An MSN to DNP program is the shortest way to the doctorate, for nurses
who already hold a master’s. 77
accredited institutions name this route on their own program pages, and
44% of them are flagged for
distance study, because almost everyone studying this way is working
full-time while they do it.
By the Best DNP programs editorial team ·
Reviewed
77Schools Confirming This RouteSchool program pages
The shortest route to the doctorate.One to two years full-time; commonly longer part-time. You are not repeating clinical preparation you already did, which is the whole reason the route exists and the reason it runs years shorter than entering with a bachelor's.
2
The rubric cannot see the deciding factor.How much of your master's a school accepts decides more than tuition does, and no school publishes it in a form that can be ranked. Cost carries 25% here, down from 30% on the national list, because a year saved beats a few thousand dollars saved.
3
44% of these schools are flagged for distance study.34 of the 77 carry the federal distance-education flag. This is the route where that matters most, because almost everyone on it is working full-time while they study.
4
The doctorate will not widen your clinical scope.If you are already licensed and certified, the degree does not let you do anything clinically you cannot do now. 77 schools confirm this route, and none of them changes that.
How This Ranking Is Scored
Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the
77 institutions on this page and to nothing
else.
55%
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.
25%
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 MSN To DNP Programs In 2026, Ranked
These are the schools whose own program pages name an MSN-to-DNP route. Of the 307 accredited institutions this site holds federal figures for, 77 were confirmed when their pages were read on 2026-09-08, and 230 were not settled either way. None was found to rule the route out. A school missing from this list has not been shown to lack the route, so if it is the one you want, ask it directly.
Read these against the gap analysis rather than instead of it. The
cards show what the federal survey publishes; what your master’s
is worth to each school is a conversation you still have to have.
Nebraska publishes its admission floor instead of leaving you to infer it: a 3.0 GPA for full admission across all three entry routes, with applicants between 2.5 and 2.9 eligible for provisional consideration. That is worth knowing before an application fee. Entry is by BSN-to-DNP for nurses with an accredited bachelor’s, MSN-to-DNP for those with an accredited master’s, or a post-graduate track for holders of a master’s or doctorate, and the accrediting bodies accepted for the prior degree are named rather than assumed. Graduates move into advanced clinical roles as nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists and nurse midwives, or into nursing leadership. The school treats those as parallel destinations rather than one being the fallback.
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.
Reno’s school of nursing secures your clinical placements for you, which removes the single biggest obstacle in an online doctorate, and then adds the exception in a footnote: you place yourself for the residency component. Both halves matter, and the second is the one to plan around. The program is fully online and open nationwide. Two pathways run, one from a bachelor’s leading to clinical education leadership or nurse executive work, and one from a master’s for nurses already practicing as advanced practitioners or already prepared as educators. If you take the clinical nurse leader master’s here first, a number of its core courses transfer into the doctorate. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 4 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
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.
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.
Gulf Coast publishes four separate DNP curricula and the credit totals are nothing alike, so the number that matters is the one attached to your entry point. The BSN-to-DNP nurse practitioner route is 81 credits, full time or part time. If you already hold an MSN with an advanced practice focus, you finish in 36 credits over five full-time semesters. Nurse anesthesiology is a different proposition again: 112 credits across nine continuous full-time semesters, 36 months end to end, and it wants a full year of ICU experience behind you before classes start in the summer. CRNAs who already hold a master’s take a 37-credit version over six part-time semesters instead. Anesthesiology is also the one route with a standing campus commitment, once a week from that first summer through to graduation.
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.
St. Augustine publishes the whole shape of its psychiatric mental health route: 77 credit hours plus 1,334 practicum contact hours across 12 trimesters, about four years from a bachelor’s. Coursework is online with one required clinical intensive held virtually, which is a genuinely different commitment from flying somewhere. Two details reward a close read. Practicum hours here run well above the thousand most programs settle at, and the university publishes a different credit total for students in Arkansas, so the state you live in can change the degree requirement. Against its size this is one of the larger producers of nursing doctorates in the country.
