Every nurse anesthesia program accredited by COA has to publish how
its latest class did: how many left, how many found work as nurse
anesthetists, and how many passed the certification exam first time.
89 of the
156 publish enough of it to
rank, and this list ranks them on those figures alone.
Ranked on outcomes, not on the university.Every accredited program has to publish its attrition, its employment rate and its first-time pass rate on the certification exam. Those three figures are the whole score, so a hospital-based school and a research university are measured the same way.
2
The pass rate carries half the weight.The median ranked program reports 93% of its latest class passing the NCE on the first attempt, and 16 report 100%. Attrition is the second factor, because leaving a full-time program part-way costs more than anything else here.
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DNP or DNAP makes no difference to the exam.117 programs award a DNP and 39 a DNAP. The certification board asks for an accredited program, not a degree title, so both are ranked together.
4
67 programs are listed without a rank.Most are too new to have graduated a class. The rest publish their outcomes in a form that could not be checked, or not at all. They are still accredited and appear by state at the foot of the page.
How This Ranking Is Scored
The score is the weighted average of the three figures, out of 100. It
is not stretched across the list, so a score of 95 means the same thing
wherever you read it. A program is ranked only when it publishes both its
pass rate and its attrition for a class from 2024 or later.
1. First-time NCE pass rate · 50%
Earns: Graduates passing the national certification exam on the first attempt. It is the outcome a student is paying for, so it carries half the score.
Loses: A class where a meaningful share needed a second sitting. In a cohort of twenty, two retakes cost ten points here.
2. Attrition (lower is better) · 35%
Earns: Keeping the students it admits. Scored as 100 minus attrition, so 0% attrition earns full marks.
Loses: Losing students part-way. Leaving year two of a full-time program with no credential is the most expensive outcome in nursing education.
3. Employed as a CRNA within 6 months · 15%
Earns: Graduates working as nurse anesthetists within six months.
Loses: Very little, in practice. Most programs report 100%, which is why this factor carries the smallest weight.
Ranked
Each row links to the page the figures came from. The class year under
each program is the graduating class it reported, which is not the same
year for every school.
5 programs share first place.
Each reported a perfect latest class: no attrition, every graduate
passing the certification exam on the first attempt, and every graduate
employed within six months. Published data does not separate them, so
this ranking does not either.
Programs with equal scores share a rank and are listed alphabetically;
the order within a tie is not a ranking.
The three outcomes are each program’s COA disclosure for its latest
class. Length, tuition, start term and the points under each card come
from the program’s own pages, read on Oct 7, 2026.
Where a program does not publish something, the card says so. Tuition is
shown on the school’s own basis, per credit, per semester or per
program, so the figures are not comparable with each other.
Each card carries two class counts that measure different things. The
school’s figure is what the program publishes, where it publishes
one. The IPEDS figure is the federal count of nurse anesthesia
doctorates the degree-granting university conferred in 2023-24,
a different year from the class behind the outcomes. Where a university
reports anesthesia together with its other DNP tracks, or one count
covers two programs, the card says the figure cannot be separated
rather than borrowing a university-wide number.
Northeastern splits its 77 credits into four blocks: core nursing, DNP coursework, anesthesia didactics and anesthesia clinical practice, taught full time in a hybrid format from Boston. It is one of five programs sharing first place. Admission asks for a year of current critical care, with two or more preferred, and at least 20 documented hours shadowing a CRNA, so plan time in an operating room before you apply. The GRE is still required unless your undergraduate GPA is 3.6 or higher; Wayne State, by contrast, has replaced it with CCRN certification. Its program page does not name its clinical sites.
A hospital-based DNAP in Spokane with Gonzaga conferring the degree, and one of the five programs tied for first. Clinical practicum starts in the second semester and runs through the program rather than waiting for a didactic year to finish, and the 100 credit hours carry at least 2,800 clinical hours with set case numbers. Residents who choose the Western or Central Washington cohorts take most didactic courses remotely. Admission needs two years as a nurse, one of them in critical care. The honest caveat is in its own year-by-year table: classes of this size passed first time at 87% in 2024 and 83% in 2021, and the school states its cumulative first-time rate as 97% in the text and 98% in the table.
