Vanderbilt is still filling its inaugural cohort: applications for the summer 2027 start opened March 1, 2026 and closed May 15, 2026, and the program is accredited for up to 30 students a cohort. The 90-credit DNP runs 36 months in person at $2,057 a credit hour on the general DNP rate, with no GRE and the CCRN encouraged rather than required. Because no class has graduated there is no pass rate, attrition or employment record, and no acceptance rate either.
Every figure on this page was read off Vanderbilt 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.
Vanderbilt CRNA Program: Key Facts
| Degree awarded | Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) |
|---|---|
| Program length | 36 months / 9 semesters |
| Credits | 90 |
| Start | Summer (late May) |
| Application deadline | Summer 2027 start: applications open March 1 2026, deadline May 15 2026 |
| Minimum ICU experience | 1 year full-time (or part-time equivalent) within past 5 years |
| CCRN | Strongly encouraged (not required) |
| GRE | Not required |
| Minimum GPA | 3.00 cumulative |
| Class / cohort size | Accredited for up to 30 students per cohort |
| Format | Full-time, in-person |
| Tuition (in-state) | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Tuition (out-of-state) | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Tuition (as published) | $2,057 per credit hour (2025-2026), general DNP rate, not broken out by specialty or residency |
| NCE first-time pass rate | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Attrition | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Employment | Not published — verify on the program site |
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 of full-time experience, or the part-time equivalent, within the past five years. 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.
On grades the program asks for a 3.0 cumulative minimum. Treat that as a screen rather than a target, because admitted classes at doctoral programs usually sit well above the stated floor and science coursework is weighed separately.
CCRN: Strongly encouraged, not required.
GRE: Not required.
Published prerequisites
- Bachelor's or graduate degree in nursing or appropriate major
- Statistics course
- Current unencumbered RN/APRN license (US or territory)
Deadline and Timeline
Applications close applications for the summer 2027 start opened March 1, 2026 and closed May 15, 2026, and the program starts in late May.
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
$2,057 a credit hour at the 2025-26 general DNP rate, which is not broken out by specialty or residency. Vanderbilt publishes no program total.
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: not published. No class has graduated yet.
Attrition: not published
Employment: not published
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%.
About the Acceptance Rate You May Have Seen
Vanderbilt publishes no acceptance rate for this program, and it has not yet admitted its inaugural cohort — its own FAQ says “after we admit our first cohort, we will be able to provide a profile of the class.” One reader wrote to us in September 2026 describing roughly 586 applications for 24 seats in the first cohort, about 4%. We are not publishing that as this program's acceptance rate: it is a single unverified account, and Vanderbilt's own page states the program is accredited for up to 30 students per cohort, not 24. If you have documentation of the real figure, send it to us.
How Vanderbilt Compares in Tennessee
Apply in-state where you can, since residency usually moves tuition more than any other lever. See all Tennessee CRNA programs, or start with these:
| Program | City | Degree | Cost | Acceptance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carson Newman University | Jefferson City | DNAP | Varies | N/A |
| Lincoln Memorial University | Harrogate | DNP | $105,000 | 22% |
| Middle Tennessee School of Anesthesia | Madison | DNAP | $95,000 | 20% |
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 Vanderbilt 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://nursing.vanderbilt.edu/programs/dnp/nurse-anesthesia-dnp-crna/
- https://nursing.vanderbilt.edu/admissions/dnp/
- https://nursing.vanderbilt.edu/admissions/financial-aid/
Programs change requirements and prices between admission cycles. If something here no longer matches the program site, tell us and we will fix it.