What this program actually is
OrientationSystemic couple-and-relational therapy, taught through a named in-house model (IPCST) with a formal Imago Relationship Therapy affiliation, inside a Christian institutional frame
Daybreak is the smallest institution in this directory and the one whose paperwork most rewards reading. The single most consequential fact is that it is not only BPPE-approved: its MA in Counseling with a Specialization in Marriage and Family Therapy has been accredited by COAMFTE since 05/01/2024, running through 05/01/2030, and COAMFTE's Fall 2024 action letter records that the Commission removed three previously-imposed stipulations and accredited the program "with no stipulations." Institutionally, Daybreak is accredited by TRACS — the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, a faith-based *national* accreditor recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and CHEA — which reaffirmed it as a Category IV institution on April 28, 2025, effective July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2035. It is not regionally accredited (no WASC), and at $300 per quarter credit — $27,000 tuition for the 90 credits, or about $30,500 all-in across 10 quarters once books, registration and library fees are counted — it is also the cheapest route to a California MFT license in this directory by a wide margin. California's BBS does not care: BPC §4980.36 accepts a degree "obtained from a school, college, or university approved by the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, or accredited by either the Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education, or a regional or national institutional accrediting agency that is recognized by the United States Department of Education" — Daybreak satisfies all three limbs independently, and BBS lists it as a qualifying program. Outside California the picture is different, and the school says so itself: its own catalog warns in capitals that the MFT programs "MAY NOT sufficiently cover the MFT licensure requirements in other states or provinces," and it separately discloses that it has "no articulation agreement with any other college or university" and that its degree "may not be accepted by any other college or university as a basis for admission to a graduate-level program." Daybreak also "does not participate in federal or state financial aid programs" — no Pell, no Direct Loans, no Cal Grant. Every dollar of that $27,000 is cash or private credit.
What the school is actually built around is couple and relational work, and this shows up in the requirements rather than the brochure. The core theory course is not a generic survey but CFT 7000, which teaches a single named in-house model, IPCST (Internal Parent-Child Systems Therapy). Couples Relationship Therapy (CFT 6030) is a standalone required course sitting in the second term of Year 1, before most programs have introduced couples at all. The practicum requirement is where the commitment becomes measurable: 300 direct client-contact hours of which at least 100 must be *relational* — defined as conjoint work with "two or more individuals... who share an ongoing relationship beyond that which occurs in the therapeutic experience itself." California's BBS floor is 225 hours with no relational minimum, so Daybreak is requiring a third more hours and imposing a relational quota the state does not. The institution is formally affiliated with the Imago International Training Institute; Imago is required in the general MAC and IRT tracks (not in the MFT specialization) and IRT 9400, Advanced Imago Relationship Therapy Training II, is one of only four MAC electives. Daybreak is also an AASECT Organizational Provider, and Human Sexuality Education I is a required MFT course rather than a workshop.
Two contexts a prospective student should have plainly. First, this is a Christian institution in more than name: the catalog's MAC admissions list requires a "Signed Faith Statement," students are told "it is expected that students regularly attend and be involved in a local church," and Spirituality and Psychotherapy is one of the four MAC electives. Second, it was founded out of a Korean counseling lineage — president Dr. Jay Oh is the founder of the Korean Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and a former associate professor at Soongsil and Baekseok Universities in South Korea — and BPPE has approved every Daybreak program in Korean as well as English. The program's own published demographic table shows 30 of 35 MA students are Asian. Serving a specific linguistic and faith community well is a legitimate thing for a school to do, and Daybreak does it openly. The countervailing facts are also public and should be weighed honestly: the BPPE 2024 annual report gives the MA program a 21.28% completion rate, 26 degrees awarded, 0 of 26 graduates employed in field, and zero graduates sitting the LMFT exam in either 2023 or 2024; the COAMFTE outcomes table lists every accredited-era cohort (2023–2024 onward, 11 to 22 students each) as "IP — In Process," meaning no graduation, job-placement or licensure rate has yet been published for any cohort under accreditation. There is, as of this writing, no outcome data demonstrating that people finish this program and get licensed. Enrollment is also restricted: the MFT program page states Daybreak "currently accepts applicants residing in California and Maryland."
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.
