A post-master’s DNP is for nurses who already hold a graduate
nursing degree and want the doctorate as a discrete addition rather
than a second full program. 166
accredited institutions name the route on their own program pages, more
than confirm either of the other two entry routes.
By the Best DNP programs editorial team ·
Reviewed
166Schools Confirming This RouteSchool program pages
The 1,000 hours are not waived for you.This is the most commonly misread rule on the route. AACN addresses it directly: the expectation applies to all DNP students, post-master's included. It counts from the baccalaureate, so earlier hours can apply, but the requirement itself stands.
2
It is the widest of the three routes.166 schools confirm a post-master's route, against 125 for BSN entry and 77 for MSN entry. More schools run this door than either of the others.
3
The work happens before you enroll, not during.Your requirements depend on what your master's covered and how many documented hours you can evidence. Settle both in writing first and the program itself is the most predictable of the three.
4
Cost is not the lever here.Cost carries 25% of the score on this page. The lowest published in-state rate in the pool is $3,239 at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and on a one-year program that gap moves less than a year of recognized coursework does.
How This Ranking Is Scored
Three published figures, weighted. Scores are relative to the
166 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 Post-Master's DNP Programs In 2026, Ranked
These are the schools whose own program pages name a post-master's route. Of the 307 accredited institutions this site holds federal figures for, 166 were confirmed when their pages were read on 2026-09-08, and 141 were not settled either way. None was found to rule the route out, so a school missing from this list has not been shown to lack it.
The widest pool of the three routes, so this is the list where a
shortlist is worth building rather than accepting. Each card shows
the published figures that produced the score.
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.
UCSF was first in the University of California system to run a post-master’s entry to the doctorate, and that route is seven quarters, hybrid, combining online learning with selected in-person immersions. The bachelor’s entry route is hybrid too, with the majority of courses online. Quarters rather than semesters is the detail to plan around, because a quarter calendar moves faster and the breaks fall in different places from the schedule most employers assume. This is a graduate health sciences campus of about 3,000 people with no undergraduate college attached, and against that size it confers nursing doctorates at one of the higher rates in the country.
Irvine’s post-master’s DNP is a two-year, primarily online commitment written for working professionals, and the family nurse practitioner track is the heavy one at 98 units and 1,020 hours of clinical practice, though California counts in quarter units, so the load is less alarming than it looks. The useful provision is that the clinical hours attached to the scholarly project can be completed at your own place of employment or another agency suited to the project, which removes the hardest logistical problem in the degree for anyone already working somewhere appropriate. Cohorts are small and the school says it turns away qualified applicants. Nurses employed on a career appointment within the University of California system can apply for a $10,000 scholarship.
Amherst answers up front the question most online programs leave you to find out late: it cannot accept DNP students who live in Alabama, Minnesota, New York, Oregon or Washington. If you are in one of those five states, that settles it before you compare anything else. For everyone else the coursework runs entirely online, the clinical side is done through internships where you already are, and the degree ends in a project that puts research evidence to work in a practice setting you choose. The post-baccalaureate route concentrates on psychiatric mental health, so this is a doctorate pointed at one population rather than a general one. You can also take a master’s in nursing on the way through instead of finishing with nothing in between.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kentucky runs six specialties inside one BSN-to-DNP option and publishes a plan of study for each rather than one timetable for the degree. Full time is three years. If that will not fit around a roster there are five-year part-time plans and a modified four-year plan built specifically for nurses already working in direct care. Executive leadership sits apart from the clinical specialties with its own full- and part-time sequences. Your specialty decides your certification board as much as your coursework: family primary care goes to ANCC or AANP, both pediatric routes to the PNCB, and executive leadership to the ANCC nurse executive advanced exam or the AONE certified-in-executive-nursing-practice exam.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Quinnipiac runs a fully online post-master’s doctorate with a floor of 36 credits, and floor is the operative word: additional courses get added depending on what your master’s covered and how the project progresses. The published number is a starting point rather than a total. The project courses carry 260 hours, and there are separate practicum sequences for leadership and for population health, so the practical work is split across two different kinds of setting rather than concentrated in one. Applications are rolling, with final deadlines roughly two weeks before classes start, which is unusually late and genuinely useful if you are deciding on a compressed timeline. You need an unencumbered registered nurse or advanced practice license to apply.
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 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.
Southern Illinois Edwardsville quantifies the experience requirement instead of leaving it vague: a year of full-time work, or its part-time equivalent, which the school puts at 1,872 hours, completed before you start the first specialization clinical course. It also wants your registered nurse license current in the state where you intend to do the practicum, not wherever you happen to be licensed now. The post-master’s application asks for a personal statement naming a doctoral project idea that is patient or practice focused, so you are expected to arrive with a problem in mind rather than find one later. Priority deadlines run 1 February for summer, 1 June for fall and 1 November for spring, and every doctoral student attends an immersion in the first days of the fall semester.
