148 of
307 accredited institutions
carry every military and veteran provision the federal survey records:
Yellow Ribbon, the Department of Defense agreement a school needs before
it can accept Tuition Assistance, credit for military training, a
dedicated veterans contact, and a recognized student veteran
organization. No school is ranked here for calling itself military
friendly, only for what it files.
148 of 307 accredited institutions carry all five.This page defines the term rather than borrowing it: a school qualifies when the federal survey records a yes to every one of the five military provisions it asks about. Another 97 carry four and are listed further down with the one they lack.
2
Yellow Ribbon and the DoD MOU are not the same benefit.Yellow Ribbon covers tuition above the Post-9/11 GI Bill cap and is a veterans' benefit. The Department of Defense MOU is what lets a school take military Tuition Assistance while you are still serving. 257 accredited institutions hold the first and 259 the second.
3
43% are flagged for distance study.64 of the 148 carry the federal distance-education flag, which matters more on this list than on any other: a PCS move mid-program is the constraint a campus-bound doctorate cannot absorb. The practice hours stay in person wherever the coursework is.
4
These are institution-level commitments, not program-level ones.IPEDS asks the institution, not its nursing school. A Yellow Ribbon agreement is signed centrally and applied through financial aid, so it does reach you, but confirm the amount and the cap with the school before you count on it.
The Five Provisions, And What Each One Does
Ordered by what they decide rather than by the survey’s own
numbering. The first two are money. The last three are whether the
program survives contact with a military schedule.
Yellow Ribbon Program · 257 of
307 accredited institutions
The school funds part of the tuition that sits above the Post-9/11 GI Bill cap and the VA matches it. It is what makes an expensive private program reachable on benefits, and it is a veterans’ benefit rather than an active-duty one.
Department of Defense Voluntary Educational Partnership MOU · 259 of
307 accredited institutions
The agreement a school has to sign before it can receive military Tuition Assistance. If you are still serving and intend to use TA, this is the box that matters, and it is a different box from Yellow Ribbon.
Credit for military training · 265 of
307 accredited institutions
The school will evaluate military training and experience for academic credit. At doctoral level this rarely shortens the program itself, and it can still clear prerequisites, so it is worth asking what specifically they would count.
Dedicated point of contact · 288 of
307 accredited institutions
A named person whose job is veterans, servicemembers and their families. It sounds administrative and it is the provision most likely to matter on the day a deployment or a PCS move collides with a semester.
Recognized student veteran organization · 212 of
307 accredited institutions
A recognized organization on campus. It is the rarest of the five among accredited DNP institutions, and it is the one that matters least on a program most people study at a distance.
How This Ranking Is Scored
“Military-friendly” is a phrase with no official meaning, so this page gives it one: an institution qualifies by answering yes to every one of the five provisions below, and is then ordered on the same rubric as every other list on this site.
Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the
148 institutions on this page and to nothing
else.
50%
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.
30%
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.
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 Military-Friendly DNP Programs In 2026, Ranked
Every school on this list answers yes to all five of the military and veteran provisions the federal survey asks about. That is a stricter test than the commercial "military-friendly" lists apply, and unlike them it is a published definition you can check: 148 of the 307 accredited institutions this site holds federal figures for meet it, read from IPEDS 2024 on 2026-09-11. Put plainly, these are the DNP programs that are military
friendly on every measure the survey records. The five provisions are
the entry test, not the score:
every school here holds all of them, so they cannot separate one
from another and the order below is the site’s standard
rubric.
Every school below holds all five provisions, so these cards show
what separates them instead: what the federal record publishes, and
how each score was composed.
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.
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.
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. If cohort size and an established placement network matter to you, Gainesville’s conferral volume is the argument for it. 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 about 2.5 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
St Scholastica quantifies the campus commitment down to days: one to three each semester for lab and simulation, with everything else online or hybrid. That is a number you can hold against a roster, which minimal on-campus requirements on its own is not. Bachelor’s entry runs three years full-time and takes people holding a bachelor of science, a bachelor of arts or a nursing bachelor’s, so a non-nursing degree is not automatically a barrier. Three concentrations run: adult-gerontology acute care, family practice, and psychiatric mental health. The last of those is offered only at the Duluth campus, so if psychiatric practice is your aim, the location decision is already made for you.
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.
Arlington states something almost no school puts in writing: you must carry medical insurance covering emergency department evaluation and follow-up treatment for needle-stick injuries and blood-borne disease exposure, and the university will not cover that treatment itself. The requirement comes from the UT System Board of Regents. It is not a large cost next to tuition, but it is a real one, and knowing which risks sit with you rather than with the school is worth more than most brochure copy. The college runs a wide graduate ladder beside the doctorate, including practitioner master’s routes in adult-gerontology acute and primary care, psychiatric mental health, and pediatric acute and primary care, plus registered-nurse bridges into most of them.
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.
South Alabama runs its DNP online, and the routes differ in length as much as in price. Enter with a BSN and you take the full 64 credit hours, MSN core and specialty included. Already practicing in an advanced role? The MSN-to-DNP route is 39 credits, because you take only the DNP core, project development and residency. Adding a new specialty on top of an MSN puts you back at 64. You get seven years either way, and the college wants the master’s portion finished in the first five. There is no dissertation. You complete an evidence-based project instead, and the residency behind it can be done in your own region rather than in Mobile. Two states are closed: the college is not accepting applications from South Dakota or New York.
