College of Saint Benedict FNP Programs

College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University offers a BSN-DNP Family Nurse Practitioner Track.

Program Tracks Overview

Program	Est. Tuition	Est. Duration	Credit Hours
BSN-DNP	$73.5K	3 years (9 semesters)	70

College of Saint Benedict’s defining advantage is the size and shape of its clinical requirement: 960 direct patient care hours, one quarter of which is an elective rotation the student chooses in mental health, acute care, or another specialty. The trade-offs are a Minnesota RN license required before the first course and two to three campus visits every semester.

Quick Facts

Feature	Details
Program Types	BSN to DNP, Family Nurse Practitioner. 70 credits. No post-master’s FNP certificate is published.
Format	Mostly Online. Coursework is online with two to three campus visits per semester in St. Joseph.
Clinical Hours	1,140 total: 960 direct patient care across four practicums, plus 180 DNP project hours.
Clinical Placement	Guaranteed and assigned by the program. Students do not recruit their own preceptors.
Population	Family and individual across the lifespan.
Distinctive Coursework	Specialty Care Management, Family Systems, a two-course Advanced Diagnostics sequence, Global Perspectives.
Concentrations	None named. Specialization happens through the 240-hour elective clinical practicum.
RN License Requirements	Minnesota RN license before the first course, plus licensure in the state where clinicals occur.
RN Experience Gate	2,000 documented RN practice hours before Advanced Practice Nursing I and Clinical Practicum I.
Start Terms	Fall and spring.
Tuition	$1,050 per credit for 2026-27. About $73,500 in tuition across 70 credits.
Accreditation	CCNE accredits the DNP programs. Higher Learning Commission institutionally. Minnesota Board of Nursing approved.

BSN to DNP, Family Nurse Practitioner

The estimated tuition for the BSN-DNP at College of Saint Benedict is approximately $73,500 (70 credits at $1,050/credit). The program can generally be completed in about 3 years (9 semesters), running fall, spring, and summer every year with no term off.

The official program page is Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) – Family Nurse Practitioner.

BSN-DNP Curriculum

Doctoral core comes first. The entire first year, 24 credits across three terms, is doctoral coursework: informatics, program evaluation, research methods, ethics and health policy, health systems leadership, and a Global Perspectives course that most FNP programs do not carry. No pathophysiology, pharmacology, or assessment appears until the second fall. That front-loading is unusual and it has a practical consequence: a student who leaves after year one has a year of leadership and research credits, not a partial nurse practitioner education.

The FNP spine occupies years two and three. Advanced pathophysiology, two pharmacology courses, and health assessment open the specialty sequence, followed by Advanced Practice Nursing I, II, and III at 3, 4, and 4 credits. Running alongside is a two-part Advanced Diagnostics sequence, which separates diagnostic reasoning from the management courses rather than folding it in. Family Systems adds a family-unit lens that is uncommon as standalone coursework.

Specialty content is real coursework, not a label. Specialty Care Management pairs with the elective clinical practicum in the final summer, so the specialty choice is taught and practiced in the same term. The DNP project runs as five sequential courses from the second spring through graduation, which spreads the scholarly work across six terms instead of concentrating it at the end.

NRSG 513 Global Perspectives (3)
NRSG 537 Advanced Pharmacology II (2)
NRSG 551 Family Systems (2)
NRSG 552 Advanced Diagnostics I (2)
NRSG 553 Advanced Diagnostics II (2)
NRSG 557 Specialty Care Management (2)
NRSG 560, 561, 562 Advanced Practice Nursing I, II, III (3, 4, 4)
NRSG 563 Capstone for the Advanced Practice Nurse: Transition to Practice (2)
NRSG 587 Clinical Practicum Elective (2)

More curriculum details are available here.

You Should Know

The published plan of study is a single fixed sequence with no part-time variant. Term loads range from 6 to 9 credits and every summer carries a full load.
Course order is locked by prerequisites, so a failed or repeated course generally stops progression until it is passed. Graduate nursing courses may be repeated once, and students are capped at two withdrawals or retakes combined.
Up to six graduate credits may transfer at the program chair’s discretion, but pathophysiology, pharmacology, advanced pharmacology, health assessment, and any clinical hours are explicitly excluded.
DNP-FNP students must finish within eight years of the first course. The published plan uses three.