Michigan State restricts its post-master’s doctorate to advanced practice registered nurses who already hold current national certification in their specialty. A master’s on its own is not enough here and an uncertified nurse is not eligible, so settle that before anything else. What you actually take is decided by a transcript review measuring the gap between your prior education and the doctoral outcomes, which means two applicants can be handed different plans. Everyone completes a project, a practicum and whatever courses that review identifies. There is also an option to add a second advanced practice specialty on request, which turns the doctorate into a route to a new patient population rather than only a credential upgrade.
4 DNP tracks at this
institution, Critical care, Family nurse practitioner, Geriatric, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Maryville publishes the doctoral core as a fixed block and everything else as a variable on top of it, which makes the routes easy to compare. The DNP core and capstone are 11 courses and 33 credit hours whichever concentration you take. From a BSN the whole degree is 74 to 77 credit hours depending on that concentration. The psychiatric mental health option, for instance, adds 21 credits of assessment, diagnosis and management on its own. Courses run fully online with start dates in spring, summer and fall rather than one annual intake, and the college puts its accelerated BSN-to-DNP at as few as 40 months against the three to four years a full-time route usually takes.
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.
Illinois Chicago admits once a year, in fall, and that single intake is the first thing to plan around. The degree runs anywhere from two to six years depending on focus area, entry route and whether you study full or part time. From a master’s it is usually two to four. From a BSN it is 77 credit hours. Delivery is hybrid in the real sense rather than the marketing one, with some courses online, some blended and some on campus. The clinical requirement is 1,000 practicum hours, and in the adult-gerontology acute care focus 675 of those sit inside the specialty itself. One structural point: the college charges the same per-credit rate to residents and non-residents, so an Illinois address does not change what you pay.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gannon runs its DNP as a bridge from an MSN rather than as a standalone doctorate, and it sizes that bridge to what you already did: 26 to 32 credits, with where you land inside that range decided by how many clinical hours your master’s brought with it. Six credits is a semester’s difference, so it is worth establishing early rather than after you enroll. It charges one published rate whichever state you live in, so residency does not move the price here the way it does at a public university. And it confers a substantial number of doctorates a year for a private institution of about 4,200 students, which points to an established program rather than a new 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.
Chatham runs a 27-credit low-residency post-master’s doctorate that can be finished in four terms, one of the shorter honest routes on this site. The 500-hour rule is the one to read carefully: if you have not completed 500 clinical hours before you enroll, the shortfall has to be made up during the program, and it is required for the degree to be conferred. A lighter master’s practicum turns into extra work here rather than a waiver. The admission essay asks you to describe a clinical problem in your own practice setting and explain how you would spend those 500 hours changing it, so the application is effectively a project proposal. There is no prerequisite course list, but faculty expect research methods and statistics behind you.
Grand Canyon runs two versions of the doctorate, and the difference between them is one course and one practicum. The base program is the comprehensive doctorate. The organizational leadership version adds a leadership course and a practicum aimed at systems strategy and organizational change, and it runs 33 credits online in eight-week blocks. Eight-week courses mean fewer subjects at once and each one finished faster, which suits a nurse who would rather sprint through one topic than juggle three. The university runs a transfer evaluation before you commit, so what your existing graduate credit is worth gets settled up front rather than after you enroll. This is a large online university, and the doctoral cohort is spread across the country.
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.
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.
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.
Chamberlain runs its DNP fully online and puts the shortest route at two years. It describes itself as the largest DNP program in the country by total graduates, which is its own claim rather than a federal one. The rule to check before you apply concerns the master’s you already hold. If you have a BSN plus a graduate degree in a field other than nursing, you must transfer in or complete at least six designated Chamberlain courses, 18 credit hours in all, before you can be admitted to the doctorate at all. That is a semester of work most applicants do not budget for. Focus areas then sit on top of the core as two elective leadership courses each.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Clemson delivers all of its DNP coursework online and sets a floor rather than a target on length: a minimum of six semesters, which is two years if you run straight through. A minimum is a useful thing to be told, because it is the number a school cannot talk you below, whereas an advertised completion time usually assumes everything goes right. Its federal filing does carry a distance-education flag, so the online description holds up rather than being a partial one. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the middle third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures.