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.
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.
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.
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.
San Diego runs an unusually wide set of bachelor’s-entry tracks, two of them dual routes that qualify you in a second population: pediatric with family, and adult-gerontology with family. Earning two certifications inside one sequence is rare, and worth weighing against the extra time it takes. One condition settles it for anyone outside California: your California license endorsement has to be in progress at the point of admission, so the licensing question cannot wait until after you arrive. The grade point average floor is 3.0, calculated on your most recent bachelor’s or graduate coursework rather than on everything you have ever taken, and a year of clinical experience is preferred rather than required.
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.
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.
Colorado Christian is explicit that it is a Christian university and that the doctorate is built that way. The curriculum is framed around biblical truth alongside the national nursing competencies, and admission asks for a stated desire to do doctoral work in a Christ-centered community. Read that as information rather than marketing, because it shapes who is in the cohort. The leadership track for master’s holders runs 520 clinical hours and you complete them where you already live, rather than traveling to a placement the school picks. Courses come in 5, 10 and 15 week blocks with a one-day online orientation. One caveat comes before all of it: the program is online but open only to students in certain states, so check whether yours is one.
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.
Bradley publishes credits, years, semesters and clinical hours together for each route, which makes the trade explicit in a way most schools avoid. From a BSN, the adult-gerontology acute care doctorate is 68 credit hours over 10 semesters, about three years and four months, carrying the full 1,000 clinical hours. If you already hold a master’s and want the post-master’s certificate in the same specialty instead, that is 32 credits over five semesters, roughly a year and eight months, with 600 clinical hours. Half the time and under half the credits, for a certificate rather than a doctorate. The programs run online, and there is a separate RN-to-MSN entry for nurses holding an associate degree, a diploma or a bachelor’s in another field.
Elms publishes its two nurse practitioner timelines plainly: about three years full time if you enter with a bachelor’s, and about two and a half if you already hold a master’s. That six-month gap is smaller than at most schools, where a master’s typically saves a year or more, so if you are MSN-prepared and comparing programs on time saved, this is one where the advantage is thinner than usual. It is a small private college in Chicopee of roughly 1,270 students, and it confers around nineteen doctorates a year, which is a high output for its size and suggests the nursing doctorate is a substantial part of what the college does.
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.
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.
Rush prices its DNP in time rather than in one number, and the three entry points are genuinely different lengths. From a BSN it runs about three and two-thirds years. From a master’s in a non-APRN role it is three years, and from a master’s as a practicing APRN it is two. The clinical practicum follows the same logic: 756 hours from a BSN or a non-APRN master’s, and between 500 and 756 for an APRN, settled by a gap analysis of what you already hold. Nurse anesthesia ignores all of that at 36 months for everyone whatever they enter with, and it is accredited by the COA rather than CCNE, re-accredited in 2025 and running to 2035.
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.
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.
South Dakota State points its doctorate at rural and underserved practice, which is an orientation rather than a slogan in a state with that geography. Bachelor’s entry to the family practitioner route is 78 credits and 1,020 clinical hours, taught online with a field-based practicum and a few classes that may need a campus visit. The provision to check first is the three P’s. If you have already completed advanced pathophysiology, advanced pharmacology and advanced assessment to the standard the school wants, 12 credits come off your plan, and the school says that can turn a four-year program into a three-year one. A whole year turning on three courses is worth an email before you apply. A psychiatric mental health specialization runs alongside.
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.
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.
UT Tyler runs its main doctorate part-time and primarily online at an average of two courses a semester, finishing in three years, a pace built around people who are not stepping back from work. The application asks for a three to five page paper naming your area of interest and saying why this program in particular, so the essay does real filtering rather than serving as a formality. Priority applications close 1 April for a fall start, with a final deadline of 15 June. Alongside it runs a very different thing: a 36-month nurse anesthesia doctorate that also prepares you as an adult-gerontology acute care practitioner, aimed at critical care nurses. Two credentials out of one intense sequence.
