What this program actually is
OrientationSystemic/family-systems, taught strictly — individual counseling theory is introduced only after two full courses of systems theory and explicitly reframed 'from a Systemic perspective', with a stated Recovery-and-Resilience emphasis for community mental health
The first thing to correct is the premise most people arrive with. The Chicago School is not a converted for-profit. IPEDS has classified it as a private, not-for-profit institution in every directory year available going back to 1985, when it was still listed as "CHICAGO SCH PROF PSYC" — there is no for-profit period to date. What is true is that it behaves like a national chain: it is one of six institutions inside The Community Solution Education System (its own IT help desk runs at helpdesk.tcsedsystem.edu), and the MA in Marriage, Couples, and Family Therapy is sold at Los Angeles, Anaheim, and now online, with San Diego quietly closed to new students and teaching out through Summer 2027. The program is COAMFTE-accredited effective November 1, 2022 — initial accreditation with stipulations at COAMFTE's Fall 2022 meeting, stipulations removed at the Fall 2023 meeting, next review Fall 2028.
The curriculum's actual signature is a sequencing decision, and it is easy to miss in the course list. Almost every California MFT program teaches counseling theories first and family systems second. The Chicago School inverts it: MM 563 Systems Theory and Family Therapy I is the prerequisite for MM 564 Systems Theory and Family Therapy II, which is in turn the prerequisite for MM 565 — a two-credit course called "Systemic Perspectives on Counseling Theories" that introduces "the primary theories of counseling" only after you have spent two full courses inside systems theory, and then only "from a Systemic perspective." Individual theory is not taught on its own terms here; it is taught as a special case. The second signature is how heavily gated the degree is: a zero-credit Practicum Readiness Assessment (a one-hour written law-and-ethics exam, 70% to pass, referral to the Student Conduct Committee with possible dismissal after three failures), then two Clinical Competency Evaluations inside the practicum seminars — one formative, one summative, each requiring a full case report, a recorded or transcribed session, and a live case presentation — then a zero-credit Written Comprehensive Examination.
The numbers are the reason to read this page carefully. On the program's own COAMFTE Graduate Achievement Data (Fall 2026 table), campus cohorts of 69 to 109 full-time students have graduated within the advertised three years at rates of 42% to 64% — roughly half of each cohort takes longer than advertised. Licensure rates for those who do finish are strong (81% to 95%, against COAMFTE's 70% benchmark) and job placement runs 90% to 100%. Against that, the US Department of Education's College Scorecard reports, for master's degrees under CIP 51.15 (which is where marriage and family therapy sits) at The Chicago School's shared OPE ID, a median federal graduate debt of $108,000 with a median monthly payment of $1,229 — and median earnings one year out of $54,966. That is a debt load roughly twice first-year earnings, and it is the highest figure in this segment by a wide margin. At the 2026-27 rate of $1,509 per credit hour, the 60-credit degree is about $90,540 in tuition alone. The fully online modality is brand new and unproven: COAMFTE data shows "No Students" for every cohort year from 2016-17 through 2024-25, and 21 students in the first 2025-26 cohort, all still in process.
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.
Systemic Perspectives on Counseling Theories
"This course introduces students to the primary theories of counseling. Additionally, the application of techniques, skills, and interventions utilizing the primary theories of counseling will be explored from a Systemic perspective." Prerequisite: MM 564 Systems Theory and Family Therapy II.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThis is the clearest structural statement the program makes. Most CA programs open with a survey of counseling theories; here it is a two-credit course you cannot take until you have completed two full systems-theory courses, and even then the theories are filtered through a systemic lens. If you want to train as a generalist individual therapist who happens to have an MFT license, this sequencing is working against you.
Recovery, Trauma, and Crisis Counseling within the Community
"This course introduces the basic theory and practice of the Recovery and Resilience model of mental health and its application in community mental health settings. Students will learn about ecological concepts, prevention, and intervention strategies aimed at serving the broad mental health needs of communities."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThe program's mission statement names "recovery, and resilience" explicitly, and this is the course where that claim is cashed. It signals that the training target is public and community mental health — county contracts, school-based sites, agencies serving serious mental illness — rather than the cash-pay private-practice track.
Practicum Readiness Assessment
"Students will take the Practicum Readiness Assessment the semester prior to starting Practicum I." Per the Program Guidebook it is a one-hour written examination responding to a clinical vignette with questions in two areas — Law and Ethics — requiring a cumulative 70% to pass. Course fee $55. Prerequisites: MM 545, MM 563, MM 528.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA zero-credit, fee-bearing exam that stands between you and any client contact is unusual, and its consequences are severe: fail twice and you are advised to postpone placement a full academic year; fail three times and you are referred to the Student Conduct Committee with a potential recommendation for dismissal. This single course explains a large part of why the on-time graduation rate sits between 42% and 64%.