BSN-DNP Clinical Requirements

1,140 total practice hours. Four practicum courses carry 240 hours each for 960 direct patient care hours, and the five DNP project courses carry 180 hours combined.
Clinical work starts in the sixth of nine semesters. The final four terms each carry a 240-hour block.
The fourth block, Clinical Practicum Elective, is taken in mental health, acute care, or another specialty area chosen by the student.
The program provides placements. Students are not responsible for finding their own preceptors.
A minimum of 120 direct hours must be completed with a nurse practitioner.
Preceptors may be an NP, physician assistant, certified nurse midwife, or physician. Family members, friends, and anyone the student supervises at work are excluded.
Precepted courses hold a student-to-faculty ratio no greater than 6:1.
At least two meetings per semester take place between student, faculty, and site preceptor, virtually or in person.
Malpractice insurance must be in place before the first rotation.
Missed clinical hours must be made up, and a fee may be charged for the faculty coverage involved.

At 960 direct patient care hours, this program sits 460 hours above the 500-hour national certification floor and well above the 600 to 700 hours common among FNP programs. The school’s own handbook tells students to expect 8 to 16 clinical hours a week once practicum starts, and 240 hours across a 15-week term works out to 16 hours weekly, at the top of that band (derived from the published block size and a standard semester length). For a nurse still working, that is two clinical days a week for four straight terms. The placement model is the offsetting benefit: assignment rather than negotiation removes the single most common source of delay in FNP programs, and the elective block means a quarter of that volume goes somewhere the student picked.

You Should Know

Placements are assigned, not selected. The handbook states that students outside the CentraCare system are assigned based on professional experience, learning needs, and location, so geography is a factor the student does not control.
For CentraCare placements, priority goes to students who are current CentraCare employees with at least two years of RN experience before entering the program.
The 120-hour nurse practitioner minimum is 12.5% of the direct hours. The remaining 840 could be supervised by a physician assistant or physician under the published preceptor rules.
The school does not publish how elective specialty requests are matched or whether a requested specialty can be declined for lack of a site.
Students must hold an RN license in the state where clinical experiences take place, not only in Minnesota.
Students who cannot participate in a course, including precepted clinical, for two weeks or more are administratively withdrawn.

BSN-DNP Admissions

Two gates shape this application more than the GPA does: a Minnesota RN license must be in hand before the first course, and 2,000 documented RN practice hours must be on file before clinical coursework begins.

Four-year nursing degree from a CCNE, CNEA, or ACEN accredited program, conferred before the program starts.
Cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher on a 4.0 scale.
Current, unencumbered RN license registered in Minnesota.
Minimum 2,000 RN practice hours documented to the graduate nursing chair before Advanced Practice Nursing I and Clinical Practicum I.
Application through NursingCAS, with official transcripts from every post-secondary institution attended.
Holistic review of essays on goals and purpose, plus a current resume or CV.
An inferential statistics course is recommended before applying.
Fall and spring starts. Final deadlines run August 1 for fall and December 1 for spring, with priority review at January 1 for fall and May 1 for spring, then rolling admission until seats fill.
After acceptance: background study, immunization records, CPR certification, and a witnessed seven-panel drug and alcohol screen.

You Should Know

The Minnesota licensure requirement applies at matriculation, not at graduation. A nurse licensed elsewhere would need Minnesota licensure before the first class, which narrows this program to Minnesota-based applicants and compact-state nurses willing to add a Minnesota license.
The program page describes the experience requirement as at least one year of RN work, preferring two or more at application. The student handbook states it as 2,000 documented practice hours. The two are the same order of magnitude but the handbook version requires proof on file.
Priority review sits roughly seven months ahead of the final deadline, and the school states that meeting it improves the odds of admission. Applying at the final deadline means competing for whatever seats remain.
Accepted students who wish to defer must reapply the following year as new applicants unless the graduate nursing chair approves otherwise.
The school states that its nursing graduates meet the educational requirements for licensure in all fifty states under federal disclosure rules. That covers the curriculum, not enrollment: the Minnesota license gate is separate and still applies.
Acceptance is conditional until the background study, health and immunization documentation, drug and alcohol screen, CPR card, and Minnesota RN license are all complete.

Tuition

College of Saint Benedict publishes a DNP-FNP rate of $1,050 per credit for the 2026-27 year. Tuition is billed by credits taken each semester rather than at a flat full-time rate, so a light term costs less and there is no plateau to reach.

Cost Component	Calculation	Amount
Tuition	70 credits × $1,050	$73,500
Program fee	$225 × 9 semesters	$2,025
Technology fee	$170 × 9 semesters	$1,530
Course fees	Seven course-specific charges	$1,620
Total (derived)	Tuition plus mandatory and course fees	$78,675

The $78,675 total is derived, not published. It multiplies the school’s published per-credit rate by the published 70-credit total, then adds the per-semester fees across the nine semesters in the published plan of study and the seven course fees listed in the DNP-FNP column of the school’s fee table.