Central Arkansas sets its DNP at 33 to 36 credit hours and requires documented evidence of 1,000 post-baccalaureate clinical practice hours, which is a different requirement from completing them here. If your record falls short of the thousand, the college has a named course for exactly that, a DNP clinical internship you enroll in to make up the difference. So the shortfall has a fixed remedy rather than turning into a negotiation with an advisor. That matters more than it sounds, because the hours you banked during a master’s are the variable that decides how long a post-master’s doctorate really takes, and very few schools publish the mechanism for topping them up.
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.
7 DNP tracks at this
institution, Adult health, Family nurse practitioner, Maternal/Child Health and Neonatal Nurse/Nursing, Nursing practice (general), Pediatric, Psychiatric-mental health NP, Women's Health Nurse/Nursing. Ranked once, on the largest.
Duke files more separate DNP records with the federal survey than any other institution in this dataset, eight of them, which is a fair signal of how many distinct routes sit under one program name. Its MSN-to-DNP is distance-based, with coursework completed from wherever you are. Admission is broader than most: it takes a master’s in nursing from a CCNE- or ACEN-accredited program, but it will also take a master’s in a related health field, so a graduate degree from outside nursing does not rule you out here the way it does at a lot of schools. Among the specialties is a nurse innovator and entrepreneur track whose three specialty courses all run online.
South University sets a deadline that catches people out: official documentation of the clinical hours you completed after your bachelor’s has to be submitted within five weeks of your start date. Five weeks is not long to get a former program to certify a transcript detail, so start that request before you enroll rather than after. The doctorate runs online, and by output it is one of the larger nursing doctorates in the country, so the program itself is well established. The federal file also records a 7 percent graduation rate for the institution as a whole. That figure is undergraduate-weighted rather than a measure of this doctorate, and it is the sort of number to ask about directly before committing.
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.
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.
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.
Virginia publishes a 33-month full-time route from a BSN and five to six years if you go part time, which is a wider spread than most schools will admit to. The neonatal concentration attaches 14 credits and 750 hours of direct care practicum on top of the core, specialty courses and electives, and how long the whole thing takes still turns on whether you entered with a bachelor’s or a master’s. One route is restricted rather than merely selective: the combined adult-gerontology acute care clinical nurse specialist and nurse practitioner track is open to military students only and runs 36 months. If you are not eligible for that one, the real choice is narrower than the concentration list suggests.
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.
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.
California Baptist runs its doctorate as an indirect care, systems leadership degree entered from a master’s, which means it prepares you to change how care is delivered rather than to treat a new population. The shape is 36 to 45 units over two years and six terms, part-time, taught asynchronously online with mandatory on-campus residencies three or four times across the program. Admission wants a 3.0 cumulative average and verification of the supervised practicum hours your master’s included, and it will consider a master’s in another discipline. The application itself asks you to name a problem worth doctoral work and a project that would address it, so the school expects you to arrive with the work already in mind.
Dominican builds its doctorate around a residency rather than a capstone bolted on at the end. A one-credit course introduces the residency, and Residency I carries four credits, pairing clinical practicum with scholarly work so the project grows inside supervised practice instead of running alongside it. That structure matters if you want the doctoral project to be something you do at work rather than a paper you write after hours. This is a small university of about 1,400 students, and against that size it confers nursing doctorates at one of the higher rates in the country. The program carries no distance flag in its federal filing, so plan on being in Orangeburg rather than at a distance.
Bay Path publishes both routes as course counts, which is a more honest unit than years. Bachelor’s entry is 70 credits across 19 courses. Master’s entry is 36 credits across 12 courses. Both carry 1,000 supervised clinical hours, and that is the part worth noticing: holding a master’s halves the coursework here without reducing the clinical requirement, which is not how every school handles it. Everything runs online, the family practitioner track included, so the clinical hours are the only part that happens in a building. Bay Path is small, and against its size it confers nursing doctorates at a rate in the top quarter nationally, so the program is a serious piece of what the university does.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Nursing 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.
