters full-time or seven part-time, but only while your doctorate stays in the same concentration as your master’s. Switch concentrations and you get an individualized plan of study instead of a published timeline, which is the school telling you the number will be larger. Coursework is delivered online and asynchronously. The college also guarantees admission to up to ten qualified ROTC students per cohort, which is a real advantage if you are one of them. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the lowest third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 2.5 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Viterbo is specific about who may write your references, and it rules out the easy option. One has to come from your current clinical supervisor, and that person must either practice in the role you are seeking or work alongside people who do. The second must come from a physician, physician assistant or advanced practice nurse. A reference from a manager who has never done the job will not satisfy it. Everyone who clears that stage gets a personal interview. Bachelor’s entry is a year-round curriculum of three to three and a half years including summers, mostly online with roughly one day a week on campus, and practicums can usually be done where you already live. Full-time places are limited and part-time admission depends on space.
Nebraska Methodist splits its BSN-to-DNP into two numbers you can actually plan around. The degree is 75 credit hours. Fifty-seven of those you can complete online, in a mix of synchronous and asynchronous courses, and the remaining 18 are clinical practice carrying 1,080 contact hours. So roughly three quarters of the coursework is remote and the clinical quarter is not, which is a far clearer division than most schools calling themselves online will give you. Those 1,080 contact hours also sit above the 1,000 post-baccalaureate hours the degree standard calls for. The same split holds across the tracks, including family nurse practitioner and the adult-gerontology clinical nurse specialist route.
Colorado Christian is explicit that it is a Christian university and that the doctorate is built that way. The curriculum is framed around biblical truth alongside the national nursing competencies, and admission asks for a stated desire to do doctoral work in a Christ-centered community. Read that as information rather than marketing, because it shapes who is in the cohort. The leadership track for master’s holders runs 520 clinical hours and you complete them where you already live, rather than traveling to a placement the school picks. Courses come in 5, 10 and 15 week blocks with a one-day online orientation. One caveat comes before all of it: the program is online but open only to students in certain states, so check whether yours is one.
Marquette takes master’s holders from three different backgrounds rather than only clinical ones: an advanced practice role, nursing administration and leadership, or health care policy. A policy master’s named explicitly as an entry route is unusual, and worth knowing if your work has moved away from the bedside. The curriculum spans translational research, epidemiology, informatics, statistics, advanced clinical practice and health policy. The deadlines are firm and worth marking: 15 November for spring entry and 15 February for fall, with late fall applications considered on a space-available basis if complete by 1 June. There is no summer admission at all, so the calendar has two doors rather than three.
Chamberlain runs its DNP fully online and puts the shortest route at two years. It describes itself as the largest DNP program in the country by total graduates, which is its own claim rather than a federal one. The rule to check before you apply concerns the master’s you already hold. If you have a BSN plus a graduate degree in a field other than nursing, you must transfer in or complete at least six designated Chamberlain courses, 18 credit hours in all, before you can be admitted to the doctorate at all. That is a semester of work most applicants do not budget for. Focus areas then sit on top of the core as two elective leadership courses each.
Idaho State calculates your grade point average on the last 60 credits of your bachelor’s rather than the whole degree, with a floor of 3.0, which helps if you started slowly and finished well. Post-master’s applicants have a paperwork job most schools do not ask for: an official letter carrying the university seal, documenting exactly how many clinical hours your master’s program included. You then sign a contract with the school committing to whatever additional hours are needed to meet the national requirement, so any shortfall is settled in writing at admission rather than discovered later. The school of nursing awards more than $100,000 in scholarships a year and opens applications in April. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the lowest third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 3 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
Washburn sets the doctorate against what you already hold rather than running one sequence for everyone. The school describes the program as advanced practice education matched to your entry education level, your certification and the practice you intend, so a bachelor’s-prepared registered nurse and a certified practitioner are not doing the same plan of study. The bachelor’s route is written for nurses who keep working through it. Delivery is distance accessible, which is the school’s own phrase and a more careful one than fully online. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the lowest third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures.
Michigan Flint publishes the master’s and the doctoral portions separately, which makes the real cost of the doctorate in credits visible in a way most schools avoid. For the family nurse practitioner concentration the master’s core is 52 credits and the combined MSN and DNP is 70, so the doctoral layer is 18 credits on top. Adult-gerontology primary care runs 55 and 73, the same 18-credit difference. If you already hold a master’s, the MSN-to-DNP route is 30 to 34 credit hours, nearly twice that 18, and the gap is the price of the college bridging whatever your master’s did not cover. Admission carries a small non-refundable deposit to hold your seat.
Chatham runs a 27-credit low-residency post-master’s doctorate that can be finished in four terms, one of the shorter honest routes on this site. The 500-hour rule is the one to read carefully: if you have not completed 500 clinical hours before you enroll, the shortfall has to be made up during the program, and it is required for the degree to be conferred. A lighter master’s practicum turns into extra work here rather than a waiver. The admission essay asks you to describe a clinical problem in your own practice setting and explain how you would spend those 500 hours changing it, so the application is effectively a project proposal. There is no prerequisite course list, but faculty expect research methods and statistics behind you.
Bradley publishes credits, years, semesters and clinical hours together for each route, which makes the trade explicit in a way most schools avoid. From a BSN, the adult-gerontology acute care doctorate is 68 credit hours over 10 semesters, about three years and four months, carrying the full 1,000 clinical hours. If you already hold a master’s and want the post-master’s certificate in the same specialty instead, that is 32 credits over five semesters, roughly a year and eight months, with 600 clinical hours. Half the time and under half the credits, for a certificate rather than a doctorate. The programs run online, and there is a separate RN-to-MSN entry for nurses holding an associate degree, a diploma or a bachelor’s in another field.
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.
James Madison publishes three credit totals and one hour total. The post-master’s route is 40 to 46 credits, bachelor’s entry is 77, and healthcare systems leadership is 69, and every one of them carries the same 1,000 course-related practice hours. The hours do not move with your prior degree here, only the coursework does. The funding is the part worth chasing: a graduate assistantship covers full tuition and fees and pays a stipend, in exchange for 18 hours a week working with faculty. Eighteen hours is close to a half-time job, so it suits someone stepping back from clinical work rather than fitting a doctorate around full shifts. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the middle third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures.
