Marquette University offers three Pediatric Nurse Practitioner tracks, each available at the MSN, Post-BSN DNP, & Post-Master’s Certificate degree levels:
- Pediatric Primary Care
- Pediatric Acute Care
- Dual Pediatric Primary and Acute Care
Program Tracks Overview
| Program | Est. Tuition | Est. Duration | Credit Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| MSN – PC | $60,900 | 2.5–4.5 yrs | 42 |
| DNP – PC | $100,050 | 4–7 yrs | 69 |
| Cert – PC | $17,400–$43,500 | 1–3 yrs | 12–30 |
| MSN – AC | $60,900 | 2.5–4.5 yrs | 42 |
| DNP – AC | $100,050 | 4–7 yrs | 69 |
| Cert – AC | $17,400–$43,500 | 1–3 yrs | 12–30 |
| MSN – Dual | $69,600 | 3–5 yrs | 48 |
| DNP – Dual | $113,100 | 4.5–8 yrs | 78 |
| Cert – Dual | $17,400–$56,550 | 1–4 yrs | 12–39 |
Marquette’s defining advantage is the dual primary care and acute care PNP track, which prepares graduates for both PNCB certification exams and is built around immersion at Children’s Wisconsin — including a full semester in a 72-bed pediatric ICU and a semester rotating with more than 200 advanced practice nurses across 33 pediatric specialties. That access comes with a hard geographic limit: these are campus-based, Milwaukee-anchored programs, not online ones.
Quick Facts
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Program Types | MSN, Post-BSN DNP, Post-Master’s Certificate; Post-MSN DNP tracks also offered |
| Format | Campus. PNP tracks are not listed among Marquette’s online graduate programs |
| Population Focus | Primary Care, Acute Care, or Dual Primary/Acute Care |
| Clinical Hours | Dual: 500 primary + 500 acute, plus a 250-hour residency. Single-population tracks: not clearly stated |
| Clinical Placement | Sites arranged through the College of Nursing; Children’s Wisconsin, southeastern Wisconsin, northern Illinois |
| Distinctive Coursework | Critically Ill Children Practicum; PICU semester; leveled simulation across two high-fidelity labs |
| Pace | Part-time, 3–6 credits per term; individualized plan of study built with an adviser |
| RN License Requirements | Unencumbered U.S. RN license; Wisconsin or eNLC license required at time of admission |
| RN Experience Requirements | Pediatric inpatient/acute experience required; the stated amount conflicts across Marquette pages (see warning below) |
| Application Cycle | Rolling admission for spring and fall start terms; GRE not required |
| Tuition | $1,450 per credit (Graduate School rate) |
| Accreditation | Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) |
Estimated durations above are derived from Marquette’s stated part-time pace of 3–6 credits per term across three terms per year. Marquette does not publish a fixed program length; plans of study are individualized, so your actual timeline depends on the credit load you can carry while working.
Clinical Education
All three tracks share one clinical model, and it is unusually institution-centered. Rather than sending students to hunt for preceptors, Marquette routes pediatric clinical training through Children’s Wisconsin and a network of primary care sites across southeastern Wisconsin, with additional facilities in greater Milwaukee, elsewhere in Wisconsin, and northern Illinois.
- Acute care training includes a semester with more than 200 advanced practice nurses across 33 pediatric specialties at Children’s Wisconsin.
- Acute care students spend an entire semester in a 72-bed pediatric intensive care unit.
- Primary care sites emphasize practices serving economically disadvantaged children.
- Many faculty hold joint appointments with the Medical College of Wisconsin and practice at Children’s Wisconsin.
- Leveled simulation runs throughout the clinical sequence using two high-fidelity labs, one at Marquette and one at Children’s Wisconsin.
- DNP students work with faculty to tailor final clinical hours to individual learning objectives.
- Attendance at all clinical experiences, including skills labs and simulation, is mandatory; excessive absence can result in course failure or withdrawal.
What this buys you is subspecialty exposure most PNP programs cannot arrange — cardiology, oncology, critical care, and pulmonary APRN teams under one roof, at the institution where your faculty practice. What it costs you is flexibility. A clinical model anchored to one children’s hospital only works if you can physically get to Milwaukee, and there is no published option for completing rotations near a distant home base.