Diagnosis and Treatment of Mental and Emotional Disorders in Family Systems
"This course emphasizes the integration of systematic assessment and intervention procedures with couples and families, within the context of the various family therapy models. Emphasis is placed on procedural issues, critique and utilization of the current DSM, and specific problems encountered in therapeutic work with family systems."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingNote the phrase "critique and utilization of the current DSM." Diagnosis is taught twice here — once individually in MM 515 Psychopathology in the Family Context, and again as a systemic problem in MM 526, with the DSM held at arm's length. Programs that are quietly CBT-forward do not usually build a second, skeptical diagnosis course.
Marriage and Family Therapy Practicum II and III
Each is a practicum seminar in which "students will write their Clinical Competency Evaluation (CCE) based on a case from their practicum. Students are required to receive a passing grade on the CCE in order to pass this class." The Guidebook adds that each CCE "includes a full clinical case report, a recorded and/or transcribed session, and a case presentation to the class and instructor."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingTwo separate CCEs — one formative in Practicum II, one summative in Practicum III — each requiring recorded or transcribed session material rather than student self-report. Video-based competency assessment is the thing that separates programs that actually watch you work from programs that take your word for it, and this one requires it twice, as a pass/fail gate on the course.
Comprehensive Examination (auto half time)
"Students should register for the MCFT Comprehensive Examination during the semester in which they will complete their coursework for the Master's degree. Students will be notified with regard to the date, time and location of the assessment." Course fee $55. Prerequisite: MM 583.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA second zero-credit, fee-bearing gate at the far end of the degree. Combined with MM 569 and the two CCEs, this is a program with four separate high-stakes assessments outside normal coursework — a structure worth understanding before you commit, because each one is a place where the three-year timeline can break.
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.
60 credit hours (64 on the LPCC track). The Program Guidebook states that the term-by-term "Curriculum Grid" is tailored to each student's entry semester and is only "available for download via the MFT Division Student Page in Canvas" — it is not published publicly, so no verified term-by-term sequence exists outside the school. The list below is the full required-course set from the 2026-27 Acalog catalog, in catalog order, with prerequisite chains noted. The advertised length is three years standard from a fall start; the catalog warns students beginning in other semesters may need longer because of course sequencing. course sequence ↗
60units in total
- MM 515 Psychopathology in the Family Context (3)
- MM 521 Child and Adolescent Treatment (3)
- MM 523 Couples Therapy, Theory, and Techniques (3) — course fee $140
- MM 526 Diagnosis and Treatment of Mental and Emotional Disorders in Family Systems (3) — prereq MM 515, MM 565
- MM 528 Diversity in Family Therapy (3)
- MM 532 Sexual Issues in Marriage and Family Therapy (3)
- MM 538 Individual and Family Development Across the Lifespan (3)
- MM 545 Professional, Legal, and Ethical Issues in Marriage and Family Therapy (3)
- MM 547 Assessment in Marriage and Family Therapy (3) — prereq MM 515
- MM 549 Psychopharmacology and Collaborative Care (3)
- MM 555 Research Methods in Marriage and Family Therapy (3)
- MM 557 Recovery, Trauma, and Crisis Counseling within the Community (3)
- MM 560 Group Counseling and Systems (3)
- MM 563 Systems Theory and Family Therapy I (3)
- MM 564 Systems Theory and Family Therapy II (3) — prereq MM 563
- MM 565 Systemic Perspectives on Counseling Theories (2) — prereq MM 564
- MM 566 Treatment of Addictions in Family Systems (3) — prereq MM 563
- MM 569 Practicum Readiness Assessment (0) — prereq MM 545, MM 563, MM 528; course fee $55
- MM 575 Marriage and Family Therapy Practicum I (2) — prereq MM 569
- MM 582 Marriage and Family Therapy Practicum II (3) — prereq MM 575
- MM 583 Marriage and Family Therapy Practicum III (3) — prereq MM 582
- MM 578 Marriage and Family Therapy Practicum IV (2) — prereq MM 583
- MM 590 Comprehensive Examination (0) — prereq MM 583; course fee $55
- MM 514 Introduction to Counseling Skills in Systemic Therapy (1)
- MM 652 Career Assessment (3) OR FO 638 Career Development and Counseling (3) — choose one
- MM 628 Advanced Practicum (1)
- MM 619 Practicum Extension (0)
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.
