California Baptist University

What this program actually is

OrientationSystemic/family-therapy-forward within a broadly integrative counseling-psychology frame, taught from an explicitly Christian worldview

The 63-87 unit range that makes this program look confusing has a simple structure behind it. The MFT degree is a fixed 63-unit core of twenty-two required courses — there is no elective choice in it at all. Everything above 63 is optional bolt-on. The PCC sequence adds exactly two courses, PSY 536 Community Mental Health Counseling and PSY 537 Career Counseling, for 6 units (69 total). The Forensic Psychology concentration adds 18 units — four required courses plus two chosen from five, drawn from CBU's criminal-justice and forensic-psychology catalogs (81 total). Take both and you land on 87. That is the whole range. Two further caveats the catalog states plainly: the forensic concentration and the dual degrees with the M.A. in Counseling Ministry and the M.S. in Sport and Performance Psychology are on-campus only, and the PCC sequence is open to online students only if they reside in California. CBU also warns that PCC students "will also be required to complete a higher number of practicum hours to meet the BBS clinical hour requirements."

On the Christian question, CBU is the most institutionally committed of the three and the most honest about it — but as a required curriculum component it is still one course. PSY 590, Christian Perspective in Professional Counseling, is 3 units of 63: "Faculty and student dialogue on issues and topics related to the integration of Christianity and psychology." There is no Bible or theology requirement in the MSCP. What is different from a merely nominal affiliation is that CBU makes an institution-wide claim about the other sixty-two units — "All of our courses integrate theory and faith" — and its own catalog record shows that claim being actively managed. The catalog's program-modification record for the MSCP states the reason PSY 590 was raised from two units to three: "Integration is a core feature of our program, and having this course as one of the two classes with 2 units demonstrates a need to increase the level of integration in our program," plus a wish to "align us with other integration programs like HIU, APU, and Liberty," plus the frank admission that "Two-unit courses are notoriously difficult to fill compared to three-unit ones." That is a rare look at how a Christian program actually reasons about its integration requirement.

The other thing to notice is that despite the name — Counseling Psychology — the required core is heavily relational, more so than several programs with 'marriage and family therapy' in the title. Five of the twenty-two required courses are explicitly relational: PSY 505 MFT Counseling Theory, PSY 580 Family Therapy I, PSY 585 Family Therapy II, PSY 511 Couples Therapy and Intimate Partner Violence, and PSY 545 MFT Counseling: Child-Adolescent. Family Therapy II is a skills course, not a survey, using "videotape feedback, coaching, and classroom demonstration." This is the oldest and largest graduate program at CBU, founded over forty years ago, and it shows in the structure: a fixed lockstep core, evening classes starting around 4:00 pm two days a week, entry points in fall, spring and summer, and a practicum system built on "over 100 well established organizational relationships" across the Inland Empire — community mental health, school-based and church-based settings — rather than on an in-house clinic, which CBU does not appear to run for this program.

The program’s own page →

See it and hear it

Program overview

The courses that define it

Every California program teaches law and ethics, assessment and a survey of theories. These are the courses that are not on every list — the ones that tell you what this particular faculty believes therapy is. The quoted text is the catalog’s own; the note underneath each one is mine.

The whole degree, term by term

What you would actually take, in the order you would take it. Sequences change; check the current catalog before you count on any single term.

CBU publishes the full required course list and the optional add-on groups but no term-by-term sequence, so the blocks below are the catalog's own requirement groups rather than a schedule. The core is fixed and lockstep — twenty-two required courses, no electives inside the 63 units. The catalog labels the whole thing "Program Requirements (63-87 Units)" and describes the program as six semesters, though CBU markets it as two years with 3- and 4-year options for on-campus students. Entry points are fall, spring and summer; most students attend two days a week with courses generally beginning at 4:00 pm. Beyond coursework there are three non-course requirements: a comprehensive examination taken concurrently with practicum in the final year ($125 fee, one retake allowed), a psychotherapy requirement of 24 hours of individual or 50 hours of group therapy completed off campus, and formal admission to practicum by faculty decision. course sequence ↗

63 core (63-87 with optional add-ons: +6 PCC, +18 Forensic Psychology concentration)units in total

How practicum actually works

Californian clinical training runs in two legally distinct stages, and the difference decides what a program can and cannot do for you.

A trainee is a student. You see clients while still enrolled, at a site your program approves, supervised by someone the site provides. This is practicum, and it is the stage a program controls. An associate — registered with the Board after you graduate — is no longer a student, is usually paid, and is working toward the 3,000 hours the license requires. The Board renamed this stage from “intern” to “associate” in 2018, so any page still saying “MFT intern” is quoting something out of date.