NOTE: Clinical hour totals are published only for the dual track. Marquette states 500 primary care hours and 500 acute care hours for dual students, plus a 250-hour individually designed residency.
The primary care and acute care tracks each list three clinical courses but no hour total on any Marquette page reviewed. Because the PNCB requires a minimum of 500 supervised direct patient care hours for certification eligibility, and because hour totals are one of the few directly comparable metrics between PNP programs, ask the program director for the documented total for your specific track before you commit.
Marquette also does not specify whether the 250-hour residency applies to dual MSN students or only to DNP students.
General Admissions
Admission requirements are largely shared across the three tracks and all three degree levels. Marquette uses rolling admission with spring and fall entry, so there is no single annual deadline to miss — but cohort space in clinical courses is finite, and applying early matters more than the absence of a deadline suggests.
- Unencumbered U.S. RN license; Wisconsin or eNLC licensure required at the time of admission.
- Minimum 3.000 undergraduate GPA on a 4.000 scale.
- Three recommendation letters from employers or faculty familiar with graduate nursing education.
- Resume plus a written statement of professional goals.
- An interview may be required.
- Undergraduate coursework in health assessment, nursing research, and statistics with inferential analysis; the statistics course must be within five years of the program start date, with proficiency by examination sometimes accepted if it is older.
- GRE not required.
- BLS certification from the American Heart Association, maintained throughout the program.
- Health clearance, immunizations, annual TB testing, criminal background check, and drug screen submitted through CastleBranch at the student’s expense.
- International applicants: TOEFL or equivalent, plus CGFNS certification and Wisconsin licensure for graduates of foreign nursing schools.
NOTE: The RN experience requirement is stated inconsistently across Marquette’s own pages, and the differences are large enough to change whether you are eligible. Depending on which page you read, the requirement is described as:
- Two years of full-time RN practice in an inpatient pediatric setting, before applying (primary care program page).
- Two years of practice in an acute care setting, before applying (acute care program page).
- One year of full-time nursing experience, before beginning clinical courses (graduate bulletin).
- Six months to one year of pediatric acute care RN experience, before beginning clinical coursework (all three program pages).
- Six months of pediatric acute care RN experience, before beginning clinical rotations (certificate bulletin entries).
Two points are worth flagging.
First, the primary care track appears to require inpatient pediatric experience even though graduates practice in outpatient settings — an unusual gate that rules out nurses coming from adult, community, or ambulatory backgrounds.
Second, the distinction between “before applying” and “before beginning clinical courses” determines whether you can enroll now and accumulate experience during didactic coursework, or must wait. Get the answer in writing from the program director before you build a timeline around it.
Pediatric Primary Care Nurse Practitioner
The estimated tuition for the MSN in the Pediatric Primary Care Nurse Practitioner track at Marquette is approximately $60,900 (42 credits at $1,450 per credit). The program can generally be completed in about 2.5 to 4.5 years at Marquette’s stated part-time pace.
The other two pathways in this track:
- the Post-BSN DNP runs approximately $100,050 (69 credits), about 4 to 7 years
- the Post-Master’s Certificate runs approximately $17,400 to $43,500 (12 to 30 credits), about 1 to 3 years
Primary Care Curriculum
The MSN is built in three blocks: 9 foundation credits, 12 core credits, and 21 specialty credits.
The specialty block is where this track separates from a generic pediatric curriculum — three sequential clinical courses run alongside theory rather than after it, and the acute/episodic illness course gives primary care students management skills for sick-visit presentations rather than confining them to well-child content.
Representative primary care specialty coursework:
- Health Promotion Across the Lifespan
- Complex/Chronic Pediatric Health Conditions
- Seminar in Child and Family Health
- Nursing Therapeutics for Acute/Episodic Illness in Children and Adolescents
- Advanced Nursing Care of Children and Families Clinical 1, 2, and 3
- Pathophysiological Concepts, Pharmacology, and Advanced Health Assessment (foundation block)
The DNP adds 27 credits of doctoral core — quality and patient safety, informatics, translational research, epidemiology, applied statistics, and a three-course DNP project sequence with embedded residency.