Georgia College runs its DNP as three years of full-time study across nine semesters. That is a fixed shape rather than a range, so you can plan against it from the day you apply, which is more than most schools give you. The flexibility sits in the transfer rule instead: up to nine credit hours can come across from prior graduate work, but that is at the joint discretion of the program advisor, the coordinator and the department chair rather than an entitlement. Three people have to agree, so treat it as a conversation to have before you apply rather than a box to tick afterwards. The federal filing flags the program for distance study.
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.
UT Health San Antonio publishes the conversion most schools leave implicit: one semester credit hour of practicum equals four clock hours a week for that semester, and the ratio holds across every DNP track. Multiply it out before you enroll and you will know what a six-credit practicum term actually costs you in time, which is the calculation that decides whether a program fits around shift work. The school also publishes doctoral graduation rates and average time to degree by cohort instead of leaving you to ask. This is a health science center with no undergraduate arts college attached, so everyone around you is in a health profession. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the cheapest tenth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is about 4 times the in-state one, so residency matters a great deal.
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.
Anderson publishes format, duration and start date for each route side by side, and they differ more than the shared name suggests. Executive leadership from an MSN is fully online and 18 months, and it accepts a master’s in nursing in any field of study rather than demanding a matching specialty. The family nurse practitioner route from a BSN is hybrid rather than online, and three years. Psychiatric mental health runs alongside it. Every route starts in August, so there is one intake a year whichever you pick, and it is the credential you enter with rather than the specialty you want that decides how long you are committing to.
Westminster front-loads the remote part of its nurse anesthesia doctorate: the first two semesters are fully online and completed from wherever you are, and the clinical years follow. That order matters if you are still working, because it means the disruption arrives on a schedule you can see coming rather than immediately. It is a small private university in Salt Lake City of roughly 1,150 students, so the cohort you join is small by construction, and its federal filing carries no distance-education flag for the degree as a whole. Read that as a campus-based program with an online opening rather than an online one.
Pittsburg State charges online students the resident in-state rate regardless of where they actually live, and that removes the single biggest variable from the cost of a public university doctorate. Here it is not, provided you are in a program the university has designated as online. That is a standing policy rather than a discount round, so it applies for the length of the program rather than for a year, and it is the main reason to look at this school from outside Kansas.
Morningside builds a second chance into admission, which almost no school does in writing. If you are turned down on grade point average, you may still register for coursework, and after 10 graduate credit hours at 3.0 or better you can be admitted. That turns a hard floor into a demonstrable one. Three tracks run, direct patient care, transformative leadership and adult-gerontology acute care, and each is open from either a bachelor’s or a master’s. Everything is online. Licensure carries a geographic condition: your registered nurse license must be from Iowa or a compact state, and anything else needs the dean’s approval, so settle that before you apply. A new graduate can start while still obtaining licensure, for one semester.
Point Loma splits the 1,000 clinical hours in a way few schools spell out: at least 500 must be direct patient care and 500 attach to the DNP project itself. If you assumed the project counted as paperwork rather than as practice hours, that changes the shape of the whole second half of the degree. The clinical nurse specialist route is fully asynchronous and runs 55 to 65 units depending on the prerequisites you arrive holding. Healthcare leadership from an MSN is 24 months, six semesters. Family nurse practitioner is the long one at 76 units and as many as ten semesters, and it is also the route with in-person requirements: two on-campus intensive weekends on top of clinicals, with synchronous sessions optional rather than required.
Auburn runs its doctorate as a hybrid program and is upfront about what that means: scheduled on-campus intensives you attend in person, with distance-learning delivery in between. Knowing there is a fixed campus obligation before you apply is the difference between a program that fits your life and one that quietly does not. The college publishes separate pages for admission and progression, curriculum models, graduate assistantships and scholarship information, so the funding routes are laid out rather than left to an advising appointment. Auburn’s doctoral output is small against the size of the university, so expect a compact cohort inside a large public institution.
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.
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.