Hours you bank as a trainee count toward the 3,000, up to a limit, which is why the size and quality of a program’s placement matters long after graduation: a student who leaves with 1,000 hours starts the associate years a third of the way through them, and one who leaves with the 225-hour minimum starts at the beginning.

Practicum is also where a degree most often stops being on schedule. Coursework runs on a calendar the school controls; placement does not. The questions that matter are therefore all about who owns the problem of finding you a site — and the answer differs enormously between programs on this list.

What happens after the degree →

CBU gates practicum harder than most, and does it early. Clearance runs through a "two-part professional development review" split across PSY 501 and PSY 502, the two basic- and advanced-skills courses taken near the start of the program — so your readiness is being assessed a year or more before you see a client. Formal admission then follows: "Admission to Practicum will be a faculty decision based on grades, evaluation of the Practicum application, and placement approval," an interview "to further evaluate the applicant's readiness may be required," and there is a written appeal process for students judged not ready. Placement itself is not assigned but is drawn from a curated pool — CBU says it has "over 100 well established organizational relationships" spanning community mental health, school-based and church-based settings, and that "each placement is pre-approved by the department to meet BBS and CBU standards," with experienced licensed supervisors on site. There is no in-house training clinic for this program in any public CBU source, which is the main structural difference from the other Christian-institution programs in this set: your first client will be at an outside agency. The sequence is bracketed by PSY 534, a one-unit course that exists specifically so students can start counseling before PSY 555 or keep accruing hours after PSY 570 — a useful safety valve if your site's calendar and CBU's do not line up. The comprehensive examination is taken concurrently with practicum in that final year. Handoff to associate status is standard: the MSCP is BBS-approved for both MFT and LPCC educational requirements, and PCC-bound students are warned they must complete more practicum hours than the MFT core requires. source ↗

Will this degree travel

What the Board requires of any qualifying degree →

What it is, on paper

The program’s own page →

What it costs

The figure below is the institution’s own, from its own page, with the year it applies to. Multiply the per-unit rate by the actual unit count and add campus fees before comparing it with anything.

$864 a unit 2026-27 — source

What a month costs to live on while you study →

Getting in

Minimum 2.75 GPA cumulative or last 60/90 unit GPA source →

admissions page ↗

How its graduates did on the Board’s exam

Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 58% across 981 sittings here, against 66% statewide. First attempts are the fairer comparison — counting resits measures how many tries people needed rather than how many passed, and it penalises a school whose graduates keep going.

On the separate California Law and Ethics exam, 73% of this school’s 802 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.

Recorded by the Board as California Baptist University, Riverside. Its list is kept by institution and its names lag: a school that has since renamed appears under the name it had when the candidates sat.

July 2018 - December 2024, pooled (13 semiannual BBS reports) · the Board’s published exam results by school →

What people say about it

Quoted where the wording carries the meaning, linked in every case, opening in a new window. The tags are my reading of each source, not a measurement, and the unflattering ones are here too.

What to ask before you apply

None of these are answered on a program page, and all five change what the degree is actually worth to you.

What I could not establish

Everything above is sourced. These are the things I looked for and could not establish - take them to admissions, and note how quickly and precisely they answer.

• CBU does not publish the practicum client-hour minimum for the MSCP anywhere public. The MSCP student handbook, which PSY 501 and PSY 502 both refer students to for practicum detail, is hosted on the InsideCBU portal behind a login.
• No relational (couples/family) client-hour sub-minimum is published.
• Supervision mechanics are not published — individual vs group supervision ratios, weekly supervision hours, and whether sessions are recorded or live-observed at placement sites. The only recording confirmed anywhere in the curriculum is the videotape feedback used inside PSY 585 Family Therapy II.
• No term-by-term course sequence is published; the catalog gives requirement groups and a "6 semesters" program-length field only.
• Cohort size is not published by CBU. The 20-30 figure is from a third-party directory, not the university.
• GPA requirement is inconsistent across CBU's own pages: the MSCP FAQ says 2.75 minimum, other sources cite 3.0 for unconditional admission.
• CBU does not publish BBS licensing-exam pass rates for MSCP graduates.
• No independent student discussion of this program was found on Reddit, Student Doctor Network or GradCafe. A Sentio review page exists but blocks automated retrieval, so nothing from it is reproduced here.
• Whether CBU operates any in-house counseling clinic used for MSCP training could not be confirmed — no public CBU page mentions one for this program, and the practicum description points entirely to outside partner agencies.