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.
Washington State places you itself through a clinical placement coordinator, and then draws the map: direct-care placements happen only in Washington, north Idaho and northern Oregon, because that is where the university holds nursing board authorization. It also warns about a trap of its own making. WSU takes part in the Western Regional Graduate Program, which cuts tuition for students from participating states, but placement availability has nothing to do with that, so a reduced rate does not mean you can do your clinical hours at home. Three tracks run: family practice, psychiatric mental health, and a post-master’s general route. Coursework is primarily online with a limited number of in-person labs at the Spokane, Tri-Cities and Vancouver campuses.
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.
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.
Kansas City has run this degree since 2008, when it graduated the region’s first doctoral class, and the track list reflects that head start: adult-gerontology, family, primary care pediatrics, women’s health, psychiatric mental health, and a nurse anesthesia route available only from a bachelor’s. Women’s health as a standalone practitioner track is rare. The post-master’s side has three doors rather than one, and the second is the useful one, because nurses holding a master’s in leadership, informatics or clinical research management can enter, with national certification preferred rather than required. If your master’s took you away from direct practice, that is a route back. Plans of study are individualized, and you supply course syllabi so prior work can be assessed for transfer.
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.
Southern Mississippi files its doctorate as clinical nursing, and the label is accurate: this is a practice degree pointed at advanced clinical work rather than at administration. It confers a substantial number of nursing doctorates a year, placing it in the upper quarter of accredited institutions nationally for output, so the cohort is real rather than a handful. The doctorate carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on Hattiesburg. 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 barely higher, which is unusual for a public university.
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.
Ohio University teaches its graduate nursing programs online, the doctorate included, while keeping the associate and bachelor’s routes on campus in Athens. That split tells you who each part of the school is for: undergraduates in residence, and working nurses at a distance. Its doctoral output sits in the upper half of accredited institutions nationally, so the program is established rather than nominal, though it is modest against the size of the university. 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.
Milwaukee runs a clinical nurse specialist track in adult-gerontology and calls itself the state’s hub for that role, which matters because the clinical nurse specialist is the advanced practice route most schools have quietly dropped. If you want systems-level clinical work rather than a practitioner license, this is one of the few places still building for it. The college holds more than 160 clinical partnerships, and that number is what determines whether a placement exists near you. Skills are trained in a dedicated simulation center before students reach patients. The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education accredits the bachelor’s, the master’s, the doctorate and the post-graduate advanced practice certificate.
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.
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.
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.
Texas publishes the hidden costs most programs leave you to discover. The post-MSN DNP is hybrid across five semesters, and the college states plainly that tuition covers neither textbooks nor the travel and accommodation of getting to Austin for the on-campus portion, and that you will be charged $15 a year for liability cover. The 1,000 clinical practice hours sit inside the clinical specialization courses, and up to 500 hours completed during an MSN can be counted toward them. 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. The post-MSN degree is 45 credit hours across those five semesters, which works out at roughly nine credits a term.
Missouri State runs two paths and delivers them differently. Bachelor’s entry is a hybrid of seated and online doctoral classes, so real campus time is built in. The post-master’s route leans further online and hybrid specifically to keep campus visits down. That difference is the thing to weigh here, because it decides how far from Springfield you can afford to live. Both end in the same degree. The school sorts applicants by where they are starting rather than by what they want to specialize in, which is a simpler entry point than most and makes the decision easy once you know which credential you already hold.
Old Dominion publishes two numbers about teaching that most schools keep quiet. Ninety-eight percent of didactic courses are taught by full-time faculty rather than adjuncts, and clinical practicum supervision runs at one faculty member to six or eight students. Those figures decide what your week actually feels like, and they are more useful than any completion statistic. The doctorate comes in two specializations, advanced practice and nurse executive, and a nurse holding a master’s can enter either. Both run online with immersion experiences built in. 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 about 3 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
Robert Morris runs two practitioner doctorates and publishes both as course sequences, which shows you what the training actually contains. The psychiatric mental health route is the more detailed of the two: separate practicums for diagnosis across the lifespan, for managing disorders in two stages, for psychotherapy with individuals and again with families, and one specifically on psychiatric care of older adults. Psychotherapy with families as its own supervised course is not standard, and it matters if you expect to work with them. The family practice route covers women’s health, adults in two stages, and children and adolescents, each with a practicum of its own. Both run on campus and by distance education, and both lead to specialty certification eligibility.
DePaul teaches the whole doctorate online and asynchronously, so there is no scheduled class time to work a roster around, and it reviews applications on a rolling basis rather than holding everything to a single date. Admission conditions change by track, which makes the concentration page the one to read rather than the program page. The nurse practitioner track takes both BSN- and MSN-prepared applicants, and whichever you hold has to come from a program accredited by CCNE, ACEN or CNEA. The university says it recently put more than forty million dollars into College of Science and Health facilities, including a rebuilt nursing simulation lab. Its doctoral output sits in the upper third of accredited institutions nationally, so the online cohort is a real one rather than a side offering.