Rhode Island College runs its DNP as two distinct programs. The BSN-to-DNP is a dual nurse practitioner route, and its adult-gerontology acute care option prepares you to certify as both a clinical nurse specialist and a nurse practitioner, so it is two credentials out of one program rather than the usual one. That route is mostly online and can be taken full or part time, but it wants at least a year of acute care behind you first. The MSN-to-DNP leadership program is the separate track for nurses who already hold a master’s. One administrative limit is worth knowing before you start: no more than six credits taken at the college as a non-matriculated student will count toward the degree, so testing the water has a ceiling.
Ashland publishes credits, years and per-semester load together for every route, which is rare enough to be the reason to look at it. From a master’s the DNP is 37 to 41 credit hours across six to eight semesters, so a little over two years full time. From a bachelor’s it is 79 credit hours over twelve semesters, four years. The nurse educator track is longer still at 82 credits on that same four-year shape. Six to eight credits a semester is the constant across all of them, and that is the number to hold against your working week rather than the totals. Some courses carry required on-campus sessions, so this is not a route you finish entirely from home.
La Salle runs two DNP routes that ask for very different lives. The post-master’+A+’s track is aimed at nurses moving into organizational policy, quality improvement and executive roles, and can be fitted around work. The nurse anesthesia route is a 41-month integrated hybrid program of didactic and clinical work ending in a scholarly project, taught through the Frank J. Tornetta school, and 41 months of it is close to continuous. Both sit in Philadelphia, where eleven accredited institutions compete for clinical placements, so ask early how each one arranges yours. Post-MSN students choose their pace explicitly, six credits a semester full time or three part time, and the required clinical hours vary with what you arrive holding. The post-BSN anesthesia route is built differently again: 24 months of coursework, then a 29-month clinical residency on site at the Tornetta program.
Baptist Health Sciences runs one cohort a year and it starts in January, for the BSN and the MSN entry points alike. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis but the priority deadline is 1 October, so the real calendar is tighter than rolling admission suggests. Miss the intake and you wait a year. The adult-gerontology acute care concentration is 66 credit hours, and the university puts completion at three years if you want it done that way. The post-MSN pathway is scoped to a specific purpose rather than being a general doctorate: it exists to add a second APRN credential, which is a narrower and more useful thing if you already practice and want a different patient population.
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.
Francis Marion aims its doctorate at rural practice, which is the honest description of where its graduates work in South Carolina. Three tracks run: a master’s entry for nurses who already hold an advanced practice license, and two bachelor’s entries leading to family or psychiatric mental health practice. The constraint to plan around is the calendar, because both entries admit for fall only. Miss it and you wait a year, so the application timeline matters more here than at a school with rolling or multi-term intakes. Master’s entry wants a cumulative 3.0 in the master’s. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the lowest third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures. Post-master’s certificates in psychiatric mental health and nurse education run alongside for nurses who want a credential without the degree.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Concordia publishes both totals for both routes, which makes them easy to weigh against each other. Bachelor’s entry is 70 credit hours and 1,008 clinical and practicum hours over three to four years, online with a mandatory four-day on-campus residency. The psychiatric mental health route from a master’s runs eight semesters, about three years, and requires 1,000 post-baccalaureate residency hours of which 500 must be psychiatric hours completed inside the program. That 500-hour floor is the number to check against what you already hold. Two eligibility limits come first: the online program is not open to international students or anyone needing an F1 visa, and state approval for online licensure varies, so check yours against the school’s disclosure list before you apply.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Loyola runs five routes and splits them cleanly by delivery: family practice and the executive leadership doctorate are online, while acute care, nurse anesthesia and the dual acute care plus anesthesia option are hybrid. The anesthesia program is 87 credits with practicums stacking at a minimum of 200, then 400, then 400 hours, and its semesters run continuously, with holidays and time off scheduled individually rather than falling on a shared calendar. That is a demanding structure, and the school describes it plainly instead of burying it. The executive route needs 30 or more credits and uses a personal transcript evaluation to credit the supervised practicum hours your master’s already covered, which can cut the coursework down. A dual anesthesia and acute care credential is rare.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Holy Family runs its post-master’s doctorate online for advanced practice registered nurses, and takes you part-time or full-time, so the pace is yours rather than a cohort’s. The admission conditions are specific and worth reading before you pay an application fee. Your BSN or MSN has to come from a program accredited by CCNE, ACEN or CNEA, the undergraduate grade point average floor is 3.0, and the application asks for a statement of goals naming the scholarly project you intend to pursue. That last one is unusual at application stage, because most schools let you settle the project after you enroll. Holy Family also files a family nurse practitioner track beside the general doctorate. It is a private university of about 3,200 students, and the doctoral cohort is small to match.