Delta State takes applications year round rather than against one annual deadline, which removes the wait that stops people applying when they are actually ready. The doctorate is online with campus visits each semester, taken full-time or part-time. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the lowest fifth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is barely higher, which is unusual for a public university. Against its size the school confers nursing doctorates at a rate in the top quarter of accredited institutions, so a small campus is running a real doctoral program rather than a token one.
Thomas Edison built its whole institution around working adults, and the doctorate shows it: 36 credits, finishing in 12 to 24 months, with a scholarly immersion project you can run inside your current job rather than somewhere else. Twelve months is fast for a doctorate, and it is only plausible because the project is meant to sit on top of work you are already doing. If your employer has a problem worth fixing and will let you fix it, that is the shape this program assumes. Everything runs online. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the middle third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is barely higher, which is unusual for a public university.
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.
Rutgers Camden puts a hard experience gate partway through rather than at the door: you need at least two years of registered nurse experience before you can progress into Primary Care Clinical I. So the clock on eligibility keeps running after you enroll, which is unusual and worth mapping against your own service. The clinical volume is unusual too. Students complete roughly 1,400 to 1,600 supervised clinical hours, well above the 1,000 the degree standard sets. Clinical theory courses are taught in person on campus, with some of the scholarly and didactic coursework offered hybrid, and the school describes the program as rigorous and full-time rather than something to fit around a roster.
San Diego runs an unusually wide set of bachelor’s-entry tracks, two of them dual routes that qualify you in a second population: pediatric with family, and adult-gerontology with family. Earning two certifications inside one sequence is rare, and worth weighing against the extra time it takes. One condition settles it for anyone outside California: your California license endorsement has to be in progress at the point of admission, so the licensing question cannot wait until after you arrive. The grade point average floor is 3.0, calculated on your most recent bachelor’s or graduate coursework rather than on everything you have ever taken, and a year of clinical experience is preferred rather than required.
UT Health San Antonio publishes the conversion most schools leave implicit: one semester credit hour of practicum equals four clock hours a week for that semester, and the ratio holds across every DNP track. Multiply it out before you enroll and you will know what a six-credit practicum term actually costs you in time, which is the calculation that decides whether a program fits around shift work. The school also publishes doctoral graduation rates and average time to degree by cohort instead of leaving you to ask. This is a health science center with no undergraduate arts college attached, so everyone around you is in a health profession. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 4 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
Connecticut calls its doctorate online and then names the two dates you cannot miss: intensive sessions on the Storrs campus in August and in January. Budget for those trips before anything else. Two entry points run, one from a bachelor’s and one from a master’s for nurses already licensed and certified in an advanced practice role. The post-master’s route carries a requirement the other does not: verification of 2,080 direct patient care hours as a registered nurse, on a form, completed before you apply. That is a full year of full-time practice, evidenced rather than asserted. Admission wants a nursing bachelor’s from a regionally accredited institution, a 3.0 undergraduate average and three references.
St. Augustine publishes the whole shape of its psychiatric mental health route: 77 credit hours plus 1,334 practicum contact hours across 12 trimesters, about four years from a bachelor’s. Coursework is online with one required clinical intensive held virtually, which is a genuinely different commitment from flying somewhere. Two details reward a close read. Practicum hours here run well above the thousand most programs settle at, and the university publishes a different credit total for students in Arkansas, so the state you live in can change the degree requirement. Against its size this is one of the larger producers of nursing doctorates in the country.
Northwestern Oklahoma State built its doctorate around rural practice, and it is the first BSN-to-DNP at a public Oklahoma university to prepare family nurse practitioners. The program carries the name of the Wisdom Family Foundation, and the rural focus is the substance rather than a marketing line, because rural placement is where preceptor availability actually bites. From a BSN the degree is 73 credit hours. If you already hold a master’s in nursing, the post-master’s option is 37 to 39. Cohorts start on a fixed cycle with a 1 March application deadline, so this is not a program you drift into at some convenient point in the year.
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.
Chattanooga caps what your past counts for, and says so plainly. The doctorate requires 1,000 clinical hours, and a post-master’s student may apply at most 500 hours earned after the bachelor’s toward that total. So a nurse arriving with a full master’s practicum behind them is still doing 500 more hours here. The post-master’s curriculum runs a minimum of 36 semester credits. Those hours finish in a clinical residency where you complete a translational project supervised by a chair and a committee, which is closer to a thesis structure than to a capstone. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the lowest third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures.
Wilkes runs its post-master’s doctorate online and mostly asynchronously, and it counts indirect clinical hours toward the total, which matters if your work is systems and leadership rather than direct patient care. How many hours you owe depends on what your master’s already covered, so the number gets settled against your transcript instead of being published as one figure. The catalog also carries a course whose stated purpose is giving students more time to finish the required 1,000 hours. That is a quiet admission that the hours are where people run long, and it is more useful than a completion estimate. If you are here to move into a leadership role rather than a new clinical population, the shape fits that.
Georgia College runs its DNP as three years of full-time study across nine semesters. That is a fixed shape rather than a range, so you can plan against it from the day you apply, which is more than most schools give you. The flexibility sits in the transfer rule instead: up to nine credit hours can come across from prior graduate work, but that is at the joint discretion of the program advisor, the coordinator and the department chair rather than an entitlement. Three people have to agree, so treat it as a conversation to have before you apply rather than a box to tick afterwards. The federal filing flags the program for distance study.
Tennessee Tech does not run its doctorate alone. It is a joint program with East Tennessee State, which means the faculty pool and the course catalog are larger than a single campus this size could support, and it is the reason a university best known for engineering can offer a nursing doctorate at all. Delivery is blended, mixing online coursework with in-person elements. The school flags a condition that catches distance students out: the regulatory requirements governing student clinical placement vary by state and change over time, so where you may legally do your hours is a question to settle with the program before you enroll. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the lowest third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures.