Barry gates its post-master’s doctorate on certification rather than a transcript audit. You need a valid, current national certification in an advanced nursing practice specialty, and the school treats that certification as the evidence you have already met the minimum clinical hours for your specialty. That is a cleaner test than counting hours one by one, and it means an uncertified master’s holder is not eligible here however many hours they logged. Barry confers one of the larger numbers of nursing doctorates in the country, both outright and against its size, sitting in the top tenth on each. The program carries no distance flag federally, so plan on Miami.
2 DNP tracks at this
institution, Nursing administration, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Baylor confers 196 doctorates in nursing practice a year, which is among the largest outputs in the country and is explained by an online school running several tracks at once. The pediatric route splits in two and the college is explicit about the difference: a primary care track working with children and families, and an acute care track for pediatric patients with complex, critical or chronic illness in hospitals, intensive care units and emergency departments. The family route is post-master’+A+’s only, gated on an MSN in family practice, a 3.0 cumulative GPA and existing board certification. Note that the pediatric track is not currently offered at post-master’+A+’s level, so the two population focuses admit from different places.
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.
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.
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.
UCLA attaches a freshness rule to one prerequisite that quietly rules people out: the statistics course has to have been taken within five years of when you matriculate. A course from your bachelor’s a decade ago will not carry, so budget for retaking it. The pediatric practitioner focus is scoped precisely, newborns through young adults up to age 21, which tells you the patient population instead of leaving pediatric to mean whatever you assume. The doctorate carries no distance flag in the federal filing, so this is a Los Angeles program rather than a remote one. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the middle third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures.
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.
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.
Capella runs its DNP in two different measurement systems, and which one you are in changes how you plan. The standard route counts quarter credits, at least 52 of them, across 11 quarters, which the university puts at two years and nine months. The self-paced route counts program points instead, at least 26, and how fast you finish depends on how fast you complete rather than on a semester calendar. Both carry the same minimum of 1,000 practicum hours, so the flexibility is in the coursework rather than in the clinical requirement. You need an unrestricted RN license, or to be within six months of holding one, before you start.
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.
3 DNP tracks at this
institution, Critical care, Emergency and trauma, Nursing practice (general). Ranked once, on the largest.
Vanderbilt attaches a recency window to its experience requirement, and that is the detail to check before anything else: at least one year of full-time work, or the part-time equivalent, as a registered nurse in a critical care setting, and it has to fall within the past five years. Critical care from six years ago does not count however much of it you did. It accepts an unencumbered license as either a registered nurse or an APRN, and explicitly extends that to United States territories and protectorates rather than the fifty states alone, which matters if you trained or practice in Puerto Rico or Guam.
Spring Arbor built its online DNP around a calendar rather than a semester. Courses run seven weeks with a one-week break between them, and the degree is designed to finish in 20 months, which is short enough to change the arithmetic if you are weighing a doctorate against staying where you are. Alongside the degree it runs three online post-master’s certificates, and they are scoped to who you already are: family nurse practitioner in two versions, one for nurse practitioners converting and one for nurses who are not yet NPs, an adult-gerontology primary care route for non-NPs, and a nurse educator certificate.
Case Western teaches in an intensive format that changes what part-time means: a three-credit course meets for five or six days rather than weekly across a semester. If you can free up a week, you can take a course. If your roster gives you scattered evenings instead, this is a poor fit. Which sequence you choose also decides where you have to be. The education and executive leadership sequences run remote and synchronous in a cohort, while the practice leadership sequence is primarily in person, so picking a sequence for its content means picking a travel commitment with it. Read those two things together. The post-master’s curriculum assumes you already practice as an advanced practice nurse, an administrator or an educator.
Delta State takes applications year round rather than against one annual deadline, which removes the wait that stops people applying when they are actually ready. The doctorate is online with campus visits each semester, taken full-time or part-time. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the lowest fifth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is barely higher, which is unusual for a public university. Against its size the school confers nursing doctorates at a rate in the top quarter of accredited institutions, so a small campus is running a real doctoral program rather than a token one.
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.
Thomas Edison built its whole institution around working adults, and the doctorate shows it: 36 credits, finishing in 12 to 24 months, with a scholarly immersion project you can run inside your current job rather than somewhere else. Twelve months is fast for a doctorate, and it is only plausible because the project is meant to sit on top of work you are already doing. If your employer has a problem worth fixing and will let you fix it, that is the shape this program assumes. Everything runs online. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the middle third of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is barely higher, which is unusual for a public university.
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.
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.
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.
