What this program actually is
OrientationHumanistic, relational and integrative - CACREP clinical mental health counseling with an explicit anti-racist and social-justice framing
The single most important fact about this program is one most applicants do not know: it is not state-supported. It runs through CSUF University Extension on a self-support basis, which means there is no California-resident tuition. You pay a flat per-unit price. The published rate for the Spring 2025 cohort is $675 per unit, and the degree is 63 units across 21 courses - $42,525 in tuition, before books, campus fees and parking. For comparison, CSU systemwide graduate tuition in 2025-26 is $2,340 per semester for a student taking 6.0 units or fewer. This cohort takes exactly two courses (6 units) every term, so a student in the state-supported version of the same degree pays $2,340 a term where an Extension student pays $4,050. CSUF says this plainly in its own FAQ: the Extension program, "because it is not state-supported, has somewhat higher tuition. Both programs have the same courses, taught by the same instructors." Same degree, same faculty, same CACREP accreditation - roughly 70% more per term. Federal Direct unsubsidized loans are the only financial aid, and there are no state-funded grants attached to a self-support program.
The second thing to know is that it barely runs. This is the Department of Counseling's evening cohort, launched once every three years, and CSUF accepts approximately 24 students to it each time (versus roughly 60 a year to the traditional daytime program). Applications for the Spring 2025 cohort are closed, and CSUF's own site states the Extension part-time program is "closed through Spring 2028." If you are looking now, this is a program to plan for, not apply to. It is also a one-way door: "M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling & Marriage and Family Therapy students can only take classes as part of this program" - you cannot transfer into the traditional cohort.
What you buy for the premium is scheduling certainty for a working adult. Classes meet 7:00-9:45 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays in fall and spring, and roughly 6:00-10:00 p.m. in summer (June to mid-August), for three years plus one term, starting in spring. Enrollment in the courses you need is guaranteed every semester, which the traditional program explicitly does not promise - CSUF notes traditional students "may have to adjust their scheduling plans and graduation date when they are not able to get into courses that have reached their maximum enrollment." The program is also CACREP-accredited, which CSUF markets as one of the few in California, and which allows graduates to work with the VA and Tricare. The department describes its theoretical orientation as "grounded in humanistic, relational, and integrative principles," with a strong stated emphasis on anti-racist practice and social justice advocacy - the admissions personal statement specifically requires applicants to "discuss what motivates you to be an advocate for social justice." One caveat: the Ánimo: Latinx Counseling Concentration, available in the traditional program, "is not currently offered" to the evening cohort.
See it and hear it
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.
Intimate Partner and Couples Counseling
Treating intimate partners and couples, including overview of current theories, assessment, goal-setting, interventions, ethical issues and diversity issues. Assessing and treating intimate partner violence. Sexual dysfunctions and sex therapy.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingOne course carries couples work, intimate partner violence assessment, and sex therapy together. That compression tells you the program's center is clinical mental health counseling with MFT layered on, not a systemic family-therapy program that would spread these across several courses.
Practicum
Supervised clinical practice with adults, families and children in approved community agencies. Practice in case management, documentation, use of community resources. Emphasizes dysfunction and health functioning. Hours accrued toward 280 required for yearlong practicum experience. Credit/No Credit only.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThis is where the published hour requirement lives - 280 hours across a yearlong practicum, accrued across COUN 530A, COUN 584A and COUN 590 together. Advancement into it is gated by a formal faculty evaluation the semester before, which can result in postponement or disqualification from the program.
Advanced Counseling Techniques
Advanced interventions, such as disaster and trauma response with attention to resilience, helping issues with the severely mentally ill, case management and evidenced-based practice. Required as part of yearlong practicum experience. Hours may be accrued toward 280 minimum. Credit/No Credit only.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA required co-course that runs alongside practicum and is aimed squarely at public-sector work - disaster response and severe mental illness. It is the piece of the curriculum that assumes graduates will land in community agencies rather than private practice.
The Counseling Profession
Counseling as a mental health profession, including its history, current functions and future directions. The counselor as a professional, including educational goals, personal values and cultural understandings. Opportunity to observe master counselors at work.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticing"Opportunity to observe master counselors at work" in the very first course of the sequence is a specific pedagogical commitment - modeling before doing - and it is the first course this cohort takes, in its opening spring term.