Boise State offers something most schools do not: if you already hold an advanced practice degree, whether as a nurse anesthetist, practitioner or midwife, the post-master’s doctorate carries no clinical component at all. That is the fastest honest route to the credential for someone already practicing, and the school states it plainly rather than burying it in a transfer policy. Bachelor’s entry specializes in adult-gerontology acute care or family practice, runs nationwide, and blends online coursework with annual in-person summer intensives. A dedicated placement team arranges the clinical sites rather than leaving you to it. There is no out-of-state tuition, and you can start full-time in the fall or part-time in the spring.
Winston-Salem State publishes both totals and both clocks, which makes the two routes easy to weigh against each other. Bachelor’s entry runs 78 semester hours with a minimum of 1,182 clinical hours and points at family nurse practitioner work, spread over six semesters and two summers, so about three years. Master’s entry runs 33 semester hours with a minimum of 510 clinical hours and takes roughly two years and a summer. The distance between 1,182 hours and 510 is the entire argument for finishing a master’s first if you are weighing the two routes. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 3.5 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
Virginia publishes a 33-month full-time route from a BSN and five to six years if you go part time, which is a wider spread than most schools will admit to. The neonatal concentration attaches 14 credits and 750 hours of direct care practicum on top of the core, specialty courses and electives, and how long the whole thing takes still turns on whether you entered with a bachelor’s or a master’s. One route is restricted rather than merely selective: the combined adult-gerontology acute care clinical nurse specialist and nurse practitioner track is open to military students only and runs 36 months. If you are not eligible for that one, the real choice is narrower than the concentration list suggests.
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.
Iowa publishes its clinical load per semester rather than as one total, which is the number that actually tells you whether the degree fits around a job. Fall and spring each carry 180 clinical hours if you are in the adult-gerontology primary care, pediatric or family tracks, and 270 if you are in psychiatric mental health or adult-gerontology acute care. Summer flips it for family nurse practitioners: 270 there, against 180 for the others. So the family route runs lighter through the main terms and heavier in summer, while psychiatric and acute care carry half again as much all year. Map that against your roster before comparing programs on their total hours.
Valdosta State runs a post-master’s doctorate at 38 credit hours over five semesters, online, aimed at advanced practice nurses who are still working. The unusual provision sits in the bachelor’s-entry route: you can opt out at semester seven with a master’s in hand, then return within three years to finish the last three semesters and take the doctorate. That is an exit with something to show for it, which matters if your circumstances change midway, and very few schools build one in. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 3.5 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
Temple houses its nursing doctorate inside a college of public health rather than a standalone school of nursing, so the people around you are epidemiologists, biostatisticians and physical therapists as well as nurses. That shapes the degree toward population-level work. Classes meet one day a week at the Health Sciences Center, which is the most useful scheduling fact on this card, because it lets you plan a year of shifts around one fixed day. Many courses mix online and in-person delivery. Both entries, from a bachelor’s and from a master’s, run full-time or part-time, and you can take the degree with or without a concentration. The scholarly project starts in your first year rather than waiting until the end.
5 DNP tracks at this
institution, Critical care, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing administration, Nursing practice (general), Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
South Carolina publishes a semester count for every route, and the spread is wide enough to matter. The post-master’s clinical expert major is 33 credits over six semesters. Healthcare leadership runs 36 to 39 credits over seven. Nursing education is the widest of them, 33 to 60 hours over six to nine semesters, because what you need depends on what you arrive holding. From a BSN the commitment is different in kind: those options run nine, eleven or twelve semesters depending on the route, which is three to four years before you account for anything slipping. Full-time and part-time plans of study are published for the BSN entry point.
Lenoir-Rhyne points its doctorate at psychiatric mental health, and the track ends with eligibility to sit for board certification as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. The clinical requirement runs past 1,000 hours, pairing direct clinical work with the doctoral project rather than treating them as two separate obligations. Psychiatric mental health is where the shortage of practitioners is sharpest, so a college running that track specifically is making a different bet from one running a general doctorate. The program carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on Hickory. Against its size Lenoir-Rhyne confers nursing doctorates at a rate in the top quarter of accredited institutions, which is more than a college of 2,300 students usually manages.
Sacred Heart builds the family nurse practitioner clinical work around you rather than handing you a rotation. Its two clinical immersion courses are designed individually against the student’s own clinical interests, which is a different arrangement from being placed wherever a slot happens to be open. The college also runs role immersion sequences for the clinical nurse leader and the nurse educator paths, each ending in a capstone rather than an exam. One course in the catalog tells you something no brochure will: there is a continuous enrollment option for students who need more time to finish required clinical hours. Hours run over more often than schools say out loud, and Sacred Heart has built a way to stay enrolled while you finish them.
Azusa Pacific attaches its experience requirement to a point inside the program rather than to admission. The family nurse practitioner track wants eight months of work as a registered nurse before you begin the second year of courses, so you can be admitted while you are still accumulating it, which is not how most schools handle the same requirement. The residency requirement is 1,000 hours, and the school counts leadership experience toward that total alongside clinical work, a broader definition than programs treating the whole thing as patient contact. Admitted students hold their place in the cohort with a nonrefundable deposit, so the commitment lands earlier than at schools admitting on a rolling basis.
Valparaiso teaches the coursework asynchronously online and keeps the clinical training in person, which is the standard honest arrangement rather than a claim of a fully remote doctorate. Two paths run, one from a bachelor’s and one from a master’s. The university files its doctorate under a family nurse practitioner specialty, so the clinical destination is primary care across the lifespan rather than a systems or leadership role. This is a small private university and the doctoral output reflects it, so expect a cohort measured in single figures and faculty with room to accommodate individual pacing.