A hospital school in Youngstown, Ohio, whose students are admitted twice: once by the school, then by Youngstown State University's College of Graduate Studies, and they must meet both sets of criteria. It shares first place. There is no part-time option, and the first year is heavily didactic; the school recommends against working during the program. Applicants need a full year of adult critical care in a US or federal hospital within the last three years and the adult CCRN by the deadline. Clinical sites named include Ashtabula Regional Medical Center, Aultman Alliance Community Hospital and Trinity Medical Center in Steubenville, and students must reach a minimum score on the Self Evaluation Exam before graduating.
NCE 1st try
100%
Class of 2025
Attrition
0%
Employed
100%
Within 6 months
Class size
Up to 20
Admitted per class (school's figure)
Graduates / yr
19
IPEDS 2023-24, conferred via Youngstown State University
UTHealth runs its 112-credit BSN-to-DNP anesthesia track on campus and full time, and describes it as the first such track at a public university in Texas. It shares first place, and of the two tied programs that publish a class size, its class is the larger. The record behind that is long rather than lucky: eleven of its past 14 graduating classes passed at 100% on the first attempt, and the classes of 2017 to 2026 average 98.36% first time. Students train in a new simulation center with a hybrid classroom, a debriefing area and a simulated operating room.
Western Carolina teaches in person at its Biltmore Park campus in Asheville, 86 credit hours full time, and is one of the five programs tied for first. Its clinical model is distinctive: students train at three sites where CRNAs are the only anesthesia providers, and they average more than 900 anesthetic cases. Simulation uses METI human patient simulators. Counting retakes, the school reports every graduate since 2009 has passed the certification exam. Three sites is a short rotation list, so it is worth asking at interview how case mix is spread across them.
The highest-scoring program outside the five-way tie. Maryland's 93-credit DNP is blended, with anesthesia courses face to face and some non-anesthesia classes online, and the clinical phase begins the second summer at 40 to 50 hours a week. Rotations run through more than 27 sites in Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Virginia. The bar to apply is high: two years of continuous full-time acute-care nursing at the time of application, where many programs on this list ask for one.
FGCU's 112 credit hours run as continuous full-time study, and students are on campus at least once a week from the first summer to the final spring. Clinical sites include NCH North Naples, AdventHealth ShorePoint, HCA Fawcett Memorial and Physicians Regional. Applicants need a year of ICU experience, not counting orientation. Its attrition is below the median of the ranked programs. The caveat is in the program's own three-year table: the two classes before this one passed first time at 91.3% and 79%, so the latest result is its strongest of the three.
An on-campus DNP of 86 credits in Minneapolis, affiliated with more than 35 clinical site options from small community facilities to large hospitals. Applicants need a year as a registered nurse in critical care. The school reports 3% attrition across every class since 2019, so the latest year is typical rather than unusual. The caveat cuts the other way on the exam: the same page reports the class of 2026 at 94% first time. It has not yet published that class's attrition, so the ranking uses 2025, and the 2026 result would place it lower.
Westminster structures its 90 credit hours in stages: two fully online semesters completed remotely, then three semesters of on-campus instruction in Salt Lake City, then clinical rotations chosen from more than 35 affiliated sites. Students average 900 cases over four rotations against the 650 required. Before sitting the certification exam they must score at least 425 on the Self Evaluation Exam, a gate inside the program. Its attrition, just above the median for the ranked programs, is the one figure below the ceiling and the reason it sits ninth.
Boston College's DNP is 29 courses and 97 credits, full time. Students rotate among three to six clinical sites drawn from about 30 Boston-area and New England hospitals, and applicants need at least a year of full-time critical care, two preferred. Over five years the program reports 95.41% first time. Each of the nine programs above it reported lower attrition. The school's own benchmark table shows the latest class started with 20 students, worth reading beside the attrition figure it reports. COA accreditation runs through June 2036.