The Director of Clinical Training (DCT) regularly connects with students to assist in the practicum placement and maintenance process. [...] The Director of Clinical Training facilitates practicum placement in coordination with the program faculty. The DCT has developed relationships with sites that offer a broad range of client populations and presenting problems. the school’s own page →
Placement is coordinated by a campus Director of Clinical Training, who "regularly connects with students to assist in the practicum placement and maintenance process" and to whom faculty advisors defer on all site issues — so this is a supported search rather than an assignment, and rather than the pure sink-or-swim model used by the fully-online competitors. Practicum is four sequential seminar courses (MM 575, MM 582, MM 583, MM 578) spanning four semesters or eight terms, with the field placement itself running 12 months; note a live discrepancy in the school's own materials, where the marketing page says practicum is "eight credit hours" while the 2025 Program Guidebook and the catalog course list both total ten. Supervision is two-layered: an on-site supervisor at a community agency, counseling center or school-based site, plus a regularly scheduled practicum seminar with a faculty instructor for case consultation. Inside that seminar you must pass two Clinical Competency Evaluations — a formative one in MM 582 and a summative one in MM 583 — each requiring a full clinical case report, a recorded and/or transcribed session, and a live case presentation, which means the program assesses you on observed work rather than self-report. There is no in-house training clinic: fieldwork happens at external partner agencies, students buy their own liability coverage and log hours in Tevera (a one-time $195 Experiential Learning Technology Fee covers the system), and transfer credit for practicum "is not granted, and practicum hour requirements are never waived." For online students the practicum is completed in California, which is the practical constraint that makes the online pathway a California product rather than a national one. 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
Practicum: 300 face-to-face contact hours minimum, ≥100 with couples and families
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 GRE is not required, however students who have taken the exam may submit their scores to enhance their application source →
How its graduates did on the Board’s exam
Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 70% across 374 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, 75% of this school’s 341 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.
Recorded by the Board as The Chicago School of Professional Psychology at Los Angeles. 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. For Master's programs only, COAMFTE has established a benchmark of 70% licensure rate for each cohort.” — which is worth reading before the numbers, because it is rarely what the column heading suggests.
Campus-based (Los Angeles and Anaheim) / FT
| Cohort | Graduated | Reached licensure | In the field |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-201979 in the cohort | 48 | 83 | 98 |
| 2019-202077 in the cohort | 56 | 87 | 96 |
| 2020-2021102 in the cohort | 42 | 88 | 98 |
| 2021-202293 in the cohort | 57 | 95 | 100 |
| 2022-202392 in the cohort | 64 | 93 | 90 |
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.
- The premise that The Chicago School 'converted to non-profit' does not hold up. IPEDS directory records list it as private not-for-profit (control code 2) in every year checked — 1985, 1990, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2018 and 2022. No for-profit period and therefore no conversion date exists in the federal record. It is a member of The Community Solution Education System, described on its own site as 'an integrated nonprofit system of six colleges and universities.'
- Residency dates and cost are NOT published anywhere. The program page confirms two mandatory in-person residencies in Southern California, one in year one and one in year two, mandatory for online and on-campus students alike, and says only that 'the schedule is shared in advance.' No calendar dates, no length in days, and no separate residency fee appear in the 2026-27 fee schedule. The only quantified proxy is the online cost-of-attendance budget, which allocates $7,613 for travel over a nine-month year. A magazine feature about residencies for the school's separate online Clinical Mental Health Counseling program describes those as three days each, held in Washington DC — that is a different degree and should not be assumed to describe the MCFT residencies.
- No term-by-term curriculum sequence is public. The Program Guidebook states the Curriculum Grid is available only through Canvas.
- The school's own materials disagree on practicum credits: the marketing page says 'eight credit hours over four semesters', the 2025 Program Guidebook says 'ten credit hours completed over four semesters or eight terms', and the catalog course list totals ten (2+3+3+2).
- No licensure-exam pass rate is published; COAMFTE's Graduate Achievement Data tracks licensure attainment, not exam performance.
- College Scorecard field-of-study data for The Chicago School is reported against a single shared OPE6 ID (021553) covering all campuses, so the $108,000 median debt figure is system-wide across Chicago, Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Diego, DC and the online programs — it cannot be isolated to the California MCFT cohort.
- No first-person student discussion could be retrieved this session. Reddit, Niche, GradReports and Trustpilot were all unreachable from this environment (403/404), and the web-search budget was exhausted before forum sources could be gathered. The voices section is therefore built from documentary sources only.
- No freely-licensed photograph of the Los Angeles campus (707 Wilshire Boulevard) or the Anaheim campus exists on Wikimedia Commons. There is no Commons category for the institution.
- The catalog lists an LPCC track (64 credits, adding MM 514 plus MM 652 or FO 638) but the program's public FAQ does not mention dual LMFT/LPCC preparation; a prospective student should confirm the track is actually offered at their campus.
Sources for this page (10)
- M.A. Marriage, Couples, and Family Therapy program page
- Acalog academic catalog 2026-27, MA MCFT program requirements
- MA in Marriage, Couples, and Family Therapy Program Guidebook (Dec 2025)
- COAMFTE Graduate Achievement Data Disclosure, Fall 2026
- Tuition and fees, academic year 2026-27
- COAMFTE Notice of Actions (Fall 2022 initial accreditation with stipulations; Fall 2023 stipulations removed)
- US Dept of Education College Scorecard API, field-of-study data, unitid 455664
- IPEDS institutional directory via Urban Institute Education Data API (control code by year, unitid 143978)
- Los Angeles campus page (707 Wilshire Boulevard address)
- Sentio University independent CA MFT directory profile (competitor-authored)