Crisis Intervention and Trauma Treatment
Crisis theory and intervention, as well as basic aspects of theory and treatment of trauma experienced within diverse and multicultural contexts. Case management in the context of recovery orientation.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingScheduled in Year 2 Fall, immediately before practicum begins in Year 3 - the program front-loads crisis and trauma work so students walk into an agency with it rather than picking it up on the job.
Project
Capstone program experience; taken final semester. Conduct original research relevant to the counseling field. Requires consent of faculty adviser.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThe culminating experience is original research, not a comprehensive exam - and it is the second half of a two-course research sequence with COUN 521 Research in Counseling. For a part-time working student, a research project in the final term is a real workload consideration.
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.
Strict lockstep part-time cohort: two courses (6 units) every term, spring/summer/fall, for three years plus one term, with no full-time option and no transfer into the traditional program. All classes are guaranteed each semester. The sequence below is the program's published Year/Term grid for the Spring cohort. course sequence ↗
63 units (21 courses)units in total
- COUN 500 The Counseling Profession (3)
- COUN 511A Pre-Practicum (3)
- COUN 502 Career and Lifestyle Development (3)
- COUN 523 Counseling and Culture (3)
- COUN 518 Human Development and Functioning (3)
- COUN 528 Groups: Process and Practice (3)
- COUN 520 Modes of Individual Counseling (3)
- COUN 527A Systems of Family Counseling (3)
- COUN 522A Diagnosis and Treatment Planning (3)
- COUN 526 Professional, Ethical and Legal Issues in Counseling (3)
- COUN 524 Child and Adolescent Counseling (3)
- COUN 562 Intimate Partner and Couples Counseling (3)
- COUN 538 Crisis Intervention and Trauma Treatment (3)
- COUN 530A Practicum (3)
- COUN 535 Addictions Counseling (3)
- COUN 525 Psychopharmacology for Counselors (3)
- COUN 590 Advanced Counseling Techniques (1)
- COUN 584A Advanced Practicum (3)
- COUN 521 Research in Counseling (3)
- COUN 560 Appraisal in Counseling (3)
- COUN 597 Project (3)
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 →
You apply, with the school’s help
There is an approved-site list and real support, and the seat is still yours to win. Most programs are here and most students manage it. Ask for last year’s numbers rather than the policy: how many students placed on the first round, and how many had to extend.
Students are responsible for selecting their own placement site; however, the Clinical Training Director must approve their selection by reviewing the application and signing the 4-Way Agreement. ... Appendix A provides a directory of Clinical Training Sites that meet these requirements and where previous CSUF Trainees have gained practicum experience hours. the school’s own page →
CSUF does not run an in-house training clinic for this program. Instead, "The Department of Counseling has selected community agencies ('practicum sites') that will fit with working students' schedules" - the placement network is curated by the department specifically around the fact that these students hold jobs. Practicum is "a one to one and a half-year commitment, and is equivalent to a part-time job, requiring 15-20 hours per week at the agency. There is no salary or stipend." Students provide counseling to children, adults, couples and families, and continue taking two classes concurrently, one of which is a seminar "in which students discuss their counseling experiences and show videotapes of their counseling sessions." The practicum seminar runs 8-10 students. Entry into practicum is gated by a formal faculty evaluation in the prior semester requiring a 3.0 graduate GPA, a B or better in COUN 526, and a favorable assessment of readiness to see clients; the alternatives are postponement with remediation or disqualification. source ↗
Will this degree travel
Not COAMFTE accredited
That is not a defect — 66 of the 78 institutions on the Board’s list are in the same position, including most of the Cal States, and their graduates license in California every year.
It becomes a problem if you leave. Several states will not accept a non-COAMFTE degree without remedial coursework, and a few will not accept it at all. If there is any chance you move, check the destination board’s rules before you enroll, not after.
What the Board requires of any qualifying degree →
What it is, on paper
Ánimo: Latinx Counseling concentration exists in the catalog but the extension page states it is not currently offered. Extension part-time program closed through Spring 2028; main HHD Counseling program admits for Fall 2026.