Emory takes you in at two points, from a bachelor’s or an entry-level master’s in nursing, or from a master’s you already hold, and the pace depends on which specialty and which entry you pick rather than being fixed for everyone. Delivery is distance-based: online courses broken by in-person intensives, so plan on traveling to Atlanta on a schedule the specialty sets. There is also a master of nursing pathway for people coming into nursing from another field who intend to continue to the doctorate, which makes this one of the few places you can start as a non-nurse and finish with a practice doctorate. Emory files a nurse anesthesia specialty beside the general one. 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.
Indianapolis publishes a credit total and an hour total for every track, which makes comparing them unusually easy. The two bachelor’s-entry practitioner tracks, family and adult-gerontology primary care, are each 62 credit hours with 1,050 to 1,250 clinical and practicum hours. The executive track is 31 to 36 credit hours against 1,000 practicum hours, and the post-master’s track uses the same credit range against 500 to 1,000 hours. Pace is where they part company. Family and post-master’s take you full-time or part-time, while adult-gerontology primary care and the executive track are part-time only, so if your plan was to push through quickly, those two will not let you. Admission wants a 3.0 cumulative grade point average and two years of full-time work before practicum hours start.
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.
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.
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.
Samuel Merritt is a health sciences university rather than a campus with a nursing school attached, and its doctoral output against its size is among the highest in the country: about 1,900 students in total and forty-six nursing doctorates a year. The routes are counted in units rather than years. The post-master’s doctorate needs a minimum of 30 semester units and the family nurse practitioner doctorate needs 65, so what you already hold roughly halves the work. Graduation also turns on finishing the clinical hours set for your specialty track rather than one figure for the whole degree, which means the family and psychiatric mental health routes carry different totals and the track page is where those live.
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.
Augsburg runs a 33-credit transcultural nursing doctorate over two to three years, with full-time and part-time options and a single fall start. The focus is stated rather than implied: holistic practice modalities, immersion experiences and independent practicums, which is a different emphasis from the systems-leadership framing most programs use. The bachelor’s track is built by exemption, completing every master’s course except four specifically named ones, so what you take is defined against an existing degree rather than assembled fresh. For a private university of about 3,200 students it confers a substantial number of nursing doctorates a year, which places it in the upper third nationally for output against size.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
Iowa publishes its clinical load per semester rather than as one total, which is the number that actually tells you whether the degree fits around a job. Fall and spring each carry 180 clinical hours if you are in the adult-gerontology primary care, pediatric or family tracks, and 270 if you are in psychiatric mental health or adult-gerontology acute care. Summer flips it for family nurse practitioners: 270 there, against 180 for the others. So the family route runs lighter through the main terms and heavier in summer, while psychiatric and acute care carry half again as much all year. Map that against your roster before comparing programs on their total hours.
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.
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.
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.
Oklahoma Wesleyan runs its BSN-to-DNP one course at a time in eight-week blocks, which is a genuinely different shape from a semester load and takes about three years end to end. Taking a single course at once means you are never juggling three deadlines, and it also means falling behind in one course stalls the whole sequence rather than a part of it. The other thing worth knowing is who it lets in. Applicants holding a diploma from a hospital school of nursing can transfer in 40 credit hours, which is an unusually explicit accommodation for nurses who trained before the bachelor’s became the standard entry.
Valparaiso teaches the coursework asynchronously online and keeps the clinical training in person, which is the standard honest arrangement rather than a claim of a fully remote doctorate. Two paths run, one from a bachelor’s and one from a master’s. The university files its doctorate under a family nurse practitioner specialty, so the clinical destination is primary care across the lifespan rather than a systems or leadership role. This is a small private university and the doctoral output reflects it, so expect a cohort measured in single figures and faculty with room to accommodate individual pacing.
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.
San Jose State runs a five-semester post-master’s doctorate and is precise about the campus commitment, which is the number that actually decides whether an online program is workable. Three on-campus meetings across the whole degree: orientation at the start, one midway, and the oral defense and graduation at the end of the fifth semester. Everything else is online. Admission is by cohort in the fall only, and your master’s has to be finished by 1 August before you start, so a degree still in progress that spring is cutting it fine. A master’s in a health-related field can qualify you as well as one in nursing. Project defenses are held publicly, which shows you what the end of this program looks like before you begin it.
Marymount separates its two kinds of hours and publishes both: 750 direct patient care hours and 500 project hours. Counting them apart is more honest than one combined figure, because patient-facing work and the doctoral project make very different demands on a week. Bachelor’s entry leads to either family practice or psychiatric mental health certification, and the whole thing runs online. The program is explicit about its Catholic tradition and a servant leadership framing, which is information about the cohort you would join rather than a line of marketing. The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education accredits the bachelor’s, the master’s, the post-master’s certificates and the doctorate.
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.