Oshkosh admits one class a year into a 95-credit BSN-to-DNP, and publishes more about clinical volume than most: the class of 2026 averaged 992 anesthesia cases and 2,566 clinical hours. Its sites include Waupun Memorial Hospital, a rural practice where CRNAs are the only anesthesia providers. Applicants need a year of current, continuous critical care, two preferred. Its attrition is the highest of any program scoring above 98, and its outcomes table back to 2020 shows first-time rates as low as 79%, so the latest class is one of its better years.
Cedar Crest's first two semesters are entirely online; the rest is on campus in the Lehigh Valley, with over 2,000 clinical hours and more than 800 anesthetics. Simulation includes two adult high-fidelity manikins plus a birthing mother and newborn. Applicants need at least a year of US intensive care by the deadline, and the college says plainly that employment is highly discouraged once enrolled. Among the 37 ranked programs that lost no students in their latest class, only the five at the top passed a larger share on the first attempt, and Endeavor Health matches it figure for figure.
Endeavor's school runs a 20-month clinical residency of seven sequential practicums across 18 sites, and students give approximately 950 general and regional anesthetics. It is full time only, and the school is candid about the load: during residency, clinicals, lectures and study average 60 hours a week. Applicants need two years of critical care before they start. No program whose latest class fell short of a perfect first-attempt rate scored higher; its class passed 25 of 26 on the first try, with no attrition.
NCE 1st try
96%
Class of 2025
Attrition
0%
Employed
100%
Within 6 months
Class size
About 40
Admitted per class (school's figure)
Graduates / yr
Not separable
IPEDS 2023-24: reported with all DNP tracks
Length
36 months
Tuition
$1,050
Per credit, 2026-27; DePaul tuition billed separately
Millikin and Decatur Memorial Hospital run 88 credit hours of continuous full-time study with more than 2,400 clinical hours. DNP core courses are online and anesthesia courses are face to face, and the doctoral courses come in the first half, before the specialty courses and rotations. Applicants need a year of adult critical care, two or more preferred. The class of 2025 logged an average of 887 cases, 1,731 anesthesia hours and 2,723 clinical hours. Its attrition is almost twice the median of the ranked programs, which is what holds it at fourteenth.
A DNAP run by an anesthesia practice with Central Connecticut State University: a full year of foundational science at CCSU, 68 academic credits in all, then a two-year clinical phase at Hartford Hospital, the Bone and Joint Institute, The Hospital of Central Connecticut and St. Vincent's Medical Center. Students are expected to average more than 800 cases and over 2,500 clinical hours. Its first entry-to-practice DNAP cohort graduated in May 2020. Of the programs with a perfect first-time rate in their latest class, only three lost a larger share of students.
NCE 1st try
100%
Class of 2026
Attrition
6.7%
Employed
100%
Within 6 months
Class size
Up to 20
Admitted per class (school's figure)
Graduates / yr
Not separable
IPEDS 2023-24: Central Connecticut State University's 26 include Yale New Haven Hospital School of Nurse Anesthesia
Length
36 months
Tuition
$50,000
Clinical tuition ($40,000 with early acceptance), plus CCSU tuition for 68 credits
Yale New Haven's students spend their first 12 months full time at Central Connecticut State University, then split the remaining 24 between CCSU and clinical work at Yale New Haven Hospital and its affiliates. Applicants need 18 months of critical care at the time of application, more than the one-year minimum many programs set. Over three years the school reports a 97% first-time composite, 36 of 37. It lost a larger share of its latest class than any program ranked above it. COA awarded it 10-year accreditation in fall 2025.
NCE 1st try
100%
Class of 2026
Attrition
7%
Employed
100%
Within 6 months
Class size
Not published
Graduates / yr
Not separable
IPEDS 2023-24: Central Connecticut State University's 26 include Integrated Anesthesia Associates (Hartford)
One of four programs tied on identical figures. Carolinas Medical Center takes one class a year for full-time study and asks for 18 months of current full-time adult critical care before matriculation. Simulation uses a CAE Healthcare HPS simulator, birthing simulators and Laerdal models. Its five-year record adds what one class cannot: 98% first time and 100% after retakes. COA accreditation runs through October 2034. The program pages publish little else about structure or clinical sites.