Houston caps what you can carry forward, and the number is worth checking before you compare it with anywhere else. The maximum clinical hours it will accept from an MSN is 500, whatever you actually logged. So if your master’s carried 700 or 800 practicum hours, two or three hundred of them stop counting the moment you enroll here, and the post-master’s DNP still runs 37 to 42 credit hours over eight semesters. Against a school that applies your full master’s total against the 1,000, that is a real difference in time rather than a technicality. Eight semesters is the published shape whichever end of the credit range you land on.
5 DNP tracks at this
institution, Geriatric, Maternal/Child Health and Neonatal Nurse/Nursing, Pediatric, Public Health/Community Nurse/Nursing, Registered nursing (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Michigan places you rather than leaving you to find a preceptor. Faculty match students to clinical sites from a curated network, which is the opposite of the arrangement that stalls people at other schools. Two routes run. Bachelor’s entry offers a three or four year plan, web-blended with required on-campus learning, and you may apply to only one specialty option, so choosing wrong costs you a cycle. The post-master’s route is a two-year plan. Your registered nurse license has to be active in the state where you will do the clinical work before your first term, not merely somewhere. No GRE is required for any graduate program here. Three references are asked for, and the school prefers they hold a master’s in nursing or higher.
South University sets a deadline that catches people out: official documentation of the clinical hours you completed after your bachelor’s has to be submitted within five weeks of your start date. Five weeks is not long to get a former program to certify a transcript detail, so start that request before you enroll rather than after. The doctorate runs online, and by output it is one of the larger nursing doctorates in the country, so the program itself is well established. The federal file also records a 7 percent graduation rate for the institution as a whole. That figure is undergraduate-weighted rather than a measure of this doctorate, and it is the sort of number to ask about directly before committing.
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.
Messiah runs three doctoral tracks online, family nurse practitioner, nurse educator and nursing leadership, and the leadership one is written for nurses who already hold a master’s in nursing or a related field. The practitioner route is the heavy one, published at 82 credits with 1,215 clinical hours, which is a bachelor’s-entry load rather than a top-up. Messiah also advertises no-fee tuition, meaning the published rate is the rate rather than a base you add course and technology charges to, and that is worth checking against whatever you compare it with. It is a small private university, so the doctoral cohort is small, and every track is taught online rather than in Mechanicsburg.
Oklahoma Wesleyan runs its BSN-to-DNP one course at a time in eight-week blocks, which is a genuinely different shape from a semester load and takes about three years end to end. Taking a single course at once means you are never juggling three deadlines, and it also means falling behind in one course stalls the whole sequence rather than a part of it. The other thing worth knowing is who it lets in. Applicants holding a diploma from a hospital school of nursing can transfer in 40 credit hours, which is an unusually explicit accommodation for nurses who trained before the bachelor’s became the standard entry.
Mississippi University for Women puts its BSN-to-DNP at as few as eight terms, about 33 months, which is quick for a route that starts from a bachelor’s where three to four years is the norm. Terms rather than semesters is the tell: the calendar is built around shorter blocks, so the pace comes from density rather than from cutting content. It is a small public university that confers a modest number of doctorates a year, so expect a small cohort rather than a large program. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the lowest fifth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is barely higher, which is unusual for a public university.
Point Loma splits the 1,000 clinical hours in a way few schools spell out: at least 500 must be direct patient care and 500 attach to the DNP project itself. If you assumed the project counted as paperwork rather than as practice hours, that changes the shape of the whole second half of the degree. The clinical nurse specialist route is fully asynchronous and runs 55 to 65 units depending on the prerequisites you arrive holding. Healthcare leadership from an MSN is 24 months, six semesters. Family nurse practitioner is the long one at 76 units and as many as ten semesters, and it is also the route with in-person requirements: two on-campus intensive weekends on top of clinicals, with synchronous sessions optional rather than required.
Auburn runs its doctorate as a hybrid program and is upfront about what that means: scheduled on-campus intensives you attend in person, with distance-learning delivery in between. Knowing there is a fixed campus obligation before you apply is the difference between a program that fits your life and one that quietly does not. The college publishes separate pages for admission and progression, curriculum models, graduate assistantships and scholarship information, so the funding routes are laid out rather than left to an advising appointment. Auburn’s doctoral output is small against the size of the university, so expect a compact cohort inside a large public institution.
Southeastern Louisiana leaves preceptor and facility selection to you, and says so plainly. That is the opposite of a placement service, and it is the most useful thing on this card, because finding your own preceptor is the step that stalls people most often. Weigh it against the schools that place you before you decide. Campus time comes down to two events, orientation and the defense of your doctoral project, with coursework online in between. Those online courses go through a peer review certification the university calls the Course Alignment Process, which is more quality assurance than most programs bother to describe. The GRE is no longer required. Bachelor’s entry specializes in family practice, psychiatric mental health or the nurse executive route.
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.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Nursing administration, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Baylor confers 196 doctorates in nursing practice a year, which is among the largest outputs in the country and is explained by an online school running several tracks at once. The pediatric route splits in two and the college is explicit about the difference: a primary care track working with children and families, and an acute care track for pediatric patients with complex, critical or chronic illness in hospitals, intensive care units and emergency departments. The family route is post-master’+A+’s only, gated on an MSN in family practice, a 3.0 cumulative GPA and existing board certification. Note that the pediatric track is not currently offered at post-master’+A+’s level, so the two population focuses admit from different places.
Morningside builds a second chance into admission, which almost no school does in writing. If you are turned down on grade point average, you may still register for coursework, and after 10 graduate credit hours at 3.0 or better you can be admitted. That turns a hard floor into a demonstrable one. Three tracks run, direct patient care, transformative leadership and adult-gerontology acute care, and each is open from either a bachelor’s or a master’s. Everything is online. Licensure carries a geographic condition: your registered nurse license must be from Iowa or a compact state, and anything else needs the dean’s approval, so settle that before you apply. A new graduate can start while still obtaining licensure, for one semester.
Coppin State splits the clinical hours in a way worth knowing about: at least 300 have to be done inside this program, and up to 700 can transfer from an accredited master’s. The floor is 300 whatever you bring, and the transfer ceiling is generous next to schools that stop at 500. Entry runs from a bachelor’s in nursing accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing or the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, and the pathways run in a traditional or hybrid format rather than fully online. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the lowest fifth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures.