Messiah runs three doctoral tracks online, family nurse practitioner, nurse educator and nursing leadership, and the leadership one is written for nurses who already hold a master’s in nursing or a related field. The practitioner route is the heavy one, published at 82 credits with 1,215 clinical hours, which is a bachelor’s-entry load rather than a top-up. Messiah also advertises no-fee tuition, meaning the published rate is the rate rather than a base you add course and technology charges to, and that is worth checking against whatever you compare it with. It is a small private university, so the doctoral cohort is small, and every track is taught online rather than in Mechanicsburg.
Detroit Mercy runs two very different programs under one roof. The post-master’s doctorate builds on a master’s in nursing and takes 36 credits, part-time or full-time. The nurse anesthesia route is another thing entirely, and its first year is unusual: 9 to 13 credits a term for the first 12 months with no clinical component at all. A full year of classroom work before you touch a patient is a real structural choice, and it means the front of that program is not something you fit around shifts. Against its size, Detroit Mercy confers nursing doctorates at a rate in the top quarter of accredited institutions.
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.
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.
Houston caps what you can carry forward, and the number is worth checking before you compare it with anywhere else. The maximum clinical hours it will accept from an MSN is 500, whatever you actually logged. So if your master’s carried 700 or 800 practicum hours, two or three hundred of them stop counting the moment you enroll here, and the post-master’s DNP still runs 37 to 42 credit hours over eight semesters. Against a school that applies your full master’s total against the 1,000, that is a real difference in time rather than a technicality. Eight semesters is the published shape whichever end of the credit range you land on.
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.
Delaware publishes its clinical hours split by type, which almost nobody does. The adult-gerontology acute care concentration is 68 credit hours and 1,016 clinical hours, and it tells you that 816 of those are direct care against 200 indirect. That distinction is worth more than it looks, because a program quoting one large number may be counting hours you would not describe as patient contact. The hours sit inside the core and concentration courses rather than being bolted on afterwards. The psychiatric mental health concentration runs hybrid, and its on-campus intensives run simulation with trained student actors rather than standardized patients alone.
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.
Mississippi University for Women puts its BSN-to-DNP at as few as eight terms, about 33 months, which is quick for a route that starts from a bachelor’s where three to four years is the norm. Terms rather than semesters is the tell: the calendar is built around shorter blocks, so the pace comes from density rather than from cutting content. It is a small public university that confers a modest number of doctorates a year, so expect a small cohort rather than a large program. School-wide average graduate tuition here, which excludes DNP add-on charges, sits in the lowest fifth of the 306 accredited institutions that publish a rate, in the 2023-24 federal figures, and the out-of-state rate is barely higher, which is unusual for a public university.
Union runs three doctoral tracks that lead to genuinely different work: executive leadership, nurse anesthesia, and nurse practitioner practice. It is a Christian university and states that the program integrates faith with professional preparation, which is worth knowing about the cohort you would join rather than reading as a marketing line. Beside the doctorate sit post-graduate certificates in nursing administration, family practice and psychiatric mental health, so a nurse who already holds a master’s can add a specialty without committing to the whole degree. The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education accredits the bachelor’s, the master’s, the doctorate and the certificate programs here, so the full ladder is covered rather than only the top of it.
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.
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.
Illinois State keeps its post-master’s doctorate compact: 34 credit hours and 360 clinical hours, taught online. Three hundred and sixty is a small clinical figure, and it only makes sense because the route assumes the bulk of your hours came with your master’s, so check what you already hold before treating it as the whole requirement. Two start points exist rather than one, with applications closing 15 April for a summer start and 15 July for fall. The college’s clinical partnerships run across central Illinois and reach past hospitals into long-term care, school districts and public health agencies, which widens the kinds of project a doctoral student can realistically take on.
Charles R. Drew runs a 40-credit DNP on a cohort model, so you move through it with the same group rather than assembling a schedule of your own. The format is precepted clinical placements alongside online coursework, and the weekend structure is published rather than left vague: three hours of synchronous class followed by twelve hours of asynchronous study. That ratio is the useful part, because it tells you the live commitment is small and the independent one is not, which is the reverse of how most hybrid programs are described to you. The program holds CCNE accreditation, awarded after the degree launched rather than carried across from an existing one.
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.
3 DNP tracks at this
institution, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general), Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.
Fairfield files five DNP specialties, and two of them, nurse anesthesia and nurse midwifery, are programs most universities do not attempt at all. The post-master’s doctorate is 30 to 32 credits and you can take it online or hybrid. The midwifery application is where the school shows its hand: it asks for a three-page personal statement covering why you want to be a nurse midwife, your goals for the next five to ten years, and what you intend to contribute to the profession. That is a lot of writing for an application, and it filters for people who have thought past the credential. The psychiatric mental health track carries the coursework needed to sit for certification through the American Nurses Credentialing Center.