The certificate strips the program to foundation and specialty coursework only, with the exact credit count set by what your master’s transcript already documents.
More curriculum details are available here.
Primary Care Clinical Requirements
- Three sequential clinical courses (Advanced Nursing Care of Children and Families Clinical 1–3); total hours not clearly stated.
- Primary care sites located across southeastern Wisconsin, with emphasis on practices serving economically disadvantaged children.
- PALS certification optional prior to clinical.
- Certificate students: clinical hours determined individually through the pre-admission plan of study.
Most single-population PNP programs land between 600 and 750 clinical hours. Marquette’s three-course sequence is structurally consistent with that range, but without a published figure you cannot compare this track on hours to any competitor — and for certificate applicants, the hours are genuinely variable rather than merely unpublished.
Primary Care Admissions
The one unusual gate is the inpatient pediatric RN experience requirement described on the program page, which is stricter than what most primary care PNP programs ask and stricter than what Marquette’s own bulletin states. Everything else follows the shared requirements above.
Pediatric Acute Care Nurse Practitioner
The estimated tuition for the MSN in the Pediatric Acute Care Nurse Practitioner track at Marquette is approximately $60,900 (42 credits at $1,450 per credit). The program can generally be completed in about 2.5 to 4.5 years at Marquette’s stated part-time pace.
The other two pathways in this track:
- the Post-BSN DNP runs approximately $100,050 (69 credits), about 4 to 7 years
- the Post-Master’s Certificate runs approximately $17,400 to $43,500 (12 to 30 credits), about 1 to 3 years.
Acute Care Curriculum
Credit counts are identical to the primary care track at every degree level, but the specialty block is substantively different.
Where primary care students take episodic illness management, acute care students take critical illness therapeutics, and the three clinical courses escalate deliberately: acutely ill, then acutely and chronically ill, then critically ill. That progression is why the PICU semester sits at the end rather than the beginning.
Representative acute care specialty coursework:
- Nursing Therapeutics for Acute/Critical Illnesses in Children
- Complex/Chronic Pediatric Health Conditions
- Acutely Ill Children Practicum
- Acutely/Chronically Ill Children Practicum
- Critically Ill Children Practicum
- Health Promotion Across the Lifespan
- Seminar in Child and Family Health
More curriculum details are available here.
Acute Care Clinical Requirements
- Three escalating practicum courses culminating in critical care; total hours not clearly stated.
- A full semester in the 72-bed pediatric intensive care unit at Children’s Wisconsin.
- A semester rotating with advanced practice nurses across 33 pediatric specialties.
- PALS certification required prior to clinical.
- DNP students tailor final clinical hours with faculty to specific learning objectives.
The PICU semester is the differentiator here. Many acute care PNP programs assemble critical care exposure from scattered shifts; a continuous semester in a single large unit produces a different kind of competence, because you follow patients across their trajectory rather than sampling shifts. If you intend to work in pediatric critical care, this is a materially stronger clinical design than hour counts alone would suggest.
Acute Care Admissions
The acute care track carries the most demanding experience gate: acute care practice experience is required before applying, with additional pediatric acute care experience required before clinical coursework begins. PALS is mandatory rather than optional. Applicants without inpatient pediatric background should treat this track as effectively closed until that experience is accumulated.
Dual Pediatric Primary Care and Acute Care Nurse Practitioner
The estimated tuition for the MSN in the Dual Pediatric Primary Care and Acute Care Nurse Practitioner track at Marquette is approximately $69,600 (48 credits at $1,450 per credit). The program can generally be completed in about 3 to 5 years at Marquette’s stated part-time pace.
The other two pathways in this track:
- the Post-BSN DNP runs approximately $113,100 (78 credits), about 4.5 to 8 years;
- the Post-Master’s Certificate runs approximately $17,400 to $56,550 (12 to 39 credits), about 1 to 4 years.
Dual Track Curriculum
The dual MSN carries 27 specialty credits against 21 for either single-population track — six additional credits, roughly $8,700, for a second population focus and a second certification exam.