Gonzaga answers plainly the question a lot of schools leave fuzzy: this doctorate will not make you a nurse practitioner. It is a general post-master’s degree meant to add doctoral preparation to the specialty you already hold, and if you want a new clinical specialty the university points you at a second master’s instead. Knowing that up front saves a wasted application. Admission wants a 3.3 grade point average across your master’s-level nursing courses, with a written explanation if you fall short, plus verification of the practicum hours your master’s included. The application also asks you to name a project topic you care about and say why it matters, so arrive with one. The deadline is 1 February and everything runs online.
Rush prices its DNP in time rather than in one number, and the three entry points are genuinely different lengths. From a BSN it runs about three and two-thirds years. From a master’s in a non-APRN role it is three years, and from a master’s as a practicing APRN it is two. The clinical practicum follows the same logic: 756 hours from a BSN or a non-APRN master’s, and between 500 and 756 for an APRN, settled by a gap analysis of what you already hold. Nurse anesthesia ignores all of that at 36 months for everyone whatever they enter with, and it is accredited by the COA rather than CCNE, re-accredited in 2025 and running to 2035.
Delaware publishes its clinical hours split by type, which almost nobody does. The adult-gerontology acute care concentration is 68 credit hours and 1,016 clinical hours, and it tells you that 816 of those are direct care against 200 indirect. That distinction is worth more than it looks, because a program quoting one large number may be counting hours you would not describe as patient contact. The hours sit inside the core and concentration courses rather than being bolted on afterwards. The psychiatric mental health concentration runs hybrid, and its on-campus intensives run simulation with trained student actors rather than standardized patients alone.
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.
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. 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.
Dominican builds its doctorate around a residency rather than a capstone bolted on at the end. A one-credit course introduces the residency, and Residency I carries four credits, pairing clinical practicum with scholarly work so the project grows inside supervised practice instead of running alongside it. That structure matters if you want the doctoral project to be something you do at work rather than a paper you write after hours. This is a small university of about 1,400 students, and against that size it confers nursing doctorates at one of the higher rates in the country. The program carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on being in Orangeburg rather than at a distance.
Ashland publishes credits, years and per-semester load together for every route, which is rare enough to be the reason to look at it. From a master’s the DNP is 37 to 41 credit hours across six to eight semesters, so a little over two years full time. From a bachelor’s it is 79 credit hours over twelve semesters, four years. The nurse educator track is longer still at 82 credits on that same four-year shape. Six to eight credits a semester is the constant across all of them, and that is the number to hold against your working week rather than the totals. Some courses carry required on-campus sessions, so this is not a route you finish entirely from home.
4 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Geriatric, Nursing practice (general), Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
George Washington files four DNP specialties, family, geriatric, psychiatric mental health and a general track, and delivers them in a hybrid shape: coursework online with some on-campus time for testing and skills training. Online here means most of it rather than all of it, and the on-campus days are the ones that need planning if you are traveling in. Clinical hour requirements are set per specialty rather than across the degree, so the specialty page is where the real number lives. 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.
Lewis runs four clinical practitioner tracks from a bachelor’s, adult-gerontology acute and primary care, family, and psychiatric mental health, plus a leadership track for people not heading into direct practice. The delivery split rewards a close read. Coursework is online, but annual immersion events and the health assessment labs happen at the Oak Brook location, and the residency and project implementation courses happen in person at whichever practice setting you use. So this degree takes place in three different kinds of place, not one. If Oak Brook is a long trip for you, that annual commitment is the thing to price before applying, because it repeats every year rather than happening once.
Marymount separates its two kinds of hours and publishes both: 750 direct patient care hours and 500 project hours. Counting them apart is more honest than one combined figure, because patient-facing work and the doctoral project make very different demands on a week. Bachelor’s entry leads to either family practice or psychiatric mental health certification, and the whole thing runs online. The program is explicit about its Catholic tradition and a servant leadership framing, which is information about the cohort you would join rather than a line of marketing. The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education accredits the bachelor’s, the master’s, the post-master’s certificates and the doctorate.
William Paterson runs one doctorate and is precise about it: a post-master’s DNP taught online, 38 credit hours, finishing in as few as 30 months. Thirty-eight credits is a middling load for a post-master’s route, and 30 months is the floor rather than the average, so read it as what the sequence allows when nothing goes wrong. The wider school of nursing matters if you are still choosing a master’s first. Its family nurse practitioner track runs 47 credits full-time or part-time, and it also runs a school nurse program that carries an Educational Services Endorsement once the 24 credits are done. School nursing is a different job from advanced clinical practice, and few universities run both routes inside one college.
Mount Carmel inverts the usual order: your specialty track is decided by the evidence-based practice project you end up doing, rather than chosen at application. You commit to the program first and the specialization follows from the work, which suits someone who knows the problem they want to solve better than the label they want on it. The program runs as a cohort over 18 months and five semesters, online, and the project can be carried out in your own workplace. Admission is stricter than most: a 3.25 cumulative graduate grade point average, and two references of which at least one must be doctorally prepared and one must come from a nurse holding a master’s or a doctorate.
Alverno runs 33 to 40 credits depending on the track you choose and how much clinical work you owe, and a full-time student can finish in 18 months. The hour count is set against your master’s practicum rather than fixed, so it varies from student to student. The distinctive part is funding. Students in the educational leadership track may be eligible for $40,000 through the Wisconsin Nurse Educator Program, a state scheme aimed at the shortage of nursing faculty. That is a large share of the cost of a doctorate this length, and it attaches to a track rather than to merit, so the track you pick changes what you pay. Alverno is a small college in Milwaukee and the doctoral cohort is small.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Concordia publishes both totals for both routes, which makes them easy to weigh against each other. Bachelor’s entry is 70 credit hours and 1,008 clinical and practicum hours over three to four years, online with a mandatory four-day on-campus residency. The psychiatric mental health route from a master’s runs eight semesters, about three years, and requires 1,000 post-baccalaureate residency hours of which 500 must be psychiatric hours completed inside the program. That 500-hour floor is the number to check against what you already hold. Two eligibility limits come first: the online program is not open to international students or anyone needing an F1 visa, and state approval for online licensure varies, so check yours against the school’s disclosure list before you apply.