Fresno State reviews applications on a rolling basis as they arrive rather than against one closing date, and everyone who progresses is interviewed by the doctoral program before an offer. An interview stage is worth preparing for, because it means the decision is not made on paper alone. Applications go through Cal State Apply, the system-wide portal, so the mechanics are the same as for any California State 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. The doctorate is filed federally as a distance program and it is small, conferring a handful of degrees a year.
William Paterson runs one doctorate and is precise about it: a post-master’s DNP taught online, 38 credit hours, finishing in as few as 30 months. Thirty-eight credits is a middling load for a post-master’s route, and 30 months is the floor rather than the average, so read it as what the sequence allows when nothing goes wrong. The wider school of nursing matters if you are still choosing a master’s first. Its family nurse practitioner track runs 47 credits full-time or part-time, and it also runs a school nurse program that carries an Educational Services Endorsement once the 24 credits are done. School nursing is a different job from advanced clinical practice, and few universities run both routes inside one college.
Kent State is explicit about who goes to the front of the queue for its nurse executive concentration. Priority admission goes to candidates already holding ANCC or AONL nurse executive certification, or who have worked in nursing management or administration. That is a useful signal in both directions. If you have that background you are competing on favorable terms, and if you do not, this is a concentration you enter from behind rather than level with everyone else. Post-master’s students complete a minimum of 500 practicum hours, so half of the 1,000 the degree standard sets is expected to have traveled with you from your master’s.
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.
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.
Goshen runs its doctorate jointly with Eastern Mennonite University, and the arrangement is unusual: you take courses from faculty at both institutions but enroll at one, and the diploma and the billing follow whichever you pick. One program, two possible names on the certificate. The shape is 33 credit hours across 10 courses, either nine semesters or an accelerated six-semester route finishing in 22 months. Coursework is asynchronous with one required in-person residency. The clinical requirement is 1,000 post-baccalaureate supervised hours, and hours you logged during your master’s count toward it, which is what makes the accelerated option realistic rather than punishing. The doctoral work is an evidence-based practice project rather than a research dissertation.
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.
Lee runs three doctoral tracks, a general one, a family nurse practitioner route and an executive leadership doctorate, all online with full-time and part-time plans. Two things set it apart from the usual online arrangement. The school helps arrange your practicum, leadership and scholarly project placements in your own geographic area rather than leaving you to find them, and finding them is the single most common thing that stalls an online doctorate. There is also a real on-campus component: annual intensive sessions, plus a three-day skills lab for practitioner students held before the first practicum, so you learn advanced assessment in person before using it on a patient. Admission wants a 3.0 cumulative average, and you may apply while still eligible for licensure rather than already licensed.
South College runs two DNPs on very different clocks. The nurse anesthesia concentration is a fixed full-time plan, 36 months across 12 quarters, with no part-time option in the published curriculum. The post-master’s DNP is the opposite: online, and paced by how fast you demonstrate mastery rather than by a semester calendar, with average completion falling between 18 and 30 months and the quickest full-time route at 21. That is a twelve-month spread between two students taking the same degree. So the honest planning question here is not how long the program takes, it is how many hours a week you can genuinely put into it.
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.
Ursuline sets your DNP residency hours per student rather than per program. The college states that the clinical hours required will be determined from your previous education and experience together with the requirements of the specialty you pick, so two people admitted the same year can owe materially different amounts. That is worth settling in writing before you enroll, because it is the variable that decides how long the degree actually takes you. It is a small private college of under a thousand students near Cleveland, its federal filing flags the program for distance study, and it confers a small number of doctorates a year, so expect a compact cohort rather than a large one.
Seton Hall prices the two entries far apart and publishes both: 31 credits and up if you already hold a master’s in nursing, against 73 to 79 credits coming from a bachelor’s. That is more than double, and it is the clearest argument on this card for finishing a master’s first if you are weighing the two. The program runs online. The wording Seton Hall uses is worth noticing as well, because it names master’s holders in direct or indirect care, so a master’s that was not a clinical practitioner degree is explicitly in scope here rather than left ambiguous.
McNeese designed its DNP around nurses who are still working: part-time only, post-master’s only, and delivered face to face with an online component rather than as a fully remote program. It is 54 semester credit hours beyond a master’s in nursing, which is at the heavier end for a post-master’s route where 33 to 40 is common, so the trade for the part-time pace is a longer total commitment. 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 barely higher, which is unusual for a public university.