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.
St. Thomas keeps its online DNP compact and regular: 13 core courses totaling 39 credits, with the residency built as three sequential practicum courses rather than one open-ended requirement. Each runs seven weeks and carries three credits, and together they are where the program’s required hours get completed. Nine of the 39 credits sit in that practicum sequence, so close to a quarter of the degree is residency rather than coursework. The seven-week course length is the part worth planning around, because it sets a rhythm you can hold a work roster against, and a stumble in one course costs you weeks rather than a whole semester.
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.
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.
Bellin decides your credit load with a gap analysis rather than a fixed number. The floor is 27 credits and more can be added depending on what that analysis finds, so two students admitted in the same term can owe different amounts. Certified advanced practice nurses can usually carry at least 500 hours across from their master’s. Delivery splits by route: bachelor’s entry is hybrid, master’s entry is online, and anyone taking the post-graduate certificate option to add the advanced practice component has to attend classes in person. That last condition is the one that decides whether this fits around a job. Bellin is a nursing college of under a thousand students, so the cohort is small and everyone in it is doing the same thing.
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.
Chaminade’s doctorate is new and built around Hawaii. The program runs online from a bachelor’s through a master’s to the doctorate, with a stated focus on the populations of the islands, and it carries a mandatory on-campus fall immersion, so fully remote it is not. The tracks split by what you want to become: practitioner routes for nurses holding a bachelor’s, and an executive leader track a master’s-prepared nurse can enter directly. One condition catches people out and the college states it plainly. Clinical placement partners require full vaccination including boosters before you begin clinical courses, and there is no route through the program without it. Applications for a fall start open around 15 October.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Simmons publishes its clinical hours per component rather than as one total, which makes the executive leadership route unusually easy to plan against. The doctoral portion carries 252 clinical hours, 29 credit hours and at least 181 hours on the DNP project itself. Come in from a BSN and the master’s leadership stage adds 567 clinical hours and 35 credits ahead of all that. The format is blended, online coursework with in-person elements, rather than either extreme. If you did your master’s at Simmons the route is materially easier to start: a streamlined application, the application fee waived, and up to five credits waived from the standard thirty once you are accepted.
Saint Francis says on its own program page that the doctorate is not currently accepting new students, and points prospective applicants at its master’s practitioner program instead. That is the first thing to confirm with the school before spending time on an application here. When it runs, the program is hybrid, takes full-time or part-time students, and its length varies rather than being fixed. The accreditation history is worth knowing as well: the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education granted the doctorate a five-year term in 2019 while giving the bachelor’s the full ten, so the two sit on different cycles.
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.
This is the question that decides your MSN to DNP, and the ranking
above cannot answer it. No school publishes its transfer policy in
a form that can be compared across 77 institutions, so
nothing here is ranked on it. Pretending otherwise would be worse
than saying so.
What you are asking each school for is a gap analysis: a written
statement of which of your master’s courses it accepts,
which it does not, and how many supervised hours it will count.
Ask for it before you accept an offer rather than after, because
it is the difference between a one-year program and a two-year one
at schools whose published length is identical.
Two applicants holding the same degree from different schools can
face materially different requirements at the same program. That
is not a school being difficult. Master’s curricula vary,
and the program is checking yours against its own doctoral
requirements rather than against a national standard.
