What this program actually is
OrientationSystemic/family-systems, explicitly COAMFTE-shaped, with Christian integration as a required and graded strand (PSY6120 Christian Principles in MFT; a program learning outcome that students "identify and apply Christian principles to the practice of marriage and family therapy").
The thing that separates Hope from most California MFT programs is that it is COAMFTE-accredited — accredited May 1, 2008, per its own Graduate Achievement Data disclosure — and the accreditation visibly drives the design rather than sitting in a footnote. The clinical requirement is not the BBS floor but COAMFTE's: 400 clinical training hours made up of at least 300 direct client hours "of which at least 100 must be relational," plus at least 100 supervision hours "of which at least 50 must be observable data" (recordings, behind-the-mirror, reflecting team, co-therapy, or a supervisor in the room). Very few BBS-approved-only programs in the state commit to a published relational-hours floor at all, and a student who wants portability to other states or eventual AAMFT clinical membership should weigh that heavily. The same standard shows up upstream: students run simulated-client sessions from their first semester, record themselves as therapists in PSY6995, sign a four-way clinical training agreement between student, site, supervisor and program, and finish with a Comprehensive Case Presentation (PSY6920) built around a video clip with a transcription plus a written case report.
The second structural fact is that the M.A. is the front half of a doctorate, and the two share almost everything. There is one MFT Program Handbook that opens by saying it "is your guide to the Master and Doctoral degrees in MFT." Susan Hastings, PsyD, is Chair and Program Director of the MFT Program and is also named as DMFT Program Director. The DMFT course list literally embeds the master's — MA-level courses appear in italics inside the doctoral Areas I–IV — and the DMFT page tells applicants they "earn their M.A. in Marriage & Family Therapy along the way." The doctorate adds 60 units on top of the 60-unit MA (120 total, 10 years to complete), including PSY8820 Supervision in MFT, three Advanced MFT Theory courses split by lineage (Intergenerational, Strategic/Structural/Experiential, Contemporary), PSY8200 Faith Integration and Psychology, an internship and a dissertation. The practical consequence for a master's applicant is a faculty picture worth checking: the College of Psychology and Counseling's public faculty page lists three named full-time faculty across the whole college (Laura Steele, PsyD, Dean; Susan Hastings, PsyD; Robin Felix, PsyD, who chairs the M.S. in Counseling) and roughly seventeen adjunct professors, several of them master's-credentialed. This is a small, teaching-and-clinic-oriented department, not a research faculty.
On delivery, it is on-ground in Fullerton and unusually schedule-compressed. The 60-unit MA "may be completed in 24 months," fall and spring terms are 16 weeks split into two 8-week modules, summer is 8 weeks, and "most courses are offered during the day and/or evening on Tuesdays and/or Thursdays, and some courses are offered on Monday and/or Wednesday evenings" — in practice a two-day-a-week campus footprint. The 2026-27 program packet advertises a 13:1 student/teacher ratio and $775 per unit, i.e. about $46,500 in tuition plus a $1,200 one-time practicum fee, a $200 Child Abuse Seminar fee, ~$90 for Track Your Hours and ~$95 for CAMFT membership. The program's own published outcomes are worth reading before applying: entering cohorts have ranged from 66 (2022-23) down to 30 (2025-26); on-time (2-year) graduation has run between about 36% and 60%; maximum graduation rate was 96–100% for cohorts entering 2016 through 2020 but 70.45%, 80.64% and 77.27% for the 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 cohorts; and licensure rates have ranged from 70.83% to 92%, against COAMFTE's 70% benchmark. The program explains the low on-time figure by noting that "about 40%-50% of students choose to complete the program in 3 years."
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.
