Military-Friendly DNP Programs

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

Florida runs two routes into the doctorate and gates them differently. The BSN-to-DNP is built around online coursework for nurses moving up from the bedside. The MSN-to-DNP is open only to applicants holding a master’s in nursing and an active Florida APRN license, and that condition settles the question for most people before anything else does: if you already practice in Florida as an APRN, that is your route, and if you don’t, you’re applying to the longer one. Only five public universities in this dataset sit in the national top fifteen on both DNP output and low published in-state tuition, and Gainesville is one of them. If cohort size and an established placement network matter to you, that combination is the argument for it.

In-State Tuition

$4,477

Out-Of-State

$25,694

DNP Awards

92

UG Completion

91%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

Carolina asks you to choose a pathway before a specialty, and publishes three: health care leadership and administration, BSN-to-DNP nurse practitioner areas, and MSN-to-DNP. The coursework spans advanced practice, leadership and practice-based inquiry, ending in an evidence-based DNP project, with 1,000 practice hours inside the credit total. What sets it apart is that the specialty entry expectations are written down rather than implied: pediatric primary care wants roughly six months of full-time RN work in a neonatal, pediatric or child-serving community setting, and the psychiatric-mental health track wants six months in acute or community psychiatric and substance-use care. If you are switching populations rather than deepening the one you know, those are the sentences that decide whether to apply now or work another year first.

In-State Tuition

$7,019

Out-Of-State

$39,228

DNP Awards

35

UG Completion

91%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

FSU is built for nurses who intend to keep working. Every track runs online, full or part-time, with only minimal on-campus skill practice and testing, though the college is candid that most courses carry a synchronous Zoom component, so evenings are not entirely yours. The executive health systems leadership track is fully online and part-time, and admits experienced nurses holding an MSN, a qualifying master’s, or in some cases a BSN. There is also a post-master’s route for acute care practitioners moving into adult-gerontology. One provision is unique here: a serving preceptor can claim a waiver of six credit hours for every 300 hours of precepting completed, which turns work you may already be doing into progress on the degree.

In-State Tuition

$4,640

Out-Of-State

$19,084

DNP Awards

27

UG Completion

86%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

Madison solves the problem that stalls more doctorates than coursework does. It runs a Clinical Placement Unit whose job is to secure placements in your population area and make sure the hours needed for certification and graduation are actually obtained, because staff and faculty find the practicum so you do not have to. In a market where preceptors are scarce, that is worth more than any figure on this card, and it is the opposite of schools that leave students to source their own. The scholarly project is organized around the population you intend to serve, whether pediatric primary care, psychiatric-mental health or adult-gerontology acute care. Graduates are prepared for hospitals, intensive care, emergency departments, urgent care, surgical suites and specialty settings. It also caps waivable credits at 18, which sets a floor on how much coursework an MSN-prepared applicant still has to take.

In-State Tuition

$10,006

Out-Of-State

$40,506

DNP Awards

36

UG Completion

90%

• CCNE-accredited
• Private for-profit
• Doctorate (research)
• Offered online

Walden is the largest DNP program in the country and is explicit about the arithmetic that catches people out. Completion needs 1,000 post-BSN practicum hours with at least 400 at doctoral level, and a student admitted with fewer than 600 documented hours takes up to eight extra credits to close the gap, and one credit carries 80 practicum hours. Students already holding APRN licensure receive prior credit and complete at least 500. Coursework and the project run online on your own schedule, but the practicum happens in a physical healthcare setting, and the university runs a dedicated field office to help students find one. It also states what most online programs leave out: practicum brings travel, onboarding fees, per-quarter fees and liability insurance.

In-State Tuition

$10,542

Out-Of-State

$10,542

DNP Awards

304

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

UCF states its executive track precisely: 42 credit hours of online asynchronous instruction, two required virtual DNP intensives a year, and 1,000 post-baccalaureate clinical hours. It also admits the thing most online programs gloss: the DNP project itself requires in-person clinical hours, so fully remote it is not. There is deliberately no full-time option for the nurse executive track, because the college assumes those students are already working full-time, which tells you exactly who it is designed for: serving managers, not people stepping out of practice. The family and adult-gerontology acute care tracks run mixed-mode with reduced on-campus seat time, a middle setting between the executive track’s near-total flexibility and a conventional campus program. The family practitioner route runs 73 credits against the executive track’s 42, so the track page is what to compare on rather than the program page.