Michigan State front-loads its didactic coursework, then rotates students across 18 clinical affiliate sites. There is no part-time track, and the school puts the commitment at 60 or more hours a week. The stated minimum is a year of full-time ICU experience, but recently admitted classes averaged about 3.2 years of ICU and a GPA around 3.67, a better guide to the competition than the minimum. It shares its rank with three programs on identical figures, so the order among them is alphabetical.
Buffalo's CRNA program is a three-year, 124-credit doctorate, and it asks for two years of US-based ICU experience at the time of application. After reviewing applications it invites 60 candidates to campus for in-person interviews. Its next COA review is scheduled for spring 2031. It is one of four programs here scored on the class of 2024, because that is the class its accreditation disclosure covers. Its outcomes page already lists the class of 2025 at 88% first time, a rate that could not hold this score.
Wayne State uses 32 clinical sites across metropolitan Detroit, the Toledo area and rural Michigan, and is strict about where applicants come from: they must be working full time in a surgical, medical, cardiac, neurotrauma or pediatric ICU in an academic teaching setting. It replaced the GRE with CCRN certification, and a few courses run as synchronous Zoom or hybrid classes. It matches the three programs it is tied with figure for figure, and its first-time rate is above the median for the ranked programs. COA gave it the maximum 10-year accreditation in 2024.
Kaiser Permanente teaches every nurse anesthesia course at its Pasadena school and affiliated clinical sites, with Cal State Fullerton awarding the 109-unit DNP, doctoral project included. Simulation includes transesophageal echocardiogram simulators and point-of-care ultrasound trainers. Applicants need a year of full-time adult critical care within the past two years. The cost comes in two parts: the Kaiser school charges its own program fees, and Cal State Fullerton bills tuition separately. It is one of three programs sharing 97.4, two of them on a 97% first-time rate.
MUSC's post-baccalaureate DNAP is 118 credits. The first 18 months are mainly online and classroom instruction, and clinical training then spreads across 39 locations in South Carolina and Georgia, from Level 1 trauma centers to rural independent CRNA practices. The experience requirement is a year of critical care, and the school names neonatal and pediatric ICUs among the units that count. Over three years, 2023 to 2025, it averages 95% first time and 99% after retakes, and its attrition sits exactly at the median of the ranked programs.
NCE 1st try
97%
Class of 2025
Attrition
3.1%
Employed
100%
Within 6 months
Class size
Up to 40
Admitted per class (school's figure)
Graduates / yr
31
IPEDS 2023-24
Length
Nine semesters
Tuition
$7,724
Per semester in-state; $13,597 out-of-state, plus a $1,600 program fee a semester, 2026-27
TCU builds its DNAP in two phases: 20 months of online, classroom and lab work worth 52 credit hours, then 16 months of clinical residency from late August. Unusually, students are expected to keep working in their critical care unit for the first two semesters. Teaching uses simulation and cadaver labs. Clinical sites are designated primary or enrichment, and some primary sites require rotating elsewhere to collect required cases. Only the programs with a perfect first-time rate beat its latest class on the exam; its higher attrition puts it level with two programs that passed fewer students first time.
NCE 1st try
99%
Class of 2025
Attrition
6%
Employed
100%
Within 6 months
Class size
65 to 75
Admitted per class (school's figure)
Graduates / yr
70
IPEDS 2023-24
Length
36 months
Tuition
$115,000
Total for the 2029 cohort, plus $6,000 in clinical fees
The federal government's own program, open only to registered nurses from the military and other federal services: an applicant has to be accepted by both the Graduate School of Nursing and a sponsoring service. The curriculum stresses anesthesia on the battlefield as well as across the federal health system. Applications open on April 1 and close on August 1. Its attrition is the highest of any program in the top 25, and a perfect first-time rate keeps it there; the school reports 99.8% on the certification exam since the program began, without saying whether retakes count.