Counseling and Psychotherapeutic Theories and Techniques: IPCST
"This course covers the integrative therapy model, IPCST: Internal Parent-Child systems Therapy. This therapy model is consistent with current professional research and practice, development of a personal model of counseling, and multidisciplinary responses to family, couples, and individual therapy."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingMost programs' required theories course is a comparative survey of the major schools; Daybreak's teaches one proprietary model by name. IPCST is not a recognized model outside this institution, so a student should ask directly what the evidence base is and how portable the training is — but it does mean the program has an actual theoretical spine rather than an eclectic shrug. The comparative survey is delivered separately, in CFT 6020 Advanced Marriage and Family Therapy.
Couples Relationship Therapy
"This course is designed to help students learn the concepts and approaches of marital/couples therapy models. Coursework will also include assessment, treatment planning, and intervention of couple relationships. Throughout the class discussion, ethical issues and couples interventions with diverse populations, including working with interface issues of culture, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disabilities and SES will be explored."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA full required course dedicated solely to couples, scheduled in the Winter term of Year 1 — before the student has taken psychopharmacology, assessment, or law and ethics. Many California MFT programs fold couple work into a general family therapy course or leave it to an elective. Placing it this early is the clearest structural signal that this is a couples program that also licenses MFTs, rather than the reverse.
Human Sexuality Education I
Covers sexual anatomy and physiology, sexual disorders, normative age-related sexual changes, response cycles, sexual interviewing technique, sexuality research and the history of sexology; also "alternate forms of sexual expression, creating a safe and ethical environment for treatment... possible impacts of disability on the experience of sexuality, and the self of the therapist." catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingCalifornia requires human sexuality content for licensure, but most programs meet it with a short module or a weekend. Here it is a full required course backed by real institutional infrastructure — Daybreak is an AASECT Organizational Provider and runs an entire Human Sexuality and Sex Therapy specialization, including a Sexual Attitude Reassessment (SAR) course. An MFT student can take further HST courses as electives.
Advanced Imago Relationship Therapy Training II
"This course covers Imago Relationship therapy with regard to affairs, crisis couples, and neurobiology. Using the principles of interpersonal attunement and intrapersonal attunement provide a map of the terrain that needs to be covered when working with couples in crisis."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingOne of only four electives available to MAC students, and the point at which Daybreak's Imago affiliation becomes available to an MFT-track student. Imago is a specific, brand-name couples method (Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt); Daybreak is officially affiliated with the Imago International Training Institute and its president is a certified Imago clinical instructor. Note carefully: IRT 7000 Foundations of Imago is required in the general MAC and the IRT specialization, but is NOT on the MFT specialization's required list — an MFT student reaches Imago through electives, not by default.
Carl Rogers Seminar
"The person-centered therapy of Carl Rogers is the focus of this seminar... Students also observe and participate in Rogerian counseling dyads. In the dyads students work on individual issues and therapy promotes their personal growth and counseling skills."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA rare experiential elective: students are not only studying person-centered theory but doing therapy on their own material in supervised dyads for credit. Very few California MFT programs still require or offer graded experiential self-work of this kind, and for a fully-online program it is a notable choice — it means real personal exposure to classmates over Zoom.
Spirituality and Psychotherapy
"This course is designed to provide information on spirituality and provides students with a holistic approach to understanding self and community through a spiritual focus... Students will be exposed to spiritual development models, spirituality and health research, and contemplative practices."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingListed as one of the four MAC electives, this is where the institution's Christian identity becomes coursework rather than atmosphere. Worth reading alongside the required "Signed Faith Statement" in the admissions list and the expectation that students "regularly attend and be involved in a local church." The course description itself is framed broadly (spiritual development models, contemplative practice) rather than doctrinally; a separate CFT 9350 Christian Counseling exists but is not a MAC elective.
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.