EMDR Therapy [Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing]
"This course involves a complete integrated training that provides the knowledge and skills to utilize EMDR therapy, a comprehensive understanding of case conceptualization and treatment planning, and the ability to integrate EMDR therapy into clinical practice." Prerequisite: enrolled in PSY6800 Supervised Practicum. The program packet adds that it "fulfills the first step towards EMDR certification as required by the EMDR International Association."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingFull EMDR basic training normally costs a licensed clinician thousands of dollars after graduation; embedding it as a 3-unit elective you can take while still a trainee is a genuinely unusual and concrete perk. It is one of only three electives on offer, so choosing it means giving up Group Therapy or Special Topics.
Comprehensive Case Presentation
The final-semester capstone: "designed to demonstrate the student's in-depth knowledge and application of the following core areas: clinical evaluation, crisis management and psychosocial stressors, treatment plan and case management, therapeutic interventions, legal issues, ethical issues, and diversity." It has two parts — a written case report and an oral case presentation "which consists of a video clip with a transcription." Graded credit/no credit.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThis replaces a thesis or a comprehensive written exam with a defense of your own recorded therapy. It is the clearest expression of the COAMFTE-style emphasis on observable data, and it means every graduate has had their actual clinical work watched and assessed by faculty, not just their writing about it.
Christian Principles in Marriage and Family Therapy
"This course examines the integration of Christian principles with marriage and family therapy theories. Emphasis will be placed on the vocation and calling of being a marriage and family therapist in today's world." It is a required core course for every MA student and appears again in Area I of the DMFT.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThis is the whole of the required faith content — one 3-unit course, plus a learning outcome about applying Christian principles clinically. Compared with a seminary-housed program, the theological load here is light and contained; compared with a state school, it is not zero. HIU also files a Religious Organization Exemption from California Education Code 66270, which prospective students of any background should read directly.
Treatment of Older Adults
"This course examines the theory and application of assessment and intervention techniques with older adults and their families. Emphasis is placed on understanding the biological, developmental, contextual, cultural, and social factors that prevail during advanced age and recognize their effects on treatment."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA full required 3-unit course on geriatric clinical work is rare — most California programs cover aging in a one-unit module or fold it into lifespan development. Paired with required 3-unit courses on children and on couples, it means HIU makes every graduate take a dedicated treatment course at each end of the lifespan.
Professional Development II
Taken the semester before clinical training begins: "designed to develop and practice basic clinical interviewing skills. Emphasis is on the continued development of the therapist and the structure of the therapeutic process." In practice it is the Advance to Practicum vehicle — it "guides students through the process of obtaining a clinical training site, the advance to practicum process, and enhancing clinical skills," and students record themselves as therapists in it. Graded credit/no credit.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingOne of three required 1-unit Professional Development courses (I in the first semester, II before practicum, Advanced in the last semester) that bookend and gate the degree. The middle one is the real checkpoint: it produces the Professional Development Plan and the group Advance to Practicum interview that decide whether you are allowed to see clients at all.
Interpersonal Communication and Therapeutic Qualities
"This course covers micro and macro elements of interpersonal and systemic communication along with contemporary family communication theories. An emphasis is placed on the common factors of client change, the interpersonal skills associated with activating client change, and the self as the therapist."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingExplicitly organized around common-factors research and self-of-the-therapist rather than a technique catalog — a deliberate stance about what actually moves clients, and the course most likely to shape how HIU graduates talk about their work.