Because of that, the cheapest school on this list is often not the
cheapest degree. The lowest published in-state rate here is $3,239 at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and a school
charging more per year while accepting a year more of your
coursework costs you less in total. Compare the gap analyses
first and the tuition second.
Who An MSN To DNP Program Suits
The shortest route to the doctorate, for nurses who already hold a master's. Most of the people on it are working full-time and studying around shifts, and the programs are built assuming exactly that.
Practicing nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists who want the doctorate without repeating clinical coursework
Nurses moving toward a service-leadership or quality role where the project is the point
Anyone with employer tuition support, which is far more common at this stage of a career
If you do not hold a master’s yet, the
BSN to DNP route
is the one built for you, and it runs years longer. If your graduate
degree is in nursing but you are being asked about an admissions
category rather than a curriculum, read
post-master’s DNP.
What To Settle Before You Accept An Offer
How much credit you get varies enormously
Programs differ in how much master's coursework they accept, and two schools quoting the same total credits can require very different amounts of new work from you. Ask for the gap analysis in writing before you accept an offer.
Your existing practice hours count, but not automatically
The 1,000-hour requirement is post-baccalaureate, so hours from your master's can count toward it. How many the program recognizes is a program decision and it is worth settling early.
The doctorate does not widen your clinical scope
If you are already licensed and certified, the degree will not let you do anything clinically that you cannot do now. The case for it is the systems and leadership preparation, and it is a real case, but it is not a scope case.
Because the program is short, the deciding factor is usually not tuition. It is how much of your master's the school recognizes. A program a year shorter is worth more than one a few thousand dollars cheaper.
One to two years full-time; commonly longer part-time. The range is wide because it depends less on the school's published length than on how much of your master's that school accepts. Two programs quoting the same total credits can ask very different amounts of new work from you.
How much of my master's will transfer?
There is no national answer, because there is no national rule. Each program checks your transcript against its own doctoral requirements, so the same degree can be worth a semester at one school and a year at another. Nothing on this page ranks that, because no school publishes it in a comparable form. Ask each program for a written gap analysis and compare those instead.
Do my master's practice hours count toward the 1,000?
They can. AACN sets the requirement as post-baccalaureate supervised clinical practice hours, across the whole program of study, and because it counts from the baccalaureate rather than from enrollment, supervised hours from your master's fall inside the window. How many the program recognizes is a program decision, not a rule, and it is worth settling before you accept an offer.
Is an MSN to DNP worth it if I am already a nurse practitioner?
It turns on where you are going rather than on what you can do. The degree adds no clinical authority you do not already hold, so if your destination is a patient panel it is optional. If it is a faculty line, a quality or informatics role, or anything with "director" in the title, it is often the credential being asked for. Decide which of those you are doing before you compare schools.
How many schools offer an MSN to DNP program?
77, on the evidence of their own program pages. That is the smallest of the three entry-route pools, and it is smaller than the number of schools that actually run one: 230 institutions said nothing either way on the pages that were read, and not one was found to rule the route out.
Can I keep working through an MSN to DNP program?
Most people on this route do. 34 of the 77 schools here are flagged for distance education, and part-time study is common enough that programs are built around it. The practice hours still happen in person, and they are the part that collides with a full-time job.
What is the difference between MSN to DNP and post-master's DNP?
Less than the names suggest. Schools use "post-master's" for an admissions category rather than a different curriculum, and the two routes are structurally close. The 166 schools confirming a post-master's route are listed separately, and the practical difference is how prior coursework and prior hours are treated.
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, covering master's-prepared and doctorally-prepared nurses alike. If you are already an NP, that figure is already your occupation's median and the doctorate does not move you to a different series.
Sources
1CCNE accredited program directory The accreditation that makes a school eligible for this list, and that your prior degree was probably earned under.
2IPEDS Conferrals, which lead the score here, plus tuition, completion and the distance-education flag.
5Institution program pages Whether each school runs an MSN-to-DNP route, read from its own program pages on 2026-09-08.
Every federal figure on this site is read from the administering agency’s own page, never from a secondary aggregator, and the reading date is recorded beside it.
