What this program actually is
OrientationSystemic family therapy - strengths-based and social-justice framed, with a heavy public/community mental health emphasis
CSUN runs one of the small number of COAMFTE-accredited MFT programs in California (accredited November 1, 2016, renewed May 2023), and the accreditation shapes everything about how the program behaves. It publishes real outcome numbers every year rather than marketing claims: cohorts of 51-57 students, graduation rates between 78% and 92%, and licensure rates of 96-100% for every completed cohort since 2015-16. It is tightly lockstep and full-time only - the catalog states plainly that "in most cases, general requests for part-time enrollment cannot be accommodated" - and runs 2.5-3 years including two required summer sessions. Roughly 56 students are admitted from 200-400 applicants each year.
The curriculum is unusually granular about family-therapy theory. Where most California programs teach one survey course in family systems, CSUN splits it into three required courses - EPC 670MFA (systemic: structural, strategic, experiential, intergenerational, psychodynamic), EPC 670MFB (postmodern and cognitive-behavioral: solution-focused, narrative, collaborative), and EPC 670MFC (psychoeducational and process groups, including multi-family and multi-couple groups for families with a member diagnosed with severe mental illness). Alongside this sits a heavy public-mental-health orientation: EPC 673MF Trauma-Informed Community Mental Health covers homeless services, foster care, in-home and in-school services and bilingual client services, and the fieldwork hour categories explicitly count rape-crisis accompaniments and suicide hotlines through Strength United, the university's own domestic-violence and sexual-assault agency.
Two practical things a prospective student should know. First, CSUN reinstated the GRE: "The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test is required for ALL applicants (updated for Fall 2025)" - most California MFT programs have dropped it, so this is a real added cost and timeline. Second, the program requires 20 hours of personal psychotherapy (10 in the first-year EPC 659MFA/B sequence, 10 during second-year fieldwork), which is a cost and a commitment many applicants do not budget for.
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.
Psychoeducational and Process Groups in Family Therapy
Prepares students to develop and lead psychoeducational and process groups for children and adults diagnosed with a mental health issue as well as multi-family and multi-couple groups for families with members diagnosed with severe mental illness. Emphasis on evidence-based group treatments and diversity issues.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingMulti-family and multi-couple group work for severe mental illness is a specific public-mental-health skill set that almost no other California MFT program requires as a standalone course. It signals that CSUN expects graduates to work in county and community agencies, not just private practice.
Trauma-Informed Community Mental Health
Theories and skills required in contemporary community mental health settings, including recovery-oriented treatment for severe mental illness, disaster and trauma response, services for victims of abuse and the homeless, foster care, case management, client advocacy, in-home and in-school services, bilingual client services.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThis is the course that most clearly marks CSUN as a public-sector pipeline. Recovery-oriented treatment for severe mental illness, in-home services and bilingual service delivery are the actual job description of a Los Angeles County contracted agency, and the course names them explicitly.
Neurobiology and Treatment of Trauma
Provides students with research on the neurobiological and psychosocial impact of complex trauma among diverse populations and the link with co-occurring disorders and high-risk behaviors. Students learn and practice trauma-informed care with an emphasis on evidence-based programs.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA dedicated one-unit course on trauma neurobiology, separate from the three-unit community-mental-health course and separate again from the psychopharmacology course. CSUN uses several one- and two-unit courses to force coverage of specific topics rather than folding them into a survey.
Gender and Sexuality in Marriage and Family Therapy
Examination of gender and sexuality integrating historical and cultural contexts across the lifespan. Sexuality will be considered from a biopsychosocial developmental perspective. Students will engage in critical self-assessment of knowledge, sensitivity, and attitudes about gender and sexuality as it intersects with race, ethnicity, age.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingTaken in the same semester as EPC 677MFA Couples and Sex Therapy, this adds a required self-assessment component on the student's own attitudes rather than treating gender and sexuality purely as client content.
Introduction to Professional Writing
Introduces students to the basic professional writing standards required for both academic and clinical writing in the field. Students will review professional voice, writing style, organization, language bias, and grammar as well as learn APA style.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA required first-semester writing course that doubles as the program's Graduate Writing Requirement - a "B" or better is needed to pass, retakeable up to three times, and failing writing can trigger an additional required seminar (EPC 695MF). Very few MFT programs gate progression on writing this explicitly.