Western Carolina builds its DNP on a master’s you already hold, and that makes the arithmetic unusually clean: 34 credit hours, and 1,000 clinical practice hours of which 500 transfer straight across from your MSN. The half you still owe is the half the program actually teaches. It runs fully online. 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. A rate that far below everyone else is worth confirming with the bursar before you build a budget on it.
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.
Boston College runs three ways in, and one of them is unusual: registered nurses without a bachelor’s degree can enter directly if they have completed roughly 112 college credits, earning the master’s for practitioner preparation and continuing straight into the doctorate. The other two routes start from a bachelor’s or a master’s in nursing. All three want an undergraduate average of B or better and a completed statistics course, and the school states plainly that AP credit will not cover the statistics. Clinical work rotates across three to six sites rather than parking you at one, and those include Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, so the settings differ from each other in ways that show up in what you see. 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.
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.
Oakland runs a fully online post-master’s doctorate on a two or three year plan of study, and it is precise about what your past counts for. Up to 640 practicum hours from your master’s can transfer, and unsupervised post-graduate clinical practice does not count at all. That second half is the part people get wrong, because years of independent practice feel like they ought to count and here they do not. If you hold one of the four advanced practice specialties, nurse practitioner, nurse anesthetist, nurse midwife or clinical nurse specialist, you document those hours through a supplemental application rather than a transcript. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the highest 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.
VCU is a large public research university in Richmond whose DNP is flagged for distance education in the federal record, so the online description holds up rather than being partial. It funds some doctoral students through graduate teaching assistantships, and the terms are published rather than vague: at least nine credit hours of registration, good academic standing, and 20 hours of work a week. That is close to a half-time job, so an assistantship here is a real commitment rather than a stipend. 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.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Jacksonville draws a sharp line between its two routes. Bachelor’s entry to family practice wants a 3.3 undergraduate nursing grade point average, which sits above the usual 3.0 floor, plus a year of professional nursing experience before clinical work begins. The post-master’s doctorate is the flexible one: fully online, with fall and spring starts, and the school states plainly that no campus visits are required. That last point is worth more than it sounds, because plenty of programs call themselves online and then schedule intensives you have to fly to. Your background check may be released to clinical agencies so they can approve your placement, which is routine but worth knowing before you consent to it.
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.
Wyoming runs a distance-accessible full-time doctorate in two clinical tracks, family and psychiatric mental health, with 960 hours of on-site clinical experience concentrated in the last three semesters rather than spread thin across the program. The post-master’s entry has a currency rule worth reading before you apply: you need 3 credit hours each in advanced pharmacology, pathophysiology and health assessment, plus either 600 practice hours in your specialty over the past two years or 1,500 over the past five, unless you graduated from a specialty program within the last two. The university also publishes a state-by-state determination of whether its program meets licensure requirements where you live, and it names the states where it does not. 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 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Waynesburg asks for a portfolio, capped at 25 pages, evidencing your professional career. Almost no nursing doctorate requires one, and it takes real time to assemble. It also wants a written letter of support from your clinical practice setting, so your employer has to know you are applying. Advanced practice nurses show either national certification or 500 documented hours of clinical practice from their master’s. A graduate degree in another discipline is accepted alongside a nursing bachelor’s, but it gets evaluated individually and additional master’s-level courses are added. One deadline is easy to miss: you must start within a year of being admitted, and applications go inactive and are destroyed after a year. The degree is 36 credits over three or four years.
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.
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.
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.
El Paso runs its doctorate as a post-master’s degree and pairs it with two post-graduate certificate routes, split by whether you already hold advanced practice registered nurse recognition. That split is the useful part: a nurse who is already an APRN and one who holds a master’s without that recognition are sent down different paths rather than into one queue. The college states plainly that it prepares graduates for practice across Texas and nationally, and the doctorate carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on being in El Paso. 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 2.5 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
Shepherd’s doctorate was the university’s first doctoral degree of any kind, launched in 2015 with a cohort of fifteen, and it is taught at the Martinsburg Center rather than the main campus. Instruction mixes face-to-face, hybrid and online formats instead of committing to one. Three entries run: from a bachelor’s, and from a master’s into either family or psychiatric mental health practice. If you hold a master’s in nursing but are not certified as a practitioner, the school runs an individual transcript evaluation to work out what transfers, so what you owe is settled against your record rather than a published figure. The stated focus is care for vulnerable populations, which in West Virginia means something concrete about where graduates end up working.
Corpus Christi’s doctorate is young. The practitioner track admitted its first class in fall 2016, seven students graduated in 2018, and an executive leadership track followed in fall 2019. Two routes run now, one clinical and one for leadership, so the program has had time to settle without being long established. Online students defend their doctoral projects to the university community rather than to a closed committee, which changes how the work ends and what it has to withstand. Graduates are pointed at South Texas health care and the projects reflect that, taking on problems in the communities the program serves. It is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education.
Grand Valley runs a hybrid doctorate with online coursework and specialty practicums, and it quantifies the campus commitment: one or two on-campus sessions a semester in its interprofessional simulation space. It also employs a full-time placement coordinator whose job is finding your clinical sites, and that is the difference between a program that runs to schedule and one that stalls. Graduate assistantships are available, so ask about them early rather than after you have committed to paying. The fall cohort has a preferred deadline of 1 May and a final deadline of 15 July, and applying by the earlier one is the safer plan when places are cohort-limited.
