Post-Master's DNP Programs

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

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.

In-State Tuition

$11,416

Out-Of-State

$34,405

DNP Awards

44

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (research)

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.

In-State Tuition

$12,260

Out-Of-State

$44,148

DNP Awards

26

UG Completion

87%

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

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

In-State Tuition

$4,452

Out-Of-State

$20,729

DNP Awards

81

UG Completion

63%

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

5 DNP tracks at this institution, Adult health, Family nurse practitioner, Nursing practice (general), Pediatric, Psychiatric-mental health NP. Ranked once, on the largest.

Cincinnati builds its DNP curriculum around evidence-based practice, quality improvement, policy, informatics and leadership, and its family track is explicitly aimed at both national certification exams, the ANCC’s FNP-BC and the AANP’s. The pediatric acute care programs prepare nurses for fast-paced clinical settings and family-centerd care. Two structural details are worth knowing before you plan around it. From spring 2027, advanced health assessment students must complete a three-day on-campus immersion and demonstrate competency before beginning practicum, which for a distance-flagged program means three days in Ohio. And each practicum requires at least two DNP project team meetings, so supervision is scheduled rather than left to you to arrange.

In-State Tuition

$11,685

Out-Of-State

$27,019

DNP Awards

32

UG Completion

75%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (research)

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

In-State Tuition

$11,560

Out-Of-State

$30,704

DNP Awards

61

UG Completion

74%

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

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.

In-State Tuition

$17,006

Out-Of-State

$39,683

DNP Awards

34

UG Completion

83%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

Alabama sets clinical hours by concentration rather than by degree, and the spread is wide. The college publishes 1,080 to 1,620 post-baccalaureate hours depending on which concentration you pick, against 540 for a post-master’s entry. A gap that size between two concentrations at one school is worth pinning down before you apply, because at the top end it is most of a year of placement. There is also a transfer rule that can buy time: the direct care core, meaning advanced pathophysiology, advanced physical assessment and advanced pharmacology, may transfer if you took those courses with a B or better within five years of applying. Five years is the part people miss. The doctorate carries no distance flag federally, so plan on Tuscaloosa.

In-State Tuition

$11,380

Out-Of-State

$33,372

DNP Awards

50

UG Completion

73%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

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.

In-State Tuition

$17,739

Out-Of-State

$44,510

DNP Awards

51

UG Completion

81%

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

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.

In-State Tuition

$12,109

Out-Of-State

$32,747

DNP Awards

36

UG Completion

71%

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

Utah publishes two MS-to-DNP timetables and what separates them is where you did your master’s. Come from another institution and it is 35 credit hours, five semesters full time starting in fall or seven part time starting in spring. Finish a master’s at Utah recently and the same degree is 30 credits, three semesters full time starting in summer. Either way the clinical requirement is 480 hours. The college counts every clinical, residency and practicum hour you earned during your MSN toward the 1,000 post-baccalaureate hours the degree is built on, so what you still owe depends on what you already banked rather than on a fixed number.

In-State Tuition

$8,461

Out-Of-State

$29,701

DNP Awards

91

UG Completion

65%

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

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

In-State Tuition

$10,968

Out-Of-State

$29,298

DNP Awards

36

UG Completion

69%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

Arizona publishes a credit total and a clinical total for every specialty, and the ratio between them is the interesting part. The pediatric nurse practitioner route is 64 credit hours with 720 clinical hours. Executive health systems leadership is 50 credits with 630 practicum hours, so the leadership route trades away classroom time while giving up very little time in practice, which is not what most people assume about a track that is not primarily clinical. From a master’s, the post-master’s DNP is 35 credit hours. Setting that against the 64 the pediatric route takes from a bachelor’s is the clearest way to see what the master’s you already hold is worth in time rather than in money.

In-State Tuition

$11,835

Out-Of-State

$38,165

DNP Awards

105

UG Completion

68%

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

Greensboro publishes the arithmetic that decides whether a post-master’s doctorate is worth starting. The post-master’s DNP runs 30 credits and 1,000 practicum hours, and the hours you already logged in a master’s count toward that total, which is how a full-time student finishes in four semesters, roughly 15 months, entering in the fall and ending the fall after. If your master’s practicum fell short, the school says you make up the difference here rather than waving it through. The nurse anesthesia concentration is a different commitment: 107 credits across nine semesters and 36 months, a May start, and graduate and clinical clock hours averaging about 35 a week. In-state tuition sits in the cheapest few percent of the programs on this site.

In-State Tuition

$4,422

Out-Of-State

$20,773

DNP Awards

57

UG Completion

56%

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

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. In-state tuition sits in the lower fifth on this site.

In-State Tuition

$8,430

Out-Of-State

$26,572

DNP Awards

37

UG Completion

61%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

Murray State publishes its curricula course by course, with the credit weight and the clinical hours attached to each one, which is a level of detail most schools keep behind an advising appointment. The post-master’s route shows what that buys you: the doctoral project runs across three sequential courses carrying 180 clinical hours apiece, so 540 hours accumulate through the project itself rather than in separate placements. Bachelor’s entry splits into nurse anesthesia and family practice, and the family sequence front-loads assessment and diagnostics before primary care clinical courses at 180 hours each. If you want to know what a semester will actually demand before you commit, this is a school that has already written it down.

In-State Tuition

$8,604

Out-Of-State

$18,540

DNP Awards

29

UG Completion

61%

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

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

In-State Tuition

$10,374

Out-Of-State

$24,650

DNP Awards

28

UG Completion

64%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

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

In-State Tuition

$11,304

Out-Of-State

$33,336

DNP Awards

53

UG Completion

64%

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

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.

In-State Tuition

$8,918

Out-Of-State

$8,918

DNP Awards

77

UG Completion

57%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

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.

In-State Tuition

$11,305

Out-Of-State

$27,864

DNP Awards

46

UG Completion

60%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (professional)

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.

In-State Tuition

$12,789

Out-Of-State

$28,849

DNP Awards

102

UG Completion

62%

• CCNE-accredited
• Private nonprofit
• Doctorate (research)

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.

In-State Tuition

$15,297

Out-Of-State

$15,297

DNP Awards

54

UG Completion

65%

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

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.

In-State Tuition

$8,976

Out-Of-State

$17,952

DNP Awards

178

UG Completion

53%

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

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.

In-State Tuition

$10,440

Out-Of-State

$20,880

DNP Awards

31

UG Completion

55%

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

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.

In-State Tuition

$11,750

Out-Of-State

$30,650

DNP Awards

36

UG Completion

55%

• CCNE-accredited
• Public
• Doctorate (research)

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.

In-State Tuition

$10,392

Out-Of-State

$34,860

DNP Awards

21

UG Completion

68%