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 units (66 if the two foundational prerequisites are required), completable in 24 months on a fall start; a three-year track exists and roughly 40–50% of students take it. On-ground at the Fullerton campus, mostly Tuesday and/or Thursday day or evening with some Monday/Wednesday evening courses. Fall and spring are 16 weeks made of two 8-week modules; summer is 8 weeks. Up to 9 graduate units may transfer in. The sequence below is the handbook's published two-year course sequence; note that Supervised Practicum begins in the summer between year one and year two, so clinical work spans roughly the final three semesters. course sequence ↗
60 (66 with prerequisites)units in total
- PSY5010 Counseling Theories (3)
- PSY4310 Community Mental Health (3)
- PSY5990 Professional Development I (1)
- PSY6100 Lifespan Development (3)
- PSY6130 Theories of Marriage and Family Therapy (3)
- PSY5120 Professional Ethics and Law (3)
- PSY5225 Child Abuse Seminar (0)
- PSY6995 Professional Development II (1)
- PSY5200 Substance Abuse, Addiction, and the Family (3)
- PSY6110 Interpersonal Communication & Therapeutic Qualities (3)
- PSY6125 Multicultural Perspectives in Counseling (3)
- PSY6180 Psychopathology (3)
- **Advance to Practicum**
- PSY6800 Supervised Practicum (3)
- PSY6120 Christian Principles of MFT (3)
- PSY5230 Disaster, Trauma, & Abuse Response (2)
- PSY5240 Family Violence Prevention & Intervention (2)
- Elective — PSY6140 Group Therapy, PSY6900 Special Topics or PSY6990 EMDR Seminar (2–3)
- PSY5130 Research Methodology (3)
- PSY6190 Marriage & Family Therapy Assessment (3)
- PSY6350 Treatment of Couples (3)
- PSY6800 Supervised Practicum (3)
- PSY6150 Treatment of Children (3)
- PSY6300 Treatment of Older Adults (3)
- PSY6400 Psychopharmacology (2)
- PSY6800 Supervised Practicum (3)
- PSY6920 Comprehensive Case Presentation (1)
- PSY6999 Advanced Professional Development (1)
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 must obtain a trainee position at an approved clinical training site to complete the required hours. the school’s own page →
The school runs its own training clinic. Hope 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.
Clinical training at HIU is a staged, gated process rather than a single placement year. Simulated-client work starts in the very first semester and continues throughout: students role-play as both client and therapist, run an intake, demonstrate interventions and receive feedback, and by PSY6995 they are recording themselves as therapists on their own equipment. Advance to Practicum (A2P) is the gate — one semester before clinical training, the student must have completed at least 12 units plus any prerequisites and specifically PSY5120, PSY6180, PSY5990, PSY6995, PSY5225 and PSY6130, have logged 25 professional development hours, hold a 3.0 GPA, produce CAMFT membership and malpractice insurance certificates, a CV and a Professional Development Plan, and pass "an Advance to Practicum Group Interview with a Faculty Member" alongside peers; a one-time $1,200 practicum fee is charged when the first PSY6800 is taken. The student, not the program, secures the trainee position: HIU maintains a Clinical Training Site List reviewed inside PSY6995, but a student who wants a site not on it must file an Online Petition for Site Approval that "takes a minimum of 6-8 weeks" and where "approval is not guaranteed." Once placed, students sign a four-way clinical training agreement, join Track Your Hours (~$90/year), attend weekly on-site supervision plus the weekly PSY6800 class, and submit end-of-semester paperwork through Watermark; the expected time commitment is "about 10 – 20 hours per week during the final year of study." Students stay enrolled in PSY6800 continuously until the 400 hours are complete, and after three consecutive practicum courses plus 400 approved hours they may audit further sections while still working at the site. The trainee-to-associate handoff is taught explicitly rather than left to chance: PSY6999 Advanced Professional Development, taken in the final semester, "examines associate status, licensing law, and licensing requirements" and synthesizes the program in preparation for "an associateship and the path to licensure," and the handbook spells out how the pre-degree hours (up to 1,300, including up to 750 direct) carry over onto the BBS ledger. 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
DMFT students also earn the M.A. en route, so they can work clinically while completing the doctorate
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
students are placed in practicum sites where they undergo real-world training experiences with diverse clientele source →
How its graduates did on the Board’s exam
Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 58% across 402 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, 77% of this school’s 328 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.
Recorded by the Board as Hope International 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
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.
FT
| Cohort | Graduated | Reached licensure | In the field |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-202152 in the cohort | 52.94% | 92.00% | 100% |
| 2021-202244 in the cohort | 50% | 83.87