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.
5 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Maternal/Child Health and Neonatal Nurse/Nursing, Nursing practice (general), Pediatric, Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
Wayne State runs seven clinical specialties inside its doctorate, more than most schools staff, and it builds a plan of study around your circumstances rather than running one fixed sequence for everyone. The funding detail is worth chasing if psychiatric mental health is your direction. The college reports that state IMPACT grant money awarded to Wayne State for psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioners covered one doctoral student’s tuition in full. Grant money tied to a shortage specialty is the kind of thing that changes what a degree costs, and it is worth raising with admissions directly. The college also runs a research doctorate and graduate certificates alongside, so you can move between practice and research routes in one place.
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.
West Chester runs a cohort model over six semesters, and the detail that shapes your calendar is that those semesters are fall and spring only. No summer terms means the sequence is fixed at three academic years, with no way to accelerate through a break. The curriculum splits into three named blocks, 10 credits of nursing science, 9 of leadership and 16 of practice, so 35 credits with practice carrying the largest share. It builds on a master’s rather than starting from a bachelor’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.
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.
New Mexico publishes a ceiling rather than a fixed number for its post-master’s DNP: 44 credits at most, with what you actually take decided by a gap analysis of the master’s you hold. A ceiling is more useful than an average, because it tells you the worst case you are signing up for rather than the typical one. The wider context is a large public university in Albuquerque where the resident rate is a fraction of the non-resident one, so New Mexico residency changes this decision more than the curriculum does. Its DNP output is modest against the size of the institution, so expect a small cohort inside a big university.
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.
Western Kentucky’s BSN-to-DNP family nurse practitioner concentration is 76 credit hours, with both full-time and part-time options, and the wider program requirement runs from 36 to 76 hours depending on which end you enter at. The prerequisite that catches people out is not the grade point average, though that is a 3.0. It is anatomy and physiology, where the university wants a minimum of six credit hours graded B or above. A pass is not enough. If your A and P is old or was scraped through first time, that is the thing to check before anything else, because it is the one requirement you cannot fix inside an application cycle.
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.
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.
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.
Arkansas runs its doctorate online and keeps the clinical work where you already live: you work with approved preceptors in your own locale, arranged in conjunction with faculty rather than assigned to a distant site. Campus visits are minimal and include a mandatory one-time program orientation, so there is exactly one trip you cannot avoid. Bachelor’s entry carries a single concentration, family nurse practitioner, and finishing it makes you eligible to sit for national certification. One concentration rather than six means the faculty and the placements all point at primary care across the lifespan, a narrower but more focused proposition than a school running several tracks at once.
Lowell publishes a separate degree pathway for master’s-prepared nurses who are not advanced practice registered nurses, a group most schools leave to work out their own plan. If your master’s was in education, administration or informatics, there is a named route here rather than a case-by-case negotiation. The scholarly project splits into three graded courses covering design, implementation, and dissemination with advocacy and policy, so the work is paced across the program instead of saved for the end. Before clinical rotations you work in simulation labs using high-fidelity manikins and trained actors as simulated patients. The catalog publishes a pathway per entry year, so the plan you are held to is the one in force when you start.
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.
Hopkins calls the advanced practice doctorate online, and then adds the condition that decides it: from the fall 2024 intake you have to be living in Maryland or Washington DC by the third semester, because that is where the clinical placements are. Read that before anything else. The adult-gerontological acute care track runs 70 credits with 840 clinical hours plus 160 project practicum hours, and wants a year of full-time RN work with unstable, technology-dependent patients in intensive, intermediate, progressive, stepdown or telemetry care before you start. Nurse anesthesia is taught on site rather than online, and applies in a different cycle: 1 September for a summer start against 1 November and 15 January for the practitioner tracks. Undergraduate statistics has to be a B, and the school says a B minus will not be accepted.
Belmont’s transfer policy is the reason to look at it. It accepts up to 20 credit hours of prior graduate coursework, where most schools cap transfer at around six, and it publishes worked examples rather than leaving you to ask. An applicant holding a BSN and an MBA can enter the post-master’s track and have that business coursework substitute for health care finance and for leadership and management. If you already hold a graduate degree in something adjacent, that is the difference between starting from scratch and starting a third of the way in. The clinical requirement then depends on track: family nurse practitioner students complete a minimum of 800 hours across the lifespan, and leadership and innovation students complete 700, mapped to the American Organization for Nursing Leadership competencies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
5 DNP tracks at this
institution, Emergency and trauma, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing administration, Nursing practice (general), Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
Samford files six separate DNP records federally, covering nurse anesthesia, family practice, psychiatric mental health, emergency and trauma, nursing administration and a general track. That much specialty breadth is unusual for a private university of about 6,000 students, and it puts Samford in the top tenth of accredited institutions both for the number of nursing doctorates it confers and for how many it confers against its size. The nurse anesthesia program is accredited by the Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs, and the next review is scheduled for spring 2035, which is settled well past the length of any program you would start now. The nurse leader track pairs online coursework with practicum blocks you attend in person.