NCE 1st try
100%
Class of 2026
Attrition
8.3%
Employed
100%
Within 6 months
Class size
Not published
Graduates / yr
No record
IPEDS 2023-24
Length
36 months
Tuition
None
No tuition or fees for Department of Defense employees
South Carolina's first two semesters are online, taught with the College of Nursing; after that students can request the Columbia, Greenville or Florence campus, subject to seats. The program strongly discourages outside employment once the on-campus portion begins. Applicants need a year of full-time critical care. The class of 2025 averaged 910 cases per student. It shares its rank with the Uniformed Services University on a different mix: a lower first-time rate, though still four points above the median of the ranked programs, and lower attrition.
NCE 1st try
97%
Class of 2025
Attrition
4%
Employed
100%
Within 6 months
Class size
Not published
Graduates / yr
26
IPEDS 2023-24
Length
36 months
Tuition
$7,545
Per semester resident; $12,885 non-resident, over nine semesters
Outcomes: sc.edu, retrieved Oct 6, 2026. Program details retrieved Oct 7, 2026.
Accredited by COA · next review October 2029, per COA’s list dated July 8, 2026.
Reading The Numbers Before You Apply
These are the programs' own figures, published because COA
requires it. Each one was read from the program's page and checked
against it again before it went into the table, and a figure that could
not be confirmed was left out rather than estimated. They are still
self-reported, and a program's outcomes page is the place to read them
in full.
Cohorts are small. A class of fifteen moves its pass rate by almost
seven points for each graduate who needs a second attempt, so one
excellent or poor year says less than three in a row. Most outcomes
pages show several classes, and the trend is worth more than the
latest row.
Employment barely separates programs: 77 of
the 89 ranked report every graduate
working as a nurse anesthetist, which is why it carries the smallest weight. Nurse anesthetists are in short supply,
and the national median for the occupation is
$236,590. A program's
employment rate tells you little; its pass rate and its attrition tell
you most of what the outcomes can.
What this list cannot see is admission. Every program asks for
critical-care experience first, and the competitive ones ask for more
than the minimum. The route in, from bedside to application, is set out
in how to become a CRNA.
DNP Or DNAP: Does The Degree Title Matter?
Not for certification. Of the programs with an entry-level doctorate,
117 award a Doctor of
Nursing Practice and 39 a
Doctor of Nurse Anesthesia Practice. NBCRNA, which
sets the exam, asks only that you complete an accredited program.
Where the title does matter is who accredits the doctorate itself. A
DNP is reviewed as a nursing degree as well as an anesthesia program; a
DNAP is reviewed as an anesthesia program. That can matter later if you
want to teach outside anesthesia or move into nursing leadership, and
it is set out with the accreditors' own wording in
DNP vs DNAP.
Accredited Programs Listed Without A Rank
All 67 are on COA's list and accredited. They
have not graduated a class yet, or do not publish a pass rate and an
attrition rate for a recent class that could be confirmed on their own
page. 3 are listed by COA as closing, and are marked. By state:
On the outcomes every program has to publish, 5 programs share the top score: a 100% first-time pass rate with no attrition and full employment in the latest class. Small cohorts make a perfect year easier, so read a program's earlier classes on its own outcomes page before treating one year as a pattern.
How many CRNA programs are there?
COA's list of accredited educational programs dated July 8, 2026 carries 156 programs in 46 states and territories. Some of them are new and have not yet graduated a class.
Is a DNAP as good as a DNP for becoming a CRNA?
For certification, yes. NBCRNA's rule is to "complete a nurse anesthesia educational program accredited by the Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs (COA) ("accredited program") within the previous two calendar years", and it says nothing about the title of the degree. The difference is which body accredits the doctorate itself, which is set out in DNP vs DNAP.
How long are CRNA programs?
At least 36 months. COA's own wording is that programs "vary in length and are at the Doctoral (minimum length 36 months) level." Most run full time for three years, and most do not allow outside employment while you are enrolled.
What is a good first-time NCE pass rate?
Across the 89 programs ranked here the median is 93%. A figure well below that for more than one year is worth asking about at interview, along with what the program does for students who need a second sitting.
Why is a program I know missing from the ranking?
It is probably listed without a rank further down the page. A program is ranked only when its own site publishes a first-time pass rate and an attrition rate for a class from 2024 or later, and both figures could be confirmed on the page. New programs with no graduates yet cannot meet that.
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.