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.
$675 a unit Spring 2025 cohort rate — source
What a month costs to live on while you study →
Getting in
The GRE is not required for admissions. source →
How its graduates did on the Board’s exam
Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 77% across 514 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, 90% of this school’s 410 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.
Recorded by the Board as California State University, Fullerton. 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.
What this number is, and what it is not
It describes candidates, not teaching. In 2022 the Council on Social Work Education removed licensing-exam pass rates from its accreditation standards, saying the data “may not be an equitable measure of program outcomes” — after the social-work exam board’s own analysis found first-time pass rates of 84% for white candidates and 45% for Black candidates. A program that enrolls more career-changers and more students of color will post a lower rate while teaching at least as well. The accrediting body with the most reason to want this metric examined it and stopped using it.
The denominator is not this year’s students. These are people who sat the exam during the window, often several years after graduating and sometimes after the program changed shape or owner.
It is published here because it is a real, official figure that is otherwise almost impossible to find — and it is published on this page only. There is no pass-rate column in the directory, nothing is sorted by it, and no school on this site is ranked against another.
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.
The single question that separates programs. Ask for a list of current sites, and ask plainly whether the program places you or expects you to find your own. A rural or online student unable to find a site cannot graduate.
The Board publishes this by school, so the program cannot be the only source. Ask anyway, and see whether the answer matches.
Per-unit rates move. Multiply by the actual unit count and add campus fees before comparing anything.
The 500 couples-and-families hours are carved out of the 1,750 clinical ones, and they are the category associates most often finish short on. A program placing students in adult individual settings will not generate them.
Sometimes yes, sometimes with extra units, sometimes only in one delivery format. Get it in writing rather than from a brochure.
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.
- The $675 per unit rate is labeled "Spring 2025 cohort" and CSUF states "tuition rates are subject to change." Since the next cohort will not start before Spring 2028, the rate a future applicant pays is unknown; the $42,525 total is 63 units at the last published rate, not a quoted program price. CSUF does not publish a program-total figure anywhere.
- The comparison to state-supported tuition is arithmetic on two published numbers - CSU 2025-26 graduate tuition of $2,340 per semester at 0-6.0 units versus 6 Extension units at $675 - not a figure either CSUF or the CSU publishes as a comparison. Campus fees, which apply on the state-supported side, are excluded.
- No date is published for the next cohort. CSUF says the program starts "every three years" and is closed through Spring 2028, with an asterisked "subject to change."
- The Extension schedule page lists COUN 523 Counseling and Culture and COUN 538 Crisis Intervention and Trauma Treatment, which appear in the CSUF 2025-26 catalog's 63-unit program but are absent from the most recent catalog's COUN course listing. Course descriptions for those two were taken from earlier catalog editions and may not reflect current wording.
- Applicant volume and acceptance rate for the evening cohort are not published - only the approximate cohort size of 24.
- There is no in-house training clinic and CSUF does not publish the list of affiliated practicum agencies, so it is not possible to see in advance which populations or settings are actually available.
- No recent first-person student accounts of the evening cohort were found on Reddit, GradCafe or Niche. The only substantive third-party comment located about the CSUF counseling program is a 2017 Student Doctor Network post about the traditional program's orientation.
- The program is CACREP-accredited in clinical mental health counseling; it is not COAMFTE-accredited, so there is no required public student-achievement data table (graduation, licensure and job-placement rates) of the kind CSUN publishes.
Sources for this page (9)
- CSUF University Extension - M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling & Marriage and Family Therapy (program overview)
- CSUF University Extension - Fees and financial aid
- CSUF University Extension - Program schedule (term-by-term course grid)
- CSUF University Extension - Admission requirements
- CSUF University Extension - FAQ (class times, self-support vs. state-supported, practicum, class sizes)
- CSUF catalog 2025-26 - Clinical Mental Health Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy, M.S. (63 units)
- CSUF Department of Counseling - Degree Program (orientation, cohort sizes)
- CSU systemwide tuition schedule 2025-2026 (graduate rates at 0-6.0 and 6.1+ units)
- Student Doctor Network - "Best CSU MFT program?"