Career Interventions in Mental Health Counseling
Prepares family therapists to assist children, teens and adults with a wide range of career issues that arise in clinical practice as well as prepare therapists for work in EAP environments. Topics covered include career counseling and development theory, diversity, harassment, and discrimination.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA full three-unit career-counseling course inside an MFT degree, explicitly framed toward employee assistance program work. It is a required LPCC content area, but CSUN teaches it as clinical practice rather than as a checkbox.
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.
Fully lockstep: every student moves through a fixed cohort sequence over 2.5-3 years including two required summers, full-time only, with no part-time option. The sequence below is the program's own published sample; the handbook notes each cohort receives its exact sequencing at the start of the program. course sequence ↗
72units in total
- EPC 451 Fundamentals of Counseling and Guidance (3)
- PSY 310 Abnormal Psychology (3)
- EPC 670MFA Systemic Family Therapy Theories (3)
- EPC 659MFA Introduction to Counseling Theory and Practice (3)
- EPC 643MF Diversity in Family Therapy (3)
- EPC 671MF Law, Ethics, and Professional Issues in Family Therapy (3)
- EPC 603MFB Introduction to Professional Writing (2)
- EPC 670MFB Postmodern and Cognitive-Behavioral Family Theories (3)
- EPC 659MFB Practicum in Family Therapy (3)
- EPC 603MFA Clinical Research and Program Evaluation (3)
- EPC 672MFA Mental Health Assessment and Diagnosis in Family Therapy (3)
- EPC 672MFB Neurobiology and Treatment of Trauma (1)
- EPC 674MF Family Development Across the Lifespan (3)
- EPC 690MF Advanced Fieldwork & Professional Development in Family Therapy (2)
- EPC 659MFC Fieldwork in Marriage and Family Therapy (3)
- EPC 673MF Trauma-Informed Community Mental Health (3)
- EPC 656MF Therapy with Children, Adolescents, and Their Families (3)
- EPC 677MFA Couples and Sex Therapy (3)
- EPC 659MFD Fieldwork in Marriage and Family Therapy (3)
- EPC 670MFC Psychoeducational and Process Groups in Family Therapy (3)
- EPC 679MF Clinical and Outcome-Based Assessment (3)
- EPC 677MFB Gender and Human Sexuality in Couple and Family Therapy (1)
- EPC 696MF Directed Graduate Research in Family Therapy (3)
- EPC 657MF Career Interventions in Mental Health Contexts (3)
- EPC 678MF Psychopharmacology & Neurobiological Foundations in Family Therapy (3)
- EPC 675MF Substance Abuse and Addictions Treatment in Family Therapy (3)
- EPC 690MF Advanced Fieldwork & Professional Development in Family Therapy (3)
- EPC 697 Directed Comprehensive Studies (3) OR EPC 698C Thesis/Graduate Project
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.
Apply and interview at field sites based on the approved list, available on the cohort's private Canvas page. ... Students may only work at sites that have a contract in good standing with the university. You can find a list of currently approved sites on your cohort's dedicated Canvas page. the school’s own page →
The school runs its own training clinics. Mitchell Family Counseling Clinic · Strength United Owning a clinic and holding a seat in it are different things, so this sits beside the model above rather than replacing it.
Each student must find and interview for their own placement from an approved list posted on the cohort's private Canvas page; sites are categorized as "Comprehensive Sites" (can provide all hour types) or "Hour-Specific Sites" (e.g. individual but not relational hours). Students are expected on site 15-20 hours per week for a minimum of 15 months, and most continue into a third year. Placements are typically unpaid and at some sites students must pay a fee for the training experience. Two CSUN-affiliated options exist - the on-campus Mitchell Family Counseling Clinic and Strength United - but as of the current clinic page, Mitchell's fee-for-service therapy program is paused while leadership redesigns the service model. Separately, all students must complete 20 hours of personal psychotherapy: 10 in the first-year EPC 659MFA/B courses and 10 during second-year fieldwork. source ↗
Will this degree travel
COAMFTE accredited
This is the accreditation that decides whether the degree travels. 12 of the 78 institutions on the Board’s list hold it, and this is one of them.