Mary Baldwin’s post-MSN DNP attaches 400 project hours to the clinical hours you already earned during your master’s, and together they have to reach the 1,000 the degree requires. So the size of what is left is set by what your MSN carried rather than by a fixed number here. The catalog also does something almost no school does: it estimates study time at two to three hours for every credit hour, which turns an abstract course load into a countable number of evenings. Virginia residents taking at least 12 credit hours can claim the state’s tuition assistance grant, worth $5,000 in the year the university publishes, and that is money which does not depend on the university itself.
Briar Cliff scopes its doctorate to nurses who are already certified practitioners and puts it at two years, online. This is a top-up rather than a route into practice, and the coursework says so: population health, informatics, financial management and ethics rather than another clinical population. The money side is where Briar Cliff does something different. It discounts tuition for employees of partner organizations on a sliding scale set by how many colleagues enroll alongside you, and takes 20 percent off online graduate tuition for active duty military. If your employer is on that partner list, ask before you apply anywhere else. Briar Cliff is small, and the doctoral cohort is small.
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.
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.
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.
West Coast runs its DNP entirely online and puts the fastest route at 20 months, which is at the short end of anything published by a school on this site. It also advertises no waitlist, and that matters more than it sounds. A lot of programs admit once a year into a fixed cohort, so a place can still be twelve months away after you have been accepted. The curriculum is built around strategic leadership and project management rather than around a clinical specialty, with the final four credits varying by the specialty you enroll in. It is a for-profit institution and its Texas campus confers a small number of doctorates a year, so this is a compact program rather than a large one, whatever the flexible format suggests about scale.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Scranton runs a 30-credit post-master’+A+’s leadership DNP at $772 per credit, which is one of the few programs on this site to publish a per-credit rate rather than an annual figure, and it makes the arithmetic straightforward. The format is executive: online coursework built on the assumption that you are practicing full-time while you study, which is a design choice rather than a concession. All students complete a minimum of 1,000 clinical hours toward the capstone, and advanced practice students are credited for hours already completed in a master’+A+’s specialty. The framing is Jesuit, with the emphasis on ethical leadership and service alongside the clinical content.
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.
Rocky Mountain runs its post-master’s doctorate in 20 months across five semesters, entirely online, and the design assumption is stated rather than implied: the program expects you to keep working as a nurse or practitioner throughout, so that what you learn goes into your own practice while you are learning it. Twenty months is short for a doctorate and only works because the clinical core is already behind you. Beside it sits a longer route from a bachelor’s that leads to family practitioner preparation, running nine semesters on a limited-residency model, so most of it is remote with some scheduled time in person.
Lourdes builds its 37-credit DNP out of four named parts rather than one course list: online asynchronous coursework, experiential learning, the DNP project, and a competency validation stage. That last one is the unusual piece. Most programs treat the project as the terminal hurdle, whereas here there is a separate demonstration that you can do the thing before you finish. It is a small private university of under a thousand students in northwest Ohio conferring a handful of doctorates a year, so the cohort is small and the asynchronous format is what makes the reach wider than the campus. Its federal filing carries no distance-education flag for the degree.
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.
A T Still points its doctorate at systems rather than patients, and offers three concentrations to aim it: organizational leadership, nurse educator, and population health. If you want a new clinical population this is the wrong program, and the university is clear about that rather than leaving you to infer it. Teaching is web-based and built around directed readings and discussion with faculty and working healthcare leaders, ending in a scholarly project applied to a real organization. The program holds accreditation from the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. It sits inside a college of graduate health studies, so the doctorate is one of several health professions taught at a distance here.
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.
North Park runs its doctorate as a post-graduate program for nurses who already hold a master’s, and it is a light one: 33 credits across 12 courses, a minimum of 350 practicum hours, and five semesters end to end. The courses are online and written around people who are still working, so the practicum is the part that has to fit around a job rather than the coursework. Thirty-three credits is at the low end for a nursing doctorate, which is what a post-graduate route looks like once a master’s has covered the clinical core. This is a small private university in Chicago conferring only a handful of nursing doctorates a year, so expect a cohort you can count rather than a program with several tracks running at once.
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.
Widener settles your clinical hours by audit rather than by rule. Every post-MSN applicant gets a gap analysis, in which the hours you completed toward your master’s are applied against the 1,000 the doctorate requires, and if that leaves you short you make up the difference inside the DNP project courses. Health systems leadership works the same way, with the shortfall covered by two specialization courses carrying roughly 150 to 167 hours between them. So two people admitted in the same year can owe very different amounts of clinical time, and you will not know which you are until the analysis is done. The GRE is not required.