Indianapolis publishes a credit total and an hour total for every track, which makes comparing them unusually easy. The two bachelor’s-entry practitioner tracks, family and adult-gerontology primary care, are each 62 credit hours with 1,050 to 1,250 clinical and practicum hours. The executive track is 31 to 36 credit hours against 1,000 practicum hours, and the post-master’s track uses the same credit range against 500 to 1,000 hours. Pace is where they part company. Family and post-master’s take you full-time or part-time, while adult-gerontology primary care and the executive track are part-time only, so if your plan was to push through quickly, those two will not let you. Admission wants a 3.0 cumulative grade point average and two years of full-time work before practicum hours start.
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.
Francis Marion aims its doctorate at rural practice, which is the honest description of where its graduates work in South Carolina. Three tracks run: a master’s entry for nurses who already hold an advanced practice license, and two bachelor’s entries leading to family or psychiatric mental health practice. The constraint to plan around is the calendar, because both entries admit for fall only. Miss it and you wait a year, so the application timeline matters more here than at a school with rolling or multi-term intakes. Master’s entry wants a cumulative 3.0 in the master’s. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the lowest third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures. Post-master’s certificates in psychiatric mental health and nurse education run alongside for nurses who want a credential without the degree.
Louisiana at Lafayette charges no out-of-state premium on its online doctorate, which removes the penalty that usually makes a public university expensive from elsewhere. The program runs online with a dedicated enrollment specialist, round-the-clock tutoring and an online student resource center. One thing the university’s own reporting makes plain is worth knowing first: most students in the cohort are nurse practitioners, and a student who arrived from an administration and teaching background needed additional residency hours to finish. If your master’s was not a clinical practitioner degree, ask what your hour total will be rather than assuming the published one covers you. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 3.5 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
Mary Baldwin’s post-MSN DNP attaches 400 project hours to the clinical hours you already earned during your master’s, and together they have to reach the 1,000 the degree requires. So the size of what is left is set by what your MSN carried rather than by a fixed number here. The catalog also does something almost no school does: it estimates study time at two to three hours for every credit hour, which turns an abstract course load into a countable number of evenings. Virginia residents taking at least 12 credit hours can claim the state’s tuition assistance grant, worth $5,000 in the year the university publishes, and that is money which does not depend on the university itself.
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.
King sets a higher bar for the shorter route, which is the opposite of what most people expect. Master’s entry wants a grade point average of 3.25 across your bachelor’s and master’s. Bachelor’s entry wants 3.0. So if your master’s grades were middling, the longer route may be the one actually open to you. The program runs online at 36 semester hours over six semesters, and you may take it slower if you need to. The clinical requirement is 1,000 documented post-baccalaureate hours, with documented doing real work in that sentence. Both entries want a nursing degree from an accredited program, the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education among the bodies named. King is small, so the cohorts are small.
Madonna runs two routes that barely resemble each other. The post-BSN doctorate is 74 credit hours with an MSN exit built into it, meaning you can leave with a master’s if the doctorate stops making sense partway through, which is a genuine safety net rather than a marketing line. For nurses who already hold an MSN the program is 33 semester hours taken entirely online. It charges one published rate whichever state you live in, so residency does not move the price the way it would at a public university, and its federal filing does carry a distance-education flag. Expect a small cohort: this is a private university of about 2,100 students.
7 DNP tracks at this
institution, Adult health, Family nurse practitioner, Maternal/Child Health and Neonatal Nurse/Nursing, Nursing practice (general), Pediatric, Psychiatric-mental health NP, Women's Health Nurse/Nursing. Ranked once, on the largest.
Duke files more separate DNP records with the federal survey than any other institution in this dataset, eight of them, which is a fair signal of how many distinct routes sit under one program name. Its MSN-to-DNP is distance-based, with coursework completed from wherever you are. Admission is broader than most: it takes a master’s in nursing from a CCNE- or ACEN-accredited program, but it will also take a master’s in a related health field, so a graduate degree from outside nursing does not rule you out here the way it does at a lot of schools. Among the specialties is a nurse innovator and entrepreneur track whose three specialty courses all run online.
La Salle runs two DNP routes that ask for very different lives. The post-master’+A+’s track is aimed at nurses moving into organizational policy, quality improvement and executive roles, and can be fitted around work. The nurse anesthesia route is a 41-month integrated hybrid program of didactic and clinical work ending in a scholarly project, taught through the Frank J. Tornetta school, and 41 months of it is close to continuous. Both sit in Philadelphia, where eleven accredited institutions compete for clinical placements, so ask early how each one arranges yours. Post-MSN students choose their pace explicitly, six credits a semester full time or three part time, and the required clinical hours vary with what you arrive holding. The post-BSN anesthesia route is built differently again: 24 months of coursework, then a 29-month clinical residency on site at the Tornetta program.
5 DNP tracks at this
institution, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Family nurse practitioner, Geriatric, Nursing administration, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Southern Indiana publishes three separate credit totals and the gap between them is most of the decision. The post-master’s advanced nursing practice route is 35 credits in the specialty. The BSN-to-DNP family nurse practitioner route is 72. Organizational and systems leadership, also from a BSN, is 70 with 1,000 practice hours attached. What makes the post-master’s route worth a close look is the transfer policy: the college accepts up to 42 credit hours from your MSN, which is more generous than most and is why that first number is as low as it is. Coursework is online with synchronous intensives twice a year, so there are fixed dates in the diary rather than an open-ended commitment.
