What this program actually is
OrientationIntegrative and modality-by-modality — a separate advanced-techniques course for psychodynamic, brief/CBT, child, and advocacy/case-management practice, with no single declared school
The confusing part of this program is the 43-unit number, so start there. Dominican's MS in Counseling Psychology has three named tracks and the 43-unit one — the General Master's Concentration — is deliberately not a licensure degree. The university describes it as a "43-unit program designed to prepare students to provide consultation, case management, education and training in a wide variety of settings or for further doctoral work." It replaces the licensure track's supervised practicum with 280 hours of supervised volunteer fieldwork, drops the personal-psychotherapy requirement entirely, and ends with two semesters of CP 5995, the General Master's Proficiency Project seminar — a seminar capped at six students in which each person carries a research, design or service-learning project to a final presentation before an academic or community group. If you want an LMFT, this is not the track; if you want a counseling-psychology master's as a doctoral springboard or for a non-clinical role, it is a cheaper, shorter version of the same core.
The licensure track is 60 units and it is a single program that satisfies both licenses. The MFT concentration is written to Bus. & Prof. Code §4980.37 and SB 33; the PCC concentration to §§4999.10–4999.122 and SB 788; and students can carry both concentrations inside the same 60 units rather than paying for an add-on. The 17 units the licensure track adds to the shared 43-unit core are exactly the BBS-mandated pieces the general track omits: Family Therapy (3), Couple Therapy (3), Career Counseling (3), Psychopharmacology (3), Clinical Aspects of Human Sexuality (1), Geriatrics and Long-Term Care (1), and three Practicum Seminars (9) — which, with the seminars, is how the arithmetic reaches 60.
Two things make the clinical training heavier than the California floor. The practicum requirement is "a minimum of 500 hours of practicum... of which 280 must be direct counseling" — 280 direct hours is the LPCC number, not the 225-hour MFT minimum, so MFT-only students are held to the higher bar. And personal psychotherapy is 45 hours, of which only 15 may have been done in the two years before entering. Beyond that the program is small and conventional in shape: maximum 20 students per class, faculty who are all practicing clinicians, over 50 partner agencies, in-person late-afternoon/evening/weekend classes over 30–36 months, and no in-house training clinic. The structural signature of the curriculum is modality-by-modality — separate Advanced Counseling Techniques courses for psychodynamic work, brief/CBT work, children, and case management — rather than a single theoretical allegiance.
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.
Advanced Counseling Techniques: Client Advocacy and Collaborative Care
Teaches "the basic techniques of brokerage and clinical case management" and their application with diverse populations, focusing on clients with severe mental illness, trauma and concurrent substance abuse, and on collaborating across behavioral health, criminal justice, primary care and vocational service systems.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingCase management taught as a graded 3-unit clinical technique course is genuinely uncommon in California MFT curricula, where it is usually absorbed into practicum supervision. It is a strong signal that the program expects graduates to work in county and non-profit systems where brokerage across agencies is most of the job.
Advanced Counseling Techniques: Psychodynamic
Covers "traditional and recent developments in psychodynamic theory and technique" across Ego Psychology, Object Relations, Self-Psychology, Control Mastery, Intersubjective and Relational approaches, developing competency with transference and countertransference and applying "relevant, supportive and long-term techniques with adolescents, adults and seniors."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA required, standalone psychodynamic techniques course — naming Control Mastery and intersubjective theory specifically — sitting beside an equally required brief/CBT course. Programs that are quietly CBT-forward do not staff a course like this; it tells you psychodynamic supervision is available and expected.
Fundamentals of Clinical Practice: Group Psychotherapy
"Theoretical and practical approaches to working with groups are discussed and practiced. Topics include: setting goals and objectives, group observation and assessment skills, leadership styles, process techniques, developmental stages, cultural and socio-economic diversity, social stress, and termination," extended to inpatient, school, managed care and community mental health settings.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingNote the framing: group work is one of two courses labeled 'Fundamentals of Clinical Practice' alongside individual psychotherapy, rather than a late elective. A full 3 units on group practice, including self-help and task groups, is more than the BBS requires.
Practicum Seminar
Three seminars taken alongside placement, applying and refining counseling competencies at approved sites including assessment, case management and advocacy with diverse populations. Students write comprehensive case studies covering diagnosis, treatment planning, documentation and ethics; the stated aim is to cultivate "integrity, sensitivity, flexibility, insight, compassion, and professional presence."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingNine units of seminar attached to fieldwork is substantial, and the gate to enter it is specific: 24 completed units including ethics, individual psychotherapy, brief/CBT, psychopathology and assessment. That means no student reaches a client without diagnosis and law/ethics already behind them.
GMPP Seminar
The capstone of the non-licensure General Master's track: "an opportunity for those students who wish to obtain a General Master's in Counseling Psychology to integrate, apply and demonstrate their knowledge through the development of a Master's Project" — research, design, service learning or another documented contribution — presented as work-in-progress across two semesters and publicly at graduation.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThis is the course that explains what the 43-unit degree actually is. It is a supervised project seminar capped at six students ending in a public presentation — a doctoral-preparation or applied-research exit, not a clinical one. If a prospective student is confused by the 43-unit figure, this is the answer.
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.