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.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Nursing administration, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Duquesne’+A+’s DNP is hybrid, and its nurse anesthesia curriculum rotates you through adult, pediatric, obstetric and ambulatory anesthesia rather than concentrating in one setting, which is the breadth a certification exam assumes. Nineteen doctorates a year from a private university of 8,234 in Pittsburgh puts it among the more established programs in western Pennsylvania, and federal records flag it for distance study. Pittsburgh has three accredited institutions to Philadelphia’+A+’s eleven, so the local competition for preceptors is thinner at one end of the state than the other. The nurse anesthesia route is a 92-credit plan across nine semesters and 36 months, and it wants two years of critical care behind you before you start. A residency does not count toward that two years.
Eastern Kentucky builds its post-master’s doctorate around short terms: two seven-week blocks in fall and spring and two six-week blocks over summer, so you carry two classes at a time and still count as full-time. Two courses at once is a very different load from four, and it is the structural reason this fits around a roster. The doctoral project can be done inside your own organization or community rather than at a site the school assigns, and you are given a mentor for it. Everything runs online. Textbooks come through a program charging a flat rate per credit hour, a smaller saving than tuition but a predictable one. 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.
Indiana publishes both routes with their clinical hours attached, and the difference between them is starker than the credit counts suggest. From a BSN the degree is 66 credit hours and 1,005 clinical hours, and the university puts the fastest completion at three years. From a master’s the post-MSN route is a minimum of 38 credit hours, but it still carries 1,000 total clinical practicum hours. So holding a master’s roughly halves your coursework and barely touches the clinical requirement, because those hours count across your whole post-baccalaureate education rather than starting again. That is the single most useful thing to understand before you compare a post-master’s route anywhere.
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.
Hawaii Pacific teaches the coursework entirely online and keeps the practicum in person, which is the honest version of what most online doctorates actually are. Two entries run, one from a bachelor’s in nursing and one from a master’s. The unit became a school of nursing in its own right in January 2022, so the doctorate sits inside something relatively young and visibly still building. Further down the ladder it runs a route for military hospital corpsmen to convert service experience into a bachelor’s, which is unusual and says something about who the school serves. The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education accredits the bachelor’s, the master’s, the doctorate and the post-graduate certificates.
Stockton teaches its nursing programs against simulation and assessment labs on campus and a clinical network spread across the region and the state, so placements are not concentrated in one hospital system. The ladder beneath the doctorate is unusually complete for a public university this size: an accelerated bachelor’s for people who already hold a degree in another field, a family nurse practitioner master’s, and a post-master’s certificate for nurses who want specialty certification without another degree. The doctorate carries no distance flag federally, so plan on being in Galloway. It confers a small number of degrees a year, so the cohort is compact.
Mount St. Joseph keeps its doctorate short and online: 36 credit hours, taught in an online format, accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. Thirty-six credits is a post-master’s shape, which tells you who it is for before the admissions page does, namely nurses who have already done the clinical core somewhere else. This is a small university of about 2,300 students in Cincinnati, and its doctoral output against its size sits in the top third nationally, so the program is a real part of what the place does rather than something bolted on. Since everything runs online, the Cincinnati address matters less than it looks.
Northern Arizona wants 74 to 79 graduate units for a doctorate entered from a master’s, a much heavier load than the thirty-something most post-master’s routes ask for, and that is the first thing to weigh here. On top of it sit 1,000 hours of clinical practice. The condition that catches people out is documentary: accepted students must obtain an official letter, sent directly from the institution that awarded their master’s, stating the actual number of clinical hours completed. Chasing a former registrar for that takes time, so start early. The program runs online and points its leadership training at rural and underserved populations. Admission wants a 3.0 in your bachelor’s and a 3.0 across all nursing coursework in the master’s.
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.
Prairie View is a historically Black university whose college of nursing publishes its outcomes rather than keeping them internal: employment a year after graduation, first-attempt licensure pass rates, and on-time completion, each reported by cohort year. Schools that publish completion rates alongside pass rates are giving you the harder number as well as the flattering one. A doctoral student here was selected as a Jonas Scholar for 2024 to 2026, which is a national award for nurses working on projects in priority areas. The doctorate is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education and carries no distance flag federally. 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 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
Saint Louis makes both campus visits count, which is unusual. The first is a two-day residency where the school assesses your diagnostic reasoning, clinical assessment skills and therapeutic communication rather than simply orienting you. The second comes at the end, to present the doctoral project. Bachelor’s entry runs 62 to 68 credits depending on your population focus, across four years, ending at 1,000 clinical hours. The post-master’s route is 30 credits online, with five or six credits of comparable graduate coursework transferable at the school’s discretion. Preceptors are handled through a three-tier process rather than left to you, and you are paired with a faculty mentor in your field. Check the state approval list, because approvals here are granted program by program.
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.
Edgewood runs two doctorates with different accreditors and different purposes. The nurse anesthesia program is new, launched in 2025, accredited by the Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs, and it leads to eligibility for the national certification examination and licensure as a certified registered nurse anesthetist. The executive leadership doctorate is the older one, accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education and approved by the Wisconsin Board of Nursing. It needs a minimum of 30 credits over two years full-time, and the practicum is sized to you, between 500 and 1,000 hours depending on what your master’s already covered. Its coursework runs to epidemiology, biostatistics, healthcare finance, informatics and quality management, so it is a management degree in substance as well as in name.