In-State Tuition

$4,478

Out-Of-State

$19,810

DNP Awards

65

UG Completion

78%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

USF attaches a geographic condition to the degree that decides it for a lot of applicants: a minimum of 31 credits including at least eight practicum credits and four project credits, all of which must be completed in Florida. If you do not live there, that decides it before anything else does. The plan is lock-step, so the sequence is fixed rather than assembled around your schedule, which is predictable if you want a known end date, inflexible if your work pattern shifts. Practicum hours directly support the DNP project and can include direct patient care or immersion experiences approved by the program director. Both entry routes are open, and the adult-gerontology acute care concentration evaluates prior clinical experience case by case rather than against a fixed threshold.

In-State Tuition

$4,559

Out-Of-State

$15,473

DNP Awards

87

UG Completion

77%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

Charlotte runs two concentrations that could hardly be less alike. The post-master’s DNP prepares health-system and organizational leaders, explicitly including non-APRNs alongside practicing APRNs, to lead through translating evidence into practice, so a nurse manager without a clinical master’s is not excluded. The BSN-to-DNP in nurse anesthesia across the lifespan is the opposite proposition: taught on campus in partnership with Atrium Health, a hospital-embedded clinical residency rather than something to fit around a job. Clinical hours are shaped to your primary area of interest and the specialty competencies. The university also warns that some states do not permit its online delivery or out-of-state practicum, which is the licensure question to settle before applying. It also publishes its student handbook openly, which is the fastest way to see what the program expects of you before you apply.

In-State Tuition

$3,812

Out-Of-State

$19,065

DNP Awards

25

UG Completion

69%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

East Carolina runs five DNP concentrations: nurse anesthesia, adult-gerontology primary care, family nurse practitioner, nursing leadership, and a post-master’s route for APRNs who are already certified. That post-master’s route is 36 credit hours, split 18 core, 9 project and 9 electives, and it is part-time by design so you can keep working through it. Leadership is part-time only, with a single 1 May deadline and a fall start. The detail to know before you apply is that the clinical hours attached to your DNP project are not a fixed number. ECU calculates them from the hours you already logged during your master’s, so two students in one cohort can owe different amounts. You will need an unrestricted RN license in North Carolina or a compact state, and the GRE is waived if you hold an MSN.

In-State Tuition

$4,452

Out-Of-State

$20,729

DNP Awards

81

UG Completion

63%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

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.

In-State Tuition

$11,685

Out-Of-State

$27,019

DNP Awards

32

UG Completion

75%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (research)

Tennessee’s nurse anesthesia program has been approved by the Council on Accreditation to award the doctorate as the entry credential since June 2019, which matters because the profession moved to doctoral entry and schools converted at different times. The licensing condition rewards a close read too: you need an unencumbered registered nurse license in your state of residence, not simply somewhere. And if you finished a graduate degree within the past two years, one of your rating forms has to come from a faculty member in that program, so references from work alone will not do. Knoxville confers one of the larger numbers of nursing doctorates in the country, so the cohort is substantial rather than a handful.

In-State Tuition

$11,560

Out-Of-State

$30,704

DNP Awards

61

UG Completion

74%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

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.

In-State Tuition

$11,380

Out-Of-State

$33,372

DNP Awards

50

UG Completion

73%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

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.

In-State Tuition

$13,658

Out-Of-State

$34,877

DNP Awards

41

UG Completion

75%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

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.

In-State Tuition

$8,461

Out-Of-State

$29,701

DNP Awards

91

UG Completion

65%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

Kansas sizes each DNP specialty separately and publishes the numbers next to each other, which makes the comparison unusually easy to make. The post-master’s completion route is 31 to 34 credits, online, two years of full-time study. Psychiatric mental health is 67 credits over three years and hybrid rather than fully online. Executive leadership sits between them at 63. All of them carry the same 1,000 practice hours. There is one application deadline for every specialty except nurse-midwifery, 1 June for a fall start, so the calendar is simpler here than at schools running rolling admission. Midwifery is also where the funding sits: the MIDWIVES KAN project offers up to $25,000 a year to full-time nurse-midwifery students from diverse backgrounds.

In-State Tuition

$10,968

Out-Of-State

$29,298

DNP Awards

36

UG Completion

69%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

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. In-state tuition sits in the cheapest few percent of the programs on this site.