Cohort-based and lockstep, on a four-quarter year with 10-week terms; classes meet twice a week for three hours, delivered by live Zoom (asynchronous, hybrid and in-person options also exist). The published full-time route is 2.5 years / 10 quarters; a 5-year part-time route runs the same courses at one per term. The sequence below is the 2.5-year full-time MFT track from the 2025–26 MFT Program Handbook, which supersedes the 2024–25 catalog by splitting practicum into CFT 7900B and an optional CFT 7900A. Note that the 90 units are QUARTER credits — the catalog states this is "Equivalent to 60 Semester Credits," so this is a 60-semester-unit degree, not a 90-semester-unit one. Students must earn at least 75% of credits at Daybreak and finish within 5 years. course sequence ↗
90 quarter credits (equivalent to 60 semester credits)units in total
- CFT 6010 Foundations of Marriage and Family Therapy (4.5)
- CFT 6060 Psychopathology: Principles of the Diagnostic Process (4.5)
- CFT 6030 Couples Relationship Therapy (4.5)
- CFT 6070 Psychopharmacology (4.5)
- CFT 7000 Counseling and Psychotherapeutic Theories and Techniques: IPCST (4.5)
- CFT 6600 Law, Professional Ethics, and Community Practice & Teletherapy (4.5)
- CFT 6020 Advanced Marriage and Family Therapy (4.5)
- CFT 6080 Assessment, Appraisal, and Psychological Testing (4.5)
- CFT 7900B Practicum in Couples and Family Therapy
- CFT 6300 Diversity and Multicultural Counseling (4.5)
- CFT 7900B Practicum in Couples and Family Therapy
- CFT 6700 Abuse, Trauma, and Collaborative Care (4.5)
- CFT 7900B Practicum in Couples and Family Therapy
- CFT 6050 Clinical Research and Evaluation (4.5)
- CFT 7900B Practicum in Couples and Family Therapy
- HST 6000 Human Sexuality Education I (4.5)
- CFT 6500 Chemical Dependency and Addiction Counseling (4.5)
- CFT 7900A Advanced Practicum in Couples and Family Therapy (4.5) OR an elective OR CFT 7900B if the 300 clinical hours are not yet complete
- CFT 6040 Group Therapy Process and Techniques (4.5)
- CFT 6090 Human Growth and Family Development Across the Lifespan (4.5)
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 →
The school does not say
Nothing on this school’s published pages states who secures your placement. That is not the same as a bad answer - but it is the first question to ask admissions, and the specificity of the reply tells you a great deal. Thirty of the seventy-eight are in this position.
The University has its own on-site counseling center, in Southern California, so you can gain real world experience and practice counseling both individuals and couples while learning to help them navigate their life challenges. the school’s own page →
The school runs its own training clinic. Daybreak University on-site counseling center Owning a clinic and holding a seat in it are different things, so this sits beside the model above rather than replacing it.
This is the question that decides everything for an online program, and Daybreak's own documents answer it in two directions that a prospective student must reconcile before enrolling. The handbook's "Beginning Requirements" list starts with "Obtained a trainee position at the Daybreak University Couples and Family Therapy Center (CFTC)," and requires a signed Affiliation Agreement to the Clinical Director only "if a trainee practices outside of the Daybreak University CFTC" — which reads as school-placed by default. But the Student Acknowledgement the student must sign says the opposite in plain terms: "I understand it is my responsibility to secure an appropriate clinical training site and qualified local supervisor (AAMFT Approved Supervisor or State-Approved supervisor)... failure to find a qualified site or supervisor will make completion of the program impossible." Ask admissions, in writing, whether a CFTC trainee slot is guaranteed. Mechanically: weekly Daybreak faculty group supervision by Zoom while actively seeing clients, plus weekly supervision at the local site; sessions must be video-recorded for supervision with client consent; hours tracked in TheraNest; proof of professional liability insurance and AAMFT membership required before any clinical contact; BBS Weekly Summary of Hours signed by the supervisor each week. The CFTC states its services are delivered by master's and PhD trainees "under the supervision of California-licensed Marriage and Family Therapists, in compliance with applicable California law and California Board of Behavioral Sciences requirements." Clinical supervisors may not continue a student in practicum: each quarter supervisors conduct a Practicum Review and a student may be required to discontinue practicum pending a remediation plan. 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
Specializations: Counseling (MAC), MFT, Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT), Human Sexuality and Sex Therapy (HST). Likely the lowest-cost COAMFTE-accredited option in CA.
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
Cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 3.0 (lower GPAs will be considered based on strength of overall application) source →
How its graduates did on the Board’s exam
Too few candidates to publish a rate
The Board recorded 0 first-time candidates from this school across the whole window, and this page does not print a percentage below 40. On a handful of candidates a single result moves the figure by tens of points, and a small program would be described by noise. It usually means the program is small, new, or both.