No term-by-term sequence is published, so the blocks below are structural rather than temporal — a shared 43-unit core, then a 17-unit licensure add-on. Students enter in Fall or Spring and take 30–36 months in person, with late-afternoon, evening and weekend classes available for part-time and working students; classes are capped at 20. Applicants who have not taken a Theories of Personality course must complete one by the end of the first year. Order is enforced by the practicum gate: 24 units including CP 5217, CP 5201, CP 5208, CP 5237 and CP 5221 must be done before either the Practicum Seminar or the GMPP Seminar begins. course sequence ↗
43 units (General Master's Concentration, non-licensure) or 60 units (MFT and/or PCC Concentration)units in total
- CP 5201 Fundamentals of Clinical Practice: Individual Psychotherapy (3)
- CP 5205 Advanced Counseling Techniques: Assessment and Treatment of Children (2)
- CP 5206 Crisis Intervention and Trauma (1)
- CP 5207 Advanced Counseling Techniques: Psychodynamic (2)
- CP 5208 Advanced Counseling Techniques: Brief and CBT Therapies (3)
- CP 5209 Advanced Counseling Techniques: Client Advocacy and Collaborative Care (3)
- CP 5210 Fundamentals of Clinical Practice: Group Psychotherapy (3)
- CP 5214 Domestic Violence: Assessment, Reporting and Treatment (1)
- CP 5215 Child Abuse: Assessment, Reporting and Treatment (1)
- CP 5216 Alcohol and Substance Abuse (2)
- CP 5217 Professional Ethics and Law (2)
- CP 5219 Human Diversity (2)
- CP 5221 Psychological Assessment (3)
- CP 5222 Research in Human Systems and Treatment Outcomes (3)
- CP 5231 Phases of Human Development (3)
- CP 5237 Psychopathology and Treatment Planning (3)
- CP 5995 GMPP Seminar (3)
- CP 5995 GMPP Seminar, second semester (3)
- CP 5218 Geriatrics and Long-Term Care (1)
- CP 5220 Career Counseling (3)
- CP 5224 Psychopharmacology (3)
- CP 5245 Clinical Aspects of Human Sexuality (1)
- CP 5246 Advanced Counseling Techniques: Family Therapy (3)
- CP 5247 Advanced Counseling Techniques: Couple Therapy (3)
- CP 5294 Practicum Seminar (3)
- CP 5294 Practicum Seminar, second (3)
- CP 5294 Practicum Seminar, third (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 →
The program places you
The school finds or assigns the site. You are not competing for one, which is worth more than almost anything else on this page - though it is not the same as a guarantee, and it is worth asking what happens if a placement falls through mid-year.
Dominican's well-established practicum works with over 50 community agencies to place 100 percent of our trainees in the field. the school’s own page →
There is no in-house clinic. Placements are in "governmental agencies, schools or colleges, nonprofit and charitable corporations, or licensed health facilities," with on-site licensed professionals supervising; the program states it partners with over 50 community agencies and places 100 percent of its trainees, and that roughly 90 percent of graduates go on to MFT licensure or MFT associate registration. Note the 500-hour total against 280 direct hours — the non-direct 220 hours are the paperwork, supervision and case-management side, and 280 direct is above California's 225-hour MFT graduation minimum. MFT/PCC students also complete a minimum of 45 hours of their own psychotherapy, of which no more than 15 may have been completed in the two years before entering. General Master's students may count any personal therapy they choose to do toward their 280 volunteer hours instead. 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
Max 20 students per class; 50+ community agency practicum partners; all faculty are practicing clinicians
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.
$83,882 total 2026-27 — source
What a month costs to live on while you study →
Getting in
A GPA of 3.0 is required for the last 60 units of graded undergraduate or graduate coursework. source →
How its graduates did on the Board’s exam
Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 80% across 117 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, 83% of this school’s 132 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.
Recorded by the Board as Dominican University of California. 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.
- No term-by-term course sequence is published; the catalog gives credit blocks and a practicum prerequisite gate only.
- The materials reviewed never state whether the GRE is required, waived or not considered.
- No licensure exam pass rate is published. The program's own '90 percent of graduates obtain MFT licensure or associate registration' and '100 percent of trainees placed' are self-reported claims with no cited methodology or year.
- No student reviews specific to the MS in Counseling Psychology were found on Niche, GradReports, Reddit, Student Doctor Network or GradCafe — the voices recorded here are institution-level and should be read as such.
- It is not stated whether students apply directly into the 43-unit General Master's Concentration or whether it also functions as an exit route for students who leave the licensure track, which would materially change how a prospective student should read it.
- No in-house training clinic exists and the catalog does not name any of the 50-plus partner agencies.
- Faculty are described as all practicing clinicians but no theoretical-orientation breakdown or named core faculty list was found in the catalog.
Sources for this page (7)
- Academic catalog 2025-26 — Counseling Psychology (MS, MFT, PCC)
- Academic catalog 2025-26 — CP course descriptions
- MS in Counseling Psychology program page (format, class size, placement, admissions, tuition)
- Master of Science in Counseling Psychology (MS, MFT/PCC) — concentration definitions and statutory citations
- GradReports student reviews
- Niche graduate school profile and reviews
- Wikimedia Commons — campus sign photograph (CC0)