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.
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.
Drexel sets an entry floor other schools leave implicit: no fewer than 400 precepted practice hours completed during your graduate studies, documented on a verification form your previous program has to sign. If your master’s practicum fell short of that, you are not eligible yet, and it is worth checking that before anything else. The cumulative graduate grade point average floor is 3.2, above the usual 3.0. Two tracks run. The advanced clinical expert route requires you to already hold advanced practice national certification. The leadership route accepts advanced certification or the 400 documented hours in its place. The application asks you to identify a practice problem that intrigues you and say how the doctorate would help you fix it.
Loyola attaches a certification condition to its acute care route that catches people out: every adult-gerontology acute care practitioner and clinical nurse specialist student has to obtain CCRN certification before clinical work starts. That is an exam to sit and pass on top of the application, and recent intensive care experience as a registered nurse is required to get in at all. Plan for both. The school also runs an oncology certificate alongside its other post-graduate certificates, which is a specialization few nursing schools staff. Applications to the certificate programs are accepted at any time for an upcoming open term rather than against a single annual deadline, which makes starting easier to time around work.
Salisbury counts your master’s and its own doctorate together toward one total: the project and 1,000 clinical hours are reached across both, so hours logged while earning the master’s carry forward rather than being set aside. For a nurse who already did a substantial practicum, that is the difference between a manageable addition and starting the clock again. The post-master’s doctorate is filed federally as a distance 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.
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.
Auburn Montgomery teaches its graduate nursing programs online, the doctorate included, inside a college that also houses medical laboratory science and communication disorders rather than nursing on its own. That mix shows up in the master’s offerings beneath the doctorate, one of which trains nurse educators specifically for interprofessional teaching rather than for classroom nursing education in isolation. If you are still choosing between a master’s and the doctorate, the ladder here runs through family practice, nurse education and health systems leadership. It is a small doctoral program at a regional public campus. 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.
Bellarmine asks for a 3.5 in any graduate coursework you have already done, against 3.0 for undergraduate work, a higher bar than most and the first thing to check if you have a master’s behind you. The nurse anesthesia track wants a year of recent full-time critical care employment, within the past two years, evidenced on a verification form rather than asserted. Then an interview with graduate faculty. The catalog is unusually blunt about what follows: enrollment in that track is limited, and meeting every minimum does not assure admission. Post-master’s applicants choose between advanced nursing practice and executive leadership, and delivery is online or hybrid depending on the route.
Mount Mercy sorts you by whether you already work as a nurse practitioner. If you do, the doctorate is 33 credits and about 12 months. If you hold a master’s in nursing without the practitioner credential, the family nurse practitioner route is 57 credits and about 24 months. Both run one class at a time in five and ten week blocks, which fits a nurse working full-time better than a conventional semester load does. Clinical work in the family practitioner sequence is one to one with a licensed preceptor, an advanced practice nurse, physician or physician assistant, rather than a group rotation. The nurse educator courses carry their own minimum of 100 clinical hours in a specialty you pick with faculty. It is a small university and the cohort matches.
Colorado Springs sets a progression rule sharper than most: you must hold a B, which it defines as 84 percent, in every course to stay in the program. Not to graduate, to remain enrolled. One weak semester is a bigger problem here than at a school that checks only your average at the end. Bachelor’s entry runs a minimum of 70 graduate credits, and everything has to be finished within seven years of starting, generous enough for part-time study but not open-ended. The degree ends with a defended doctoral project rather than an exam. The program is filed federally as a distance program. 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.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Nursing practice (general), Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Radford puts a documented experience floor on its practitioner tracks: at least 2,000 hours, or one year of full-time clinical practice as a registered nurse, evidenced before clinical courses start. Documentation is the operative word there. This is not a preference in an admissions brochure, it is a condition you have to prove, and discovering that after you enroll is a worse position than settling it first. The doctorate is filed federally as a distance program. 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. Radford confers a small number of nursing doctorates a year, so the cohort is compact.
South Dakota gives you a choice about how to serve the clinical hours rather than fixing a schedule: 240 hours can be done across a single summer or spread over two to three semesters. Compressing them into a summer is what makes this workable for a nurse who cannot take time out during the academic year, and few schools state that option so plainly. The doctorate is filed federally as a distance program. 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. It is a small doctoral program, so expect a handful of people in your cohort.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
Incarnate Word offers two entries with very different flexibility. Bachelor’s entry is full-time only and leads to either family or psychiatric mental health practitioner work. Master’s entry runs full-time or part-time and is scoped to advanced practice registered nurses and to nurses holding a clinically focused master’s, so a management or education master’s is not the intended input here. Full-time only on the bachelor’s route is the constraint that settles it for most working nurses, and the school states it plainly rather than burying it. Neither track carries a distance flag in the federal filing, so plan on San Antonio.
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.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
Binghamton runs two routes, and the advanced standing one carries a condition most schools do not impose: you must already hold national certification as a nurse practitioner or clinical nurse specialist, in one of the four clinical areas Decker itself offers, which are family, community health, adult-gerontology primary care and family psychiatric mental health. Certification in a specialty the college does not teach will not get you in. Both routes want an unencumbered New York registered nurse license, and the bachelor’s route needs it by the time you matriculate rather than at application. The grade point average floor is 3.0 on both. Bachelor’s entry aims at nurses heading for expert clinical practice rather than administration.