Recorded by the Board as Daybreak University. 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
About this disclosure
Daybreak was accredited on 1 May 2024, so seven of its cohorts predate accreditation and the three since have no completers yet. It also published the COAMFTE template with the placeholder brackets still in the title. There is nothing to report here yet, which is what a newly accredited program should look like.
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.
The school publishes the required table, and it currently carries no completed cohorts.
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.
- No freely-licensed photograph of Daybreak University or its Anaheim building exists on Wikimedia Commons (searched Commons file namespace for 'Daybreak University Anaheim' and the State College Blvd address). photo is null rather than hotlinking a copyrighted university image.
- No 2026–27 academic catalog is published. The newest catalog found is 2024–2025 (effective 1 Jan 2024 – 31 Dec 2025), retrieved from the BPPE document server; the MFT Program Handbook is labeled 2025–2026 on the website but its own page footers still read 'MFT Program Handbook 2023', so some handbook content may be stale.
- The catalog and the 2025–26 handbook give two DIFFERENT descriptions for HST 6000 Human Sexuality Education I — the handbook's text is the one the catalog assigns to HST 6100. The handbook version is used here; which is current was not resolvable.
- Course descriptions carry no credit-hour, prerequisite or contact-hour detail per course, and there are no syllabi, reading lists or instructor assignments published anywhere public.
- Whether a trainee position at the in-house CFTC is guaranteed to every MFT student, or whether students routinely have to find their own outside site, is genuinely ambiguous: the handbook's Beginning Requirements and its Student Acknowledgement point in opposite directions. Not resolvable from published documents.
- No published application deadline; the academic calendar implies quarterly Fall/Winter/Spring/Summer starts but no cut-off dates were found.
- No licensure exam pass rate exists. The COAMFTE Graduate Achievement Data table marks graduation, job-placement and licensure rates as 'IP — In Process' for every cohort since accreditation (2023–24, 2024–25, 2025–26), and BPPE's 2024 report records zero graduates sitting the LMFT exam in 2023 or 2024. There is therefore no outcome evidence either way.
- The BPPE 2024 figures (21.28% MA completion rate; 0 of 26 graduates employed in field) are stark, but BPPE completion-rate methodology and how Daybreak computed the denominator were not verifiable, and a 0% in-field employment figure alongside 26 degrees awarded may reflect non-reporting rather than reality. Treat as a question to put to the school, not a settled finding.
- No Reddit, GradCafe, Niche or GradReports discussion of Daybreak was retrievable (Reddit's search endpoint refused automated access; no results surfaced elsewhere). The only independent discussion found anywhere is the single Student Doctor Network thread, which has four posts and no one with first-hand experience of the program.
- Whether Daybreak has ever sought or been denied WSCUC (WASC) regional accreditation is not addressed in any public document found.
- What TRACS 'Category IV' designates was not confirmed from a TRACS source; the April 2025 Commission actions page records the reaffirmation but does not define the category.
- The exact founding date of the institution and of the MFT program is not stated in the catalog or on the About page.
Sources for this page (15)
- Academic Catalog 2024–2025 (effective 1 Jan 2024 – 31 Dec 2025), via BPPE document server
- MFT Program Student Handbook 2025–2026 (PDF)
- COAMFTE Graduate Achievement Data table, Master's Program, 2026 (PDF)
- COAMFTE Fall 2024 Accreditation Action Letter — Daybreak University (MA)
- BPPE Annual Report 2024 — Daybreak University, institution code 70204428
- Daybreak University — About / Approval and Accreditation
- Daybreak University — MFT Program page (admissions, resident-state restriction)
- Daybreak University — Child, Couple, and Family Therapy Center (DBU-CFTC)
- Daybreak University — Master's Program overview (format, tuition per credit)
- Daybreak University — MFT Programs' Demographic Composition (PDF)
- Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §4980.36 — qualifying degree and practicum requirements
- TRACS — April 2025 Accreditation Commission Actions (Reaffirmation of Accreditation)
- CHEA — Daybreak University institutional accreditation listing
- Student Doctor Network — 'Daybreak University – MFT Program' thread
- Daybreak University — Meet Our Students (school-published testimonials)