It matters most if there is any chance you will practice outside California. It matters less inside California, where a regionally-accredited, Board-listed degree is sufficient.
What the Board requires of any qualifying degree →
What it is, on paper
Eisner College of Education, Dept. of Educational Psychology & Counseling; day and evening classes
What it costs
This program does not publish a tuition figure anywhere I could find it. 43 of the 78 on the Board’s list are the same. That is a fair thing to ask admissions directly, and the speed and specificity of the answer tells you something on its own.
What a month costs to live on while you study →
Getting in
The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test is required for ALL applicants (updated for Fall 2025). source →
How its graduates did on the Board’s exam
Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 67% across 523 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, 87% of this school’s 328 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.
Recorded by the Board as California State University, Northridge. 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 the accreditor makes it publish
In the school’s own words, this counts: “Licensure rate is the percentage of graduates from the cohort year that have achieved ANY level of MFT licensure, which for our graduates includes pursuing an Associate License upon graduation. This data is based on graduates' self-report at time of survey.” — which is worth reading before the numbers, because it is rarely what the column heading suggests.
FT
| Cohort | Graduated | Reached licensure | In the field |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-201951 in the cohort | 86% | 98% | 100% |
| 2019-202051 in the cohort | 78% | 100% | 98% |
| 2020-202157 in the cohort | 86% | 98% | 97% |
| 2021-202252 in the cohort | 92% | 98% | 98% |
| 2022-202354 in the cohort | 89% | 98% | 96% |
Graduation is measured against each school’s own advertised length, which across the twelve accredited programs runs from two years to four and a half — so a low figure often means students chose a longer track rather than that they did not finish. Licensure and placement are usually shares of the graduates who answered a survey, not of the cohort. Both are reasons these numbers describe one program over time and cannot be set against another school’s.
The school’s own disclosure → · most recent 5 cohorts shown
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.
- Unit count: CSUN's own materials disagree. The current catalog and the handbook's "In A Nutshell" section both say 72 units; the handbook's prose paragraph and the university's majors page still say "64-67 unit curriculum." The handbook resolves it - 64-67 units describes the retired 2012-2020 M.S. in Counseling, Option in MFT, which is explicitly "no longer available for new student enrollment." The current 2021 curriculum totals 72 units. Our record's 64-67 figure is stale.
- Day vs. evening cohorts: the program says classes are "offered during the day and evenings," that students are assigned to a cohort, and that "the program makes every attempt to ensure students are placed in their preferred cohort; however, the program cannot guarantee that preferred days and times of course offerings will always be available." No published document says how many cohorts run, which is day and which is evening, or how the assignment is made. This has to be asked at an information session.
- Total cost of the degree is not published by the program. CSU 2025-26 systemwide graduate tuition is $2,340 per semester at 0-6.0 units and $4,032 at 6.1 or more, plus CSUN campus fees, but the program does not publish a program-total estimate and the two required summers complicate any simple multiplication.
- The Mitchell Family Counseling Clinic's fee-for-service therapy program is currently paused while leadership redesigns the service model. No restart date is published, so it is unclear whether incoming students can count on it as a placement.
- No substantive recent first-person student reviews found. Reddit, Student Doctor Network, GradCafe and Niche searches turned up nothing current and specific about the CSUN MFT cohort experience; the only student voices located were in a Daily Sundial feature about the clinic.
- Faculty/supervisor names beyond the program coordinators (Dana Stone, curriculum; Deborah Buttitta, fieldwork; Esther Choi, graduate coordinator; Shyrea Minton, department chair) were not compiled.
Sources for this page (9)
- CSUN catalog - Marriage and Family Therapy, M.S. program requirements
- CSUN catalog - Educational Psychology and Counseling course descriptions (EPC)
- CSUN MFT Program Handbook (curriculum, sample sequencing, fieldwork, admissions)
- CSUN Department of Educational Psychology & Counseling - M.S. in Marriage & Family Therapy
- CSUN COAMFTE accreditation and student achievement data
- Mitchell Family Counseling Clinic (Teaching, Learning & Counseling Consortium)
- Daily Sundial - Mitchell Family Counseling Clinic student trainees
- CSUN catalog - Schedule of Tuition and Fees, 2025-2026
- CSUN majors and programs - Marriage and Family Therapy, M.S.