South College runs two DNPs on very different clocks. The nurse anesthesia concentration is a fixed full-time plan, 36 months across 12 quarters, with no part-time option in the published curriculum. The post-master’s DNP is the opposite: online, and paced by how fast you demonstrate mastery rather than by a semester calendar, with average completion falling between 18 and 30 months and the quickest full-time route at 21. That is a twelve-month spread between two students taking the same degree. So the honest planning question here is not how long the program takes, it is how many hours a week you can genuinely put into it.
Franklin publishes what it will take off your plate, which is rarer than it should be and worth checking before you apply anywhere else. An eligible master’s holder can transfer up to 500 practicum hours and up to 12 credit hours of coursework, and practicum hours sit inside the courses rather than being arranged separately, which is how the leadership track lands at about two years. The practitioner tracks run longer: roughly three years for family, psychiatric mental health and adult-gerontology primary care if you already hold a master’s, and three to four years coming from a bachelor’s. All of it is online. Franklin confers a small number of nursing doctorates a year, so this is a route built around transfer credit and pace rather than a large cohort.
4 DNP tracks at this
institution, Adult health, Critical care, Psychiatric-mental health NP, Registered nursing (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
NYU gives you seven years from the date you matriculate to finish, whichever entry option you take, holding a 3.0 grade point average throughout. Seven years is generous by the standards of this field, and it is the number that matters most if you expect your working life to be unpredictable. The advanced standing route is a minimum of 36 credits, and 400 of its clinical hours are attached specifically to the DNP project rather than to general practice. That is a large share of your hours riding on the project, which is worth knowing because project hours depend on finding a site and a question, and those are the parts that stall.
Baptist Health Sciences runs one cohort a year and it starts in January, for the BSN and the MSN entry points alike. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis but the priority deadline is 1 October, so the real calendar is tighter than rolling admission suggests. Miss the intake and you wait a year. The adult-gerontology acute care concentration is 66 credit hours, and the university puts completion at three years if you want it done that way. The post-MSN pathway is scoped to a specific purpose rather than being a general doctorate: it exists to add a second APRN credential, which is a narrower and more useful thing if you already practice and want a different patient population.
4 DNP tracks at this
institution, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general), Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
TCU runs something most nursing schools do not: a bridge from the practice doctorate to a research PhD, for nurses who already hold a DNP and want to move from implementing evidence to producing it. That route wants a 3.5 grade point average, with provisional admission considered at 3.0. It matters if you think you might eventually teach or lead research, because it means you are not choosing between the two doctorates permanently when you pick this one. The psychiatric mental health route from a bachelor’s takes three years and asks for a single year of nursing experience, which is a low floor for a psychiatric track and makes it reachable earlier in a career than most.
Northern Michigan publishes both tracks and both application cycles, which is more forward planning than most schools give you. The post-baccalaureate curriculum is 72 credit hours and the post-master’s is 33, so the master’s you already hold is worth 39 credits here. The two cohorts run on different clocks: the post-master’s intake closes in mid-October, while the post-baccalaureate cohort starts the following August against an April deadline. Entering from a bachelor’s therefore means a longer wait before you even begin, not just a longer program once you do. The university also warns that admissions may close earlier than the published date if the seats fill, so treat that deadline as a ceiling rather than a target.
Bellin decides your credit load with a gap analysis rather than a fixed number. The floor is 27 credits and more can be added depending on what that analysis finds, so two students admitted in the same term can owe different amounts. Certified advanced practice nurses can usually carry at least 500 hours across from their master’s. Delivery splits by route: bachelor’s entry is hybrid, master’s entry is online, and anyone taking the post-graduate certificate option to add the advanced practice component has to attend classes in person. That last condition is the one that decides whether this fits around a job. Bellin is a nursing college of under a thousand students, so the cohort is small and everyone in it is doing the same thing.
Regis publishes the arithmetic that decides how long this takes, and it is unusually candid about it. You need 1,000 hours after the bachelor’s. A nurse arriving with a practitioner master’s typically enters with 600 of them already banked. A nurse arriving with a leadership, management or education master’s typically enters with 100 to 200. That is a gap of several hundred hours between two people who both hold a master’s, and it is the biggest single variable in what this degree costs you in time. Coursework runs 28 to 33 credits. The neonatal practitioner option adds a hard condition: two years of experience in a level III neonatal intensive care unit before you start.
3 DNP tracks at this
institution, Clinical Nurse Leader, Family nurse practitioner, Pediatric. Ranked once, on the largest.
Rochester publishes a narrow window for its part-time post-master’s route, two to two and a half years, which is unusually tight for a part-time doctorate where four to six years is the norm elsewhere. Read that as a structured program rather than a self-paced one: the span is short because the sequence is fixed, not because the workload is light. It is a large private research university. 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. Its federal filing carries no distance-education flag, so plan on being in Rochester rather than at a distance.
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.
Lourdes builds its 37-credit DNP out of four named parts rather than one course list: online asynchronous coursework, experiential learning, the DNP project, and a competency validation stage. That last one is the unusual piece. Most programs treat the project as the terminal hurdle, whereas here there is a separate demonstration that you can do the thing before you finish. It is a small private university of under a thousand students in northwest Ohio conferring a handful of doctorates a year, so the cohort is small and the asynchronous format is what makes the reach wider than the campus. Its federal filing carries no distance-education flag for the degree.
DeSales offers its post-master’+A+’s DNP full or part-time with two concentrations, clinical leadership and executive leadership, so the choice is between deepening practice and moving away from it. The detail worth planning around is financial rather than academic: acute care nurse practitioner students have access to partner loan repayment of up to $65,000 for a three-year commitment, which changes the arithmetic considerably for anyone willing to sign one. Admission runs on cohort deposits with fixed deadlines, so a place is held by paying rather than by accepting. DeSales gates each track on prior experience rather than on one blanket requirement. The family route wants 24 months caring for adults, the adult-gerontology acute care route 24 months of adult acute or ICU work, and the psychiatric route 24 months in mental health, all before you enter the clinical sequence.