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.
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.
Western University does something for career-changers that almost no practitioner program does: an applicant without a full year of registered nurse experience still qualifies. You are placed on a modified curriculum and must complete 1,800 hours of RN employment by the end of the first year instead of before you start. For a nurse who wants to keep moving rather than wait out a year at the bedside, that is the whole decision. The prerequisite that catches people is smaller and stricter: a statistics course of at least two semester units passed at C or better, taken at a regionally accredited institution in the United States.
What saves you time is not an exemption. It is the window. The
count is post-baccalaureate supervised clinical practice hours, across the whole program of study, and because it runs from the
baccalaureate, supervised hours you completed during your
master’s fall inside it. Many nurses on this route arrive
with a substantial share already done.
The catch is evidence. Hours you completed years ago have to be
documented to the satisfaction of the new program, and where the
records are thin, students end up repeating hours they genuinely
did complete. That is the most avoidable cost on this route, and
it is avoided by asking what documentation the program accepts
before you apply rather than after you are admitted.
Who A Post-Master’s DNP Suits
Structurally close to the MSN-to-DNP route, and named differently because programs use the term for a specific admissions category rather than a different curriculum. The distinction that matters is how prior hours and prior coursework are treated.
Nurses holding a graduate nursing degree who want the doctorate as a discrete addition rather than a second full program
Clinicians already certified in a population focus who are not seeking a new one
Anyone whose employer will fund a defined, shorter program
92 of the 166 schools here are private, where the
published rate is the same whichever state you live in. The
MSN to DNP route
overlaps heavily with this one, and which term a school uses is
often an admissions label rather than a different curriculum.
What To Settle Before You Apply
The 1,000 hours still apply to you
This is the most commonly misunderstood point on this route, and the accreditor addresses it explicitly: all DNP students, including those in post-master's programs, are expected to reach the minimum. It counts from the baccalaureate, so earlier supervised hours can count, but the expectation itself is not waived.
A gap analysis is not optional
What you owe depends entirely on what your master's covered and how many documented hours you can evidence. Two applicants with the same degree from different schools can face materially different requirements.
Documentation of past hours can be the bottleneck
Hours you completed years ago need to be evidenced to the new program's satisfaction. Where records are thin, students end up repeating hours they did complete.
The work on this route happens before enrollment rather than during it. Get the hour count and the credit transfer agreed in writing, and the program itself is the most predictable of the three.
Do the 1,000 practice hours apply to a post-master's DNP?
Yes, and this is the point readers most often get wrong. AACN states that programs should provide a minimum of 1,000 hours of practice post-baccalaureate as part of a supervised academic program. The requirement counts from the baccalaureate rather than from enrollment, so supervised hours you completed during your master's can count toward it. What is not true is that the requirement is waived because you already hold a graduate degree.
What is the difference between a post-master's DNP and an MSN to DNP?
Mostly the label. Schools use "post-master's" for an admissions category rather than for a different curriculum, so the two often lead to the same coursework and the same project. Where they diverge is on paperwork: this route is written for applicants who already hold a graduate nursing degree and are not seeking a new population focus, so the questions are about your prior hours and prior credits rather than about your clinical preparation. 77 schools name the MSN route, 166 name this one, and many name both.
How long does a post-master's DNP take?
One to two years, frequently part-time. The published length varies less than what you personally owe, which depends on your master's coursework and your documented hours. Two applicants entering the same program can face materially different requirements.
What if I cannot document practice hours from years ago?
You repeat them, which is the most avoidable cost on this route. Start with your master's program: many keep clinical logs longer than students expect, and a transcript alone rarely carries hour counts. Ask the admitting program what form of evidence it accepts before you apply, because the answer varies and it decides how much of the 1,000 you are starting from.
How many schools offer a post-master's DNP?
166, which is more than name either of the other two routes, and 166 of those carry enough published figures to hold a position in the ranking above. Treat that as a floor rather than a census: 141 institutions were not settled by the pages that were read.
Do I need a new population focus?
Not usually. This route is built for clinicians who are already certified in a population focus and are adding the doctorate rather than a second specialty. If you do want a new population focus, that is a different program and a longer one, and it is worth saying so in your application rather than discovering it at advising.
Is a post-master's DNP online?
80 of the 166 schools here carry the federal distance-education flag. That flag covers coursework. The supervised hours stay in person, and on a short program they are the constraint that decides whether the schedule works around your job.
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. Most people on this route are already in that occupation and already counted in that median, which is worth holding in mind when a program describes the degree as an earnings move.
5Institution program pages Whether each school runs a post-master's 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.