Confirmed costs:

$1,050 per credit for the DNP-FNP in 2026-27.
$225 program fee and $170 technology fee, both charged every semester.
Course fees in the DNP-FNP column: $130 for NRSG 539, $200 for NRSG 552, $175 for NRSG 553, $15 for NRSG 563, $500 for the APEA review attached to NRSG 561, $100 for MNNP attached to NRSG 562, and $500 for the APEA review attached to NRSG 562.
The program fee covers lab supplies and equipment, liability insurance, and software, and is reviewed and updated each semester.
Tuition discounts are available for CSB and SJU alumnae and alumni and for employees of CentraCare and the VA health system.

Be aware that:

The $1,050 rate is the 2026-27 figure and the program spans three years. The school does not publish rates for later years, so the total above assumes no increase.
The fee table lists $500 per semester for textbooks. Across nine semesters that is roughly $4,500. It is an estimate of a student expense rather than a charge from the school, and it is not included in the $78,675 total.
$1,100 of the course fees are certification review and professional membership charges attached to Advanced Practice Nursing II and III. They are unavoidable if those courses are required, but they are not instruction.
The program fee is described as covering liability insurance, yet the handbook separately requires DNP-FNP students to carry malpractice insurance before the first rotation. Confirm with the department whether a separate policy must be purchased.
Background study, immunizations, tuberculosis screening, CPR certification, and the seven-panel drug and alcohol screen are all at the student’s expense and sit outside every figure above.
A fee may be charged for faculty coverage when clinical hours are made up.
The size of the alum, CentraCare, and VA discounts is not published. The department chair is the stated contact.

Adding mandatory and course fees to tuition brings the effective cost to about $1,124 per credit, roughly 7% above the advertised rate. That is a modest fee load by private-university standards, and the reason is structural: the per-semester fees are small and there are only nine of them. The larger budgeting point is the calendar. Nine consecutive terms with no break means paying tuition every summer for three years, so the annual outlay is higher than a two-semester schedule at the same rate would suggest.

The official fee schedule is on the school’s Tuition and Fees page.

Why Choose This FNP Program?

Best suited for Minnesota-licensed nurses with real bedside experience who want a doctorate with a heavy, partly self-directed clinical load and no preceptor hunt.

The elective rotation is the reason to look here. Most FNP programs distribute clinical hours across required primary care settings and stop. This one requires four 240-hour blocks and lets the fourth go to mental health, acute care, or another specialty, paired with a Specialty Care Management course in the same term. For a nurse who already knows where they want to practice, that is 240 hours of targeted preparation inside the degree instead of on-the-job learning afterward. It also has a defensive value: an FNP who has completed a supervised behavioral health or acute care block enters primary care better equipped for the patients that show up anyway.

Volume and placement work together. 960 direct hours is a serious commitment, and it would be a harder sell if students also had to find their own sites. The program assigns placements instead, and the handbook backs that with a 6:1 faculty ratio in precepted courses and at least two student-faculty-preceptor meetings each semester. The practical effect is that the burden here is time in clinic, not administrative work, which is a different kind of difficulty than most applicants are bracing for.

The trade-offs are concrete and worth weighing. A Minnesota RN license is required before the first course, which rules the program out for many out-of-state applicants. Two to three campus visits per semester in St. Joseph means travel for anyone outside central Minnesota. The sequence runs nine straight terms with no published part-time route, so three years of continuous enrollment through every summer is the only path. Placements are assigned rather than chosen, and CentraCare employees get priority within that system. At $1,050 per credit with about $3,600 in semester fees and $1,620 in course charges, this is private-college pricing, and the extra 260 clinical hours above the common range are hours you work rather than credits you buy. If the elective specialty block and the placement guarantee do not matter much to you, the same credential is available elsewhere for less time in clinic.

Accreditation

The Doctor of Nursing Practice degree programs at the College of Saint Benedict, in partnership with Saint John’s University, are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. CCNE accreditation covers the DNP degree programs, which includes the Family Nurse Practitioner track.

Separately, the Department of Nursing is pursuing accreditation from the National League for Nursing Commission for Nursing Education Accreditation. The master’s degree in nursing holds pre-accreditation status with NLN CNEA, which does not guarantee that initial accreditation will follow. That process concerns the master’s program rather than the DNP, and the school does not state any effect on the FNP track.

The Higher Learning Commission is the institutional accreditor for both colleges and reviewed and approved the graduate nursing programs on July 16, 2021. Institutional accreditation is what makes federal financial aid available and what determines whether credits transfer to other institutions. The Bachelor’s-to-DNP program with APRN concentration is also approved by the Minnesota Board of Nursing.

Graduates are eligible to sit for the national FNP certification exam through either the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners Certification Board or the American Nurses Credentialing Center, in the Family/Individual Across the Lifespan population focus, and to seek licensure as a family nurse practitioner.

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