TCU publishes a flat $115,000 total for its 87-credit DNAP, plus roughly $6,000 in clinical fees that sit outside that figure, and it accepts 65 to 75 students a year. Both the GRE and the CCRN are required. Its class of 2024 posted a 99% first-time pass rate on the National Certification Exam, the highest in this pilot, and the next cycle opens in December 2026 and closes in May 2027 for a January 2028 start.
Every figure on this page was read off Texas Christian University's own pages on 22 September 2026. Where the program publishes nothing, this page says so rather than guessing. The National Certification Exam, or NCE, is the exam every graduate has to pass, and a program that publishes its first-time pass rate is handing you the single most useful number it has.
TCU CRNA Program: Key Facts
| Degree awarded | Doctor of Nurse Anesthesia Practice (DNAP) |
|---|---|
| Program length | 36 months / 3 years (Phase I 20 months, Phase II 16 months) |
| Credits | 87 |
| Start | January (2028 cohort) |
| Application deadline | Opens December 2026, deadline May 2027, for January 2028 cohort start |
| Minimum ICU experience | 1 year minimum, 2 years recommended |
| CCRN | Required |
| GRE | Required; most recent admitted cohort averaged Quantitative 154, Verbal 155, Writing 4 |
| Minimum GPA | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Class / cohort size | Typically 65-75 students accepted each year |
| Format | Hybrid: Phase I combines online, classroom and laboratory work; Phase II is weekly classroom sessions plus 16-month clinical residency |
| Tuition (in-state) | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Tuition (out-of-state) | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Tuition (as published) | $115,000 total for the 2029 cohort (BSN-to-DNAP program), plus roughly $6,000 in clinical fees not included; no in-state/out-of-state distinction shown |
| NCE first-time pass rate | 99% first-time pass rate, Class of 2024 |
| Attrition | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Employment | 100% of graduates employed upon graduation, Class of 2023 |
Anything marked “Not published” is genuinely absent from the program's own pages. Programs are not required to publish tuition, cohort size or acceptance rate, and many do not. We would rather leave a gap than fill it with a third-party guess.
Admission Requirements
The critical-care floor is one year minimum, with two years recommended. That is the hard rule, and a file sitting exactly on it is eligible rather than competitive — committees read high-acuity time in a CVICU, SICU, trauma or neuro unit very differently from a monitored floor.
No GPA minimum is published for this track. Doctoral nursing programs rarely admit below a 3.0, and admitted classes usually sit well above whatever floor exists.
CCRN: Required.
GRE: Required. The most recent admitted cohort averaged 154 quantitative and 155 verbal..
Published prerequisites
- Anatomy & Physiology I
- Anatomy & Physiology II
- Microbiology
- Chemistry (Biochemistry or Organic Chemistry)
Deadline and Timeline
Applications close opens December 2026 and closes May 2027, for a January 2028 start, and the program starts in January.
Deadlines move year to year, and a doctoral cohort is usually decided nine to twelve months before it starts. Confirm the current cycle on the program site before you plan around this date. Our CRNA application timeline works backwards from a start date through references, shadowing, CCRN and transcripts.
Cost
$115,000 in total for the 2029 cohort, plus about $6,000 in clinical fees that are not included.
Tuition is not the whole number. Fees, health insurance, board-exam and licensure costs, relocation and the lost income of three years out of a staff job all land on the same ledger. Our CRNA school cost guide works through the full picture, and cheapest CRNA programs ranks by published tuition.
Outcomes
First-time NCE pass rate: 99% first-time for the class of 2024
Attrition: not published
Employment: 100% of the class of 2023 employed on graduation
These three figures are worth more than any ranking. COA requires accredited programs to publish them, and read together they tell you whether a program gets the people it admits through to a licence. National context: the first-time NCE pass rate was 90.5% in 2025 (NBCRNA), with a five-year average of 86.6%.
How TCU Compares in Texas
Texas has other accredited options, and their requirements are not identical. See all Texas CRNA programs, or start with these:
| Program | City | Degree | Cost | Acceptance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baylor College of Medicine | Houston | DNP | $90,000 | 12% |
| Texas Wesleyan University | Fort Worth | DNAP | $115,000 | 19% |
| The University of Texas at San Antonio | San Antonio | DNP | Varies | N/A |
Cost and acceptance in that table are directory figures rather than program-verified ones. "Varies" and "N/A" mean the program publishes neither.
Sources and How We Verified This
Every figure above was read off Texas Christian University's own pages on 22 September 2026. Accreditation status and review dates come from the COA list of accredited programs. We publish no number we could not read at its source.
- https://harriscollege.tcu.edu/nurse-anesthesia/index.php
- https://harriscollege.tcu.edu/nurse-anesthesia/dnap/index.php
- https://harriscollege.tcu.edu/nurse-anesthesia/dnap/admission.php
- https://harriscollege.tcu.edu/nurse-anesthesia/faq/index.php
Programs change requirements and prices between admission cycles. If something here no longer matches the program site, tell us and we will fix it.