Akron runs a nurse anesthesia track accredited separately by the Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs, alongside the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education accreditation covering the bachelor’s, master’s, doctorate and post-graduate advanced practice certificate. Two accreditors on one program is what a specialized anesthesia track requires, and it is worth confirming at any school offering one. Clinical rotations run through Northeast Ohio health systems, so placements are local and the network is established. The doctoral program itself is small, conferring a handful of degrees a year, which means close faculty contact and a cohort you will know by name. 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.
3 DNP tracks at this
institution, Adult health, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Fisher runs two things at very different scales. The standard doctorate is a minimum of 33 credit hours of coursework. Beside it sits a dual-degree program that qualifies you as both an adult-gerontology acute care nurse practitioner and a nurse anesthetist, and that one is 103 credit hours over 36 months, in person, full-time only. There is no part-time version of it. Two credentials out of one sequence is rare, and the credit total states honestly what it costs: roughly three times the standard doctorate. None of the tracks carries a distance flag in the federal filing, so this is a Rochester program rather than a remote one.
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.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Registered nursing (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Pace runs a 30-credit post-master’s doctorate over two years part-time, entirely online, and sets a higher admission bar than most: a 3.3 grade point average in your master’s, or equivalent professional experience where your grades fall short. That second clause is worth asking about directly, because schools rarely put a route around a GPA floor in writing. The practitioner routes, adult-gerontology acute care, family, and psychiatric mental health, all land at 1,000 supervised practice hours whichever one you take. Anyone coming through the bridge route meets the program director for a gap analysis first, so what you owe is settled before you enroll rather than after. Two years part-time is a realistic clock for a nurse who is not stepping away from work.
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.
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.
Le Moyne publishes the clinical figure most schools bury: 810 hours of practice embedded into the bachelor’s entry program of study rather than arranged separately alongside it. That route runs either four years full-time or five years part-time. The post-master’s pathway is 29 credits over two years and is scoped to nurses who already hold family practitioner certification. What decides whether this fits a working nurse is the campus pattern: family practitioner coursework meets on campus once a week, on Mondays, and more on-campus meetings get added as you approach the doctoral project. One fixed weekday is easier to plan around than scattered intensives, but it is every week rather than a few times a year.
Felician runs its doctorate as a nursing education track and nothing else, taught online, scoped to nurses who already hold a master’s. The target is faculty work, academic practice and workforce development rather than advanced clinical practice, so this is the degree you take to teach rather than to add a patient population. Read the narrowness as a signal: a school with one education-focused track is staffing for that, not splitting its attention across six clinical specialties. Felician is a small private university in New Jersey and the doctoral cohort is small to match.
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.
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.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Nursing administration, Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
Toledo splits its DNP by how much of it you can do from home. The nurse executive and nurse leadership pathways are delivered entirely online. The nurse practitioner tracks are not: they combine online coursework with required in-person clinical experiences and on-campus skills immersion days the college strongly recommends rather than mandates, so the honest planning assumption is that you will be traveling. Nurse anesthesia is a different scale again at 97 credits. One admission rule catches people out: coursework more than seven years old at the point you apply will not count, so a master’s you finished a decade ago may not carry across the way you expect.
D’Youville builds your plan of study after reading your transcripts and your documented clinical hours, so what you owe is worked out individually rather than published as a single number. The family practitioner route runs six consecutive semesters and can be finished in as little as two years, full-time or part-time, and you can start in either fall or spring. There is also a psychiatric mental health plan of study written for nurses already practicing as advanced practice registered nurses who want to move into mental health leadership. One detail reflects where the university sits: it publishes commuter arrangements for part-time Canadian students, which matters in Buffalo and almost nowhere else.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Texas Wesleyan frames its DNP around what the degree does to a career rather than what it adds to a transcript: staying close to direct patient care, moving gradually into leadership, or combining clinical work with teaching, policy and quality improvement. The college is candid that the executive endpoint is about shaping an organization rather than running a single unit, and that what it pays varies widely by health system size and region rather than by the credential. Six doctorates a year from a private university of 2,487 in Fort Worth makes this a small program by design. Up to 500 practice hours from a qualifying master’s can be transferred toward the 1,000 the degree requires.
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.
Catholic University runs a joint doctorate and business master’s on overlapping credits, which is a different proposition from taking the two separately. The point of it is executive work in health systems, where you need the clinical grounding and the finance and operations side together. It runs fully online with optional in-person experiences. Admission to that route wants a bachelor’s and a master’s in nursing, a cumulative 3.2, and documented completion of 500 or more post-baccalaureate clinical hours, though the school will consider exceptions case by case. Documented is the word to plan around, because assembling that record takes longer than people expect. A straight doctorate runs from either a bachelor’s or a master’s for anyone who does not want the business half.
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.
Tampa’s doctorate is one of the smallest on this site, conferring about one degree a year against an enrollment above eleven thousand, so this is a program running at the edge of viability rather than an established pipeline. That cuts both ways: individual attention is close to guaranteed, and a cohort barely exists. The program is filed federally as a distance program. One practical detail the university publishes is that doctoral students are not assessed the student service fee charged on summer sessions, a small saving but a real one if you study year-round.