That is an unusually efficient overlap.
Programs that offer dual preparation at all often add a full year; Marquette adds two courses’ worth of coursework and one additional clinical rotation, because the therapeutics courses for episodic illness and critical illness both sit inside the same specialty block.
Coursework unique to or emphasized in the dual track:
- Nursing Therapeutics for Acute/Episodic Illness in Children and Adolescents
- Nursing Therapeutics for Acute/Critical Illnesses in Children
- Advanced Nursing Care of Children and Families Clinical 2
- Acutely Ill Children – Clinical 1
- Acutely/Chronically Ill Children Practicum
- Critically Ill Children Practicum
- Concepts and Interventions for Health Problems Across the Lifespan (DNP only, 30-credit specialty block)
More curriculum details are available here.
Dual Track Clinical Requirements
- 500 primary care clinical hours.
- 500 acute care clinical hours.
- 250 additional hours in an individually designed clinical residency.
- A full semester in the 72-bed PICU and a semester across 33 pediatric specialties at Children’s Wisconsin.
- Primary care rotations across southeastern Wisconsin, weighted toward underserved practices.
At 1,000 documented hours — 1,250 with the residency — this sits in the normal band for dual PC/AC preparation nationally, which typically runs 900 to 1,200. The number worth noticing is not the total but the split: an exact 500/500 division means each population meets the PNCB certification floor on its own, rather than one being padded by hours borrowed from the other.
That matters if you later want to practice primarily in one setting and need your training to hold up under employer scrutiny.
Dual Track Admissions
Expect the acute care experience gate to apply, since the dual track includes the full acute care clinical sequence. The dual page also cites a 3.000 minimum GPA for the MSN specifically, where the single-population pages cite it for the BSN-to-DNP; the practical requirement is the same 3.000 either way.
Tuition
Estimated tuition across Marquette’s PNP pathways runs from roughly $17,400 for the shortest post-master’s certificate to about $113,100 for the dual-population Post-BSN DNP. Marquette is private, so there is no in-state discount.
| Program | Est. Tuition |
|---|---|
| MSN – Primary Care (42 cr) | $60,900 |
| MSN – Acute Care (42 cr) | $60,900 |
| MSN – Dual (48 cr) | $69,600 |
| DNP – Primary Care (69 cr) | $100,050 |
| DNP – Acute Care (69 cr) | $100,050 |
| DNP – Dual (78 cr) | $113,100 |
| Certificate – Primary Care (12–30 cr) | $17,400–$43,500 |
| Certificate – Acute Care (12–30 cr) | $17,400–$43,500 |
| Certificate – Dual (12–39 cr) | $17,400–$56,550 |
All figures use Marquette’s published Graduate School rate of $1,450 per credit and cover tuition only.
Key Cost Takeaways
- NOTE: The $69,000 flat-rate figure on Marquette’s tuition page does not apply here. That price belongs to the Direct Entry MSN for non-nurses, a separate program for applicants without a nursing degree. PNP students pay per credit.
- Compliance costs for PNP students are modest — roughly $275 total for CPR certification, background check, health screening, and the Typhon clinical tracking system — plus variable site-specific fees that change by term.
- The per-credit rate rises. Marquette’s cached program pages listed $1,400 per credit; the current rate is $1,450. Over a 69-credit DNP spread across five or more years, annual increases compound meaningfully, and there is no published cohort rate lock.
- Certificate cost is genuinely uncertain until admission. The 12-to-39 credit range is a $27,000 spread, and your number is set by transcript review, not by a published formula.
- Part-time enrollment at 3–6 credits per term may fall below full-time thresholds for federal aid. Confirm your credit load against aid eligibility rules before enrolling.
- Merit-based graduate assistantships and fellowships are available through the College of Nursing; federal loans are available to U.S. citizens and permanent residents.
The pricing pattern worth understanding: Marquette charges a flat graduate rate with no clinical differential, so the dual track’s second population costs only what its six extra credits cost.
Nationally, schools that offer dual PC/AC preparation frequently price it as a longer, separately structured program. Marquette’s high per-credit rate makes every pathway expensive in absolute terms, but the marginal cost of the dual credential — about $8,700 over a single-population MSN — is among the better values in this specialty.