Saginaw Valley runs its master’s-to-doctorate route entirely online, and it points at two jobs rather than at clinical practice: nurse educator and nurse administrator, plus a dual track that gives you both. If you want to add a patient population, this is not the program. If you want to run a unit or teach, the dual track is the interesting one, because doing both inside one sequence is rare. Coursework is primarily online with occasional evening classes, so online here carries a small live commitment worth checking against your roster. This is a small doctoral program inside a mid-sized public university, so expect a handful of people rather than a cohort.
Eastern Michigan separates its two kinds of clinical hours instead of quoting one total, and the distinction matters. Both concentrations carry a minimum of 750 direct patient care hours plus 500 doctoral practicum hours, so patient-facing work and project work are counted apart rather than blurred together. The adult-gerontology primary care concentration is 75 credit hours and the family route is 78, and both prepare you for national certification. Delivery is hybrid. Adult-gerontology graduates work in physician practices, community health centers, outpatient clinics, urgent care and long-term care, while the family route covers infancy through older adulthood, which is the wider scope and the longer program by three credits.
Saint Francis says on its own program page that the doctorate is not currently accepting new students, and points prospective applicants at its master’s practitioner program instead. That is the first thing to confirm with the school before spending time on an application here. When it runs, the program is hybrid, takes full-time or part-time students, and its length varies rather than being fixed. The accreditation history is worth knowing as well: the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education granted the doctorate a five-year term in 2019 while giving the bachelor’s the full ten, so the two sit on different cycles.
Adelphi files its doctorate under a geriatric specialty rather than a general one, which is unusual and tells you where the program points: care of older adults rather than a broad advanced practice degree. The college puts the graduate timeline at roughly three years. It also runs the undergraduate route beneath it, and that matters in New York, because state law requires a registered nurse to earn a bachelor’s in nursing within ten years of licensure, so a nurse working through that requirement can do both in one place. The doctorate carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on being on Long Island. It is a small doctoral program inside a mid-sized private university.
A T Still points its doctorate at systems rather than patients, and offers three concentrations to aim it: organizational leadership, nurse educator, and population health. If you want a new clinical population this is the wrong program, and the university is clear about that rather than leaving you to infer it. Teaching is web-based and built around directed readings and discussion with faculty and working healthcare leaders, ending in a scholarly project applied to a real organization. The program holds accreditation from the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. It sits inside a college of graduate health studies, so the doctorate is one of several health professions taught at a distance here.
The route that takes you from a bachelor's straight to the doctorate without stopping at a master's. It is the longest single commitment of the three, and for the right person it is also the most efficient. The ranking sorts schools, but it cannot tell you whether
you are standing at the right door, and that decision changes the
length of the degree by years more than the choice of institution does.
Nurses who already know they want the doctorate and would otherwise take a master's and come back for it later
Anyone whose destination is explicitly leadership, quality or systems rather than purely clinical
Students able to study full-time, or with an employer funding a long program
64 of the 125 schools here are public, where the
published in-state rate is the one to read. If you already hold a
master’s, you are on the wrong page and the
MSN to DNP route
is roughly two years shorter.
What To Check Before You Enroll
Three things that move the cost and the length of this route more
than the rubric above can see.
You are committing before you have to
A master's route reaches nurse practitioner licensure sooner and lets you decide about a doctorate afterwards with several years of practice behind you. Going direct trades that option for time saved overall.
The practice-hour clock starts here
The 1,000 supervised hours count from the baccalaureate, so on this route the whole requirement sits inside the program. Students entering with a master's bring hours with them; you will not.
Four years is a long time for a project handbook to matter
The longer the program, the more exposure you have to its project rules, particularly whether continuation credits are charged if the project overruns.
This is the route where the choice of program matters most, simply because you will be inside it the longest. Cost differences compound over four years in a way they do not over one.
You are entering with a bachelor’s. So there are no earlier
post-baccalaureate hours for you to bring, and the whole
requirement sits inside the program you are choosing. A nurse
entering with a master’s brings hours with them and argues
about how many count. You will not have that conversation, and
you also will not get that credit.
It is worth reading the hours as time rather than as a number.
Spread across three to four years full-time,
they are the part of the program that has to fit around shifts,
and they are in person whether or not the coursework is.
Three to four years full-time; longer part-time. It is the longest of the three entry routes, and the reason is arithmetic rather than difficulty: you are completing master's-level clinical preparation and doctoral coursework in one continuous program instead of two separate ones. Part-time study, which is how most working nurses do it, pushes the far end out further.
Is BSN to DNP worth it compared with doing a master's first?
It depends on how settled you are. Going direct is faster end to end than a master's now and a doctorate later, and it costs you the chance to decide with a few years of practice behind you. So the real question is not which route is better. It is whether you would rather keep the option to change your mind or save the time that changing it would cost.
Do I need a master's to apply to a BSN to DNP program?
No. The route exists precisely so you do not. You enter with a bachelor of science in nursing and an active RN license, and the program carries you through both the advanced practice preparation and the doctoral work. If you already hold a master's, the MSN-to-DNP route is shorter and is the one built for you.
Do the 1,000 practice hours all happen inside the program?
On this route, yes. AACN states that programs should provide a minimum of 1,000 hours of practice post-baccalaureate as part of a supervised academic program. Because the count runs from the baccalaureate and you are entering with one, there are no earlier post-baccalaureate hours to bring. That is the single biggest structural difference between this route and the other two.
How many schools offer a BSN to DNP program?
125 say so on their own program pages, and 125 of those publish enough for the rubric to score them. It is the only one of the three routes where any school was found to positively exclude it, and 7 did. The rest, 175 of them, simply did not say.
Can I do a BSN to DNP online?
63 of the 125 schools on this list are flagged for distance education in the federal survey. That flag covers coursework. Practice hours stay in person wherever the lectures are, and a four-year program is a long time to discover that the school arranges no clinical placements for you. Ask who finds the sites before you enroll.
What do graduates earn?
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, the occupation most clinically-focused graduates of this route enter, carry a national median of $132,300 across 323,040 jobs. That figure covers master's-prepared and doctorally-prepared nurses alike.
5Institution program pages Whether each school runs a BSN-to-DNP route, read from its own program pages on 2026-09-08.
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.