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.
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.
St Thomas has the smallest doctoral output of any institution on this site, conferring about one degree a year, so treat this as a program to ask direct questions about rather than one with an established cohort behind it. The graduate ladder beneath it is more developed: a master’s with four concentrations, and a post-master’s psychiatric mental health certificate for advanced practice nurses that leads to eligibility for national certification in that specialty. The doctorate carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on Houston. The university says it has taught nursing in the city for more than a century.
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.
Brenau runs two doctorates side by side, one for advanced practice nurses and one for leadership and management, both scoped to people who already hold a master’s in nursing. The structure is published semester by semester: the leadership route runs six semesters, the advanced practice route seven. What both share is how the project is handled, as a four-course sequence covering identification, development, implementation, and outcomes evaluation with dissemination, each carrying one-to-one faculty mentorship. Splitting the project across four graded courses rather than leaving it as a capstone means the work gets paced for you instead of piling up at the end. The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education granted the school’s bachelor’s, master’s and post-master’s acute care certificate a full ten-year accreditation running to September 2030.
What The Benefits Actually Cover At Doctoral Level
The Post-9/11 GI Bill pays graduate tuition in full at a public
institution for an in-state student. At a private one it pays up
to a national cap, and the difference is yours unless the school
runs a Yellow Ribbon agreement. That is the entire reason the
provision exists, and it is why 94 public institutions on this
list of 148 face a different
arithmetic from the 54 private ones.
A Yellow Ribbon agreement is not a blank check. Each school sets
the amount it will contribute and the number of students it will
fund, both per program, and both can run out. The lowest published
in-state rate in this pool is $3,610 at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, which is the kind
of figure benefits cover outright and is worth weighing against a
private program whose Yellow Ribbon place you might not get.
If you are still serving, Tuition Assistance is capped per credit
hour rather than per year, and it is paid only to schools that
have signed the Department of Defense memorandum. Doctoral credits
frequently price above that cap, so the realistic plan is usually
Tuition Assistance while serving and the GI Bill afterwards rather
than either alone.
One figure this page will not give you is a salary for the degree,
for the reason set out in the FAQ below. What is worth saying here
is that the usual national medians are the wrong yardstick if the
Veterans Health Administration is where you are headed. VHA posts
are graded on the published federal pay schedule, which you can
read for the grade you would actually be hired at rather than
inferring from a figure averaged over every nurse practitioner in
the country.
Carrying Four Of The Five
These 97 institutions answer yes
to four provisions and a recorded no to one. They are here because a
strict cut-off is a useful definition and a poor shortlist: the
provision most often missing is
student vet org, absent at
44 of them
and the rarest across the whole accredited field, held by just 212 of 307.
On a degree studied mostly at a distance, a campus organization
may not be a provision you need at all.
There is no official definition of what makes a DNP program military friendly, which is why the commercial lists disagree with each other. This page uses the five provisions the federal survey actually records: Yellow Ribbon participation, a Department of Defense Tuition Assistance agreement, credit for military training, a dedicated point of contact for veterans and their families, and a recognized student veteran organization. 148 accredited institutions answer yes to all five.
Does the Post-9/11 GI Bill cover a DNP?
It covers graduate study, and at a private institution it covers it up to a national cap rather than in full. That is the gap Yellow Ribbon exists to close: the school funds part of the excess and the VA matches it. 257 of the 307 accredited institutions here participate. The amount each one commits and the number of students it funds are set by the school, so both are worth confirming before you apply.
What is the difference between Yellow Ribbon and Tuition Assistance?
Who they are for. Yellow Ribbon is a veterans' benefit that tops up the Post-9/11 GI Bill. Tuition Assistance is paid by your service branch while you are still serving, and a school can only receive it if it has signed the Department of Defense Voluntary Educational Partnership Memorandum of Understanding. 259 institutions here have. If you are still in uniform, that is the box to check first.
Can I do a DNP while on active duty?
64 of the 148 schools on this list are flagged for distance education, so the coursework is reachable. The constraint is the supervised practice hours, which are in person and have to be arranged somewhere you will still be living. Ask who finds the placement and what happens to it if you move, because a program that leaves both to you is the one a PCS order breaks.
Do these schools give credit for military medical training?
265 of the 307 accredited institutions record that they evaluate military training for credit. At doctoral level that rarely shortens the program, because the curriculum is built on a nursing degree you already hold rather than on general education. It is worth asking what specifically they would count rather than assuming either way.
Which military provision is hardest to find?
A recognized student veteran organization, held by 212 of the 307. It is also the one that matters least here, because 43% of this list is studied at a distance and a campus organization is not much use from another state.
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 carry a national median of $132,300 across 323,040 jobs. Veterans Health Administration posts are graded on the federal schedule rather than on that median, so if the VA is your destination the published grade is a better guide than any national figure.
Sources
1IPEDS 2024 Institutional Characteristics The five military and veteran provisions every school on this page is judged on. IPEDS Institutional Characteristics (IC2024.csv) and Directory Information (HD2024.csv), read 2026-09-11. Institution-level, as the survey collects it.
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.