In-State Tuition

$4,422

Out-Of-State

$20,773

DNP Awards

57

UG Completion

56%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

Birmingham confers 178 nursing doctorates a year, which puts it seventh out of the 311 accredited institutions on this site. Scale matters here in a practical way: a program that size runs its courses when the catalog says it will, and the faculty teach at doctoral level as their job rather than as an overload. Teaching happens alongside the university’s own academic medical center, so clinical exposure runs from pediatrics through geriatrics and includes level one trauma care without students being sent to a partner hospital across town. The doctorate carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on Birmingham. In-state tuition sits in the lower quarter of the programs on this site.

In-State Tuition

$9,048

Out-Of-State

$22,512

DNP Awards

178

UG Completion

64%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (research)

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.

In-State Tuition

$11,478

Out-Of-State

$32,394

DNP Awards

70

UG Completion

68%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

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.

In-State Tuition

$11,835

Out-Of-State

$38,165

DNP Awards

105

UG Completion

68%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

Montana State runs the two advanced practice roles most schools leave out alongside the usual ones: nurse-midwifery as well as nurse practitioner, with family and psychiatric mental health as the practitioner options. Bachelor’s entry is 82 credits for either practitioner focus and 74 to 82 for midwifery. The post-master’s route is 37. Transfer credit is capped by whether your earlier graduate work finished: 9 credits from a degree you did not complete against 30 from one you did, which is a sharper distinction than most schools draw. The application window is narrow and annual, opening 15 September and closing 15 December for the following fall. If your clinical hours will happen in Montana, you need Montana licensure to do them.

In-State Tuition

$6,299

Out-Of-State

$30,784

DNP Awards

32

UG Completion

57%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

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.

In-State Tuition

$8,604

Out-Of-State

$18,540

DNP Awards

29

UG Completion

61%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

Huntsville runs two ways in and they suit different people. The post-master’s route builds on advanced practice knowledge you already hold and is aimed at sharpening clinical or administrative work rather than starting it. The post-bachelor’s route carries you from a BSN through the MSN and on to the doctorate as one sequence rather than two applications. What decides whether the program fits a working nurse is the campus requirement, and Huntsville states it precisely instead of promising flexibility: coursework is distance-accessible, and you come to campus for one intensive conference every other year. Full-time and part-time are both open. Its doctoral output puts it in the upper third of accredited institutions nationally, so the cohort is real without being large.

In-State Tuition

$10,374

Out-Of-State

$24,650

DNP Awards

28

UG Completion

64%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)
• Offered online

New Hampshire is precise about the gap most schools leave vague. The post-master’s doctorate is 33 credits and 500 practicum hours, counted toward 1,000 documented advanced practice hours in which up to 500 from your master’s may be included. Arrive with fewer and there is a named remedy rather than a negotiation: a clinical practicum course carrying up to 250 hours, taken under the DNP director and repeatable once. Admission prefers a 3.50 graduate average, above the usual floor, and the application asks you to identify a scholarly inquiry from your own practice. Bachelor’s entry runs 60 credits for the clinical nurse leader route through to 80 for the family and psychiatric practitioner tracks. The degree ends in a publishable paper and a presented project.

In-State Tuition

$15,520

Out-Of-State

$36,170

DNP Awards

24

UG Completion

76%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

Hawaii coordinates clinical placements for its clinical tracks rather than leaving you to find them, and those placements include rural and neighbor island sites serving underserved communities, which is a genuinely different clinical experience from a single urban hospital rotation. The doctoral project is expected to address a real health challenge in Hawaii, so the work is tied to place rather than portable. The application window is unusually long: for a fall 2027 start, master’s and doctoral applications open on 1 September 2026 and close 1 May 2027. The school also runs a graduate entry program for people coming into nursing from another field, and it enrolled its first research doctorate cohort in fall 2026.

In-State Tuition

$11,304

Out-Of-State

$33,336

DNP Awards

53

UG Completion

64%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

North Dakota publishes the numbers a nurse anesthesia applicant actually wants, and they are unusually specific. Its class of 2025 passed the national certification exam at 100 percent on the first attempt. Every graduate over the past five years was working as a nurse anesthetist within six months of finishing. And the 2025 cohort averaged 996 cases each. That last one is the figure worth weighing, because case volume is what separates two programs that both clear the accreditation minimum, and very few schools publish it at all. These are the university’s own reported outcomes rather than a federal series, so read them as its claim.

In-State Tuition

$9,237

Out-Of-State

$13,856

DNP Awards

42

UG Completion

60%