Samuel Merritt asks for the most bedside time of any program in this pilot: 24 months or 4,160 hours of critical care within the last five years, plus the CCRN by matriculation and a 3.25 GPA. The hybrid 94-credit DNAP runs 36 months. The class of 2025 passed the National Certification Exam at 92% with zero attrition, though the program publishes neither a tuition figure nor an application deadline.
Every figure on this page was read off Samuel Merritt 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.
Samuel Merritt CRNA Program: Key Facts
| Degree awarded | Doctor of Nurse Anesthesia Practice (DNAP) |
|---|---|
| Program length | 36 months |
| Credits | 94 |
| Start | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Application deadline | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Minimum ICU experience | 24 months / 4,160 hours (within last 5 years) |
| CCRN | Required (at matriculation) |
| GRE | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Minimum GPA | 3.25 |
| Class / cohort size | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Format | Hybrid |
| Tuition (in-state) | Not published — verify on the program site |
| Tuition (out-of-state) | Not published — verify on the program site |
| NCE first-time pass rate | 92% (Class of 2025) |
| Attrition | 0% (Class of 2025) |
| Employment | 100% (Class of 2025, within six months of graduation) |
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 24 months or 4,160 hours, earned within the last 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 3.25 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: Required by matriculation.
GRE: not published.
Published prerequisites
Samuel Merritt University does not publish a prerequisite list on the pages we checked. Check the program site.
Deadline and Timeline
Samuel Merritt University does not publish an application deadline on the pages we checked, so ask the program office for the current cycle.
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
not published. The figure in our directory is an older estimate, not a program-verified number.
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: 92% for the class of 2025
Attrition: zero for the class of 2025
Employment: 100% within six months for the class of 2025
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 Samuel Merritt Compares in California
Most applicants apply to four to eight programs, so Samuel Merritt is a comparison, not a decision. See all California CRNA programs, or start with these:
| Program | City | Degree | Cost | Acceptance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California State University Fullerton | Fullerton | DNP | $85,000 | 12% |
| Loma Linda University | Loma Linda | DNP | $170,243 | 16% |
| National University Fresno | Fresno | DNAP | 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 Samuel Merritt 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.
Programs change requirements and prices between admission cycles. If something here no longer matches the program site, tell us and we will fix it.