Why Choose This PNP Program?
Best For
- Nurses living within commuting distance of Milwaukee who can attend campus courses and hospital rotations in person.
- RNs who want eligibility for both the CPNP-PC and CPNP-AC exams without enrolling in two programs.
- PICU and inpatient pediatric nurses moving into acute care advanced practice.
- Working nurses who need a part-time pace and an individualized plan of study rather than a fixed cohort schedule.
- APRNs in another population focus adding pediatrics, whose existing graduate coursework can reduce certificate credits substantially.
- Applicants who want clinical placements arranged institutionally instead of self-sourced preceptors.
- Nurses aiming at pediatric subspecialty practice, where rotating with 33 specialty APRN teams has direct career value.
Biggest Strengths
Dual certification without a dual-length program. The dual MSN requires six more credits than either single-population MSN and one additional clinical rotation. For about $8,700 more, a graduate becomes eligible for both PNCB exams — which in practice means eligibility for hospitalist, subspecialty, and outpatient pediatric roles from the same degree. Few programs nationally offer this, and fewer offer it at this credit overlap.
Clinical training concentrated inside a major children’s hospital. A continuous semester in a 72-bed PICU and a semester rotating across 33 pediatric specialties is not a placement most PNP programs can arrange. The fact that many faculty hold joint appointments with the Medical College of Wisconsin and practice at Children’s Wisconsin means your instructors and your preceptors work in the same institution, which tends to produce more consistent evaluation than an assembled preceptor network does.
Certificate pricing that scales to what you already have. Because certificate credits are set by transcript review rather than a fixed requirement, an APRN who already completed advanced pathophysiology, pharmacology, and health assessment can complete pediatric preparation with specialty coursework alone. That is a real advantage over programs with a flat post-master’s credit requirement.
Potential Drawbacks
- These are campus programs. Marquette lists only the Direct Entry MSN among its online graduate nursing offerings, so distance students should look elsewhere.
- Clinical training is anchored to southeastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois; there is no published option for rotations near a distant home.
- At $1,450 per credit, absolute cost is high — a dual DNP approaches $113,000 in tuition alone.
- Clinical hour totals for the primary care and acute care tracks are not published, which makes head-to-head comparison with other programs impossible without contacting the school.
- The RN experience requirement is stated five different ways across Marquette’s pages, ranging from six months to two years, and the primary care track appears to require inpatient pediatric experience.
- Only part-time pacing is described. A 69- or 78-credit doctoral pathway at 3–6 credits per term is a five-to-eight-year commitment.
- Certificate applicants cannot know their credit count, cost, or timeline until a plan of study is negotiated at admission.
- Progression rules are strict: a grade below B− in a clinical course results in dismissal, and repeated courses are space-available with no guaranteed seat.
Bottom Line
Marquette is the strongest option in Wisconsin for nurses who want pediatric acute care or dual-population preparation, and its Children’s Wisconsin relationship — a PICU semester, subspecialty rotations, faculty who practice on site — is the kind of clinical access that separates programs more than curriculum does. The dual track is the headline: two certification exams for six extra credits is a genuinely efficient structure. The limitations are geography and disclosure. You must be able to train in metro Milwaukee, you should expect a multi-year part-time timeline, and you will need to contact the program directly to pin down clinical hours and the actual RN experience requirement, because Marquette’s own pages disagree with each other. Nurses who need online delivery or a published, fixed timeline should compare against hybrid programs elsewhere in the Midwest.
Accreditation
Marquette University is regionally accredited, and its BSN, MSN, DNP, and post-graduate APRN certificate programs are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE). Marquette does not publish a CCNE accreditation expiration date on the program pages reviewed. The College of Nursing also holds ACME accreditation for nurse-midwifery and COA accreditation for nurse anesthesia, neither of which applies to the PNP tracks. Marquette states that graduates are academically eligible for PNCB primary care and acute care pediatric nurse practitioner certification, while noting that the university does not guarantee certification or licensure outcomes.
Review More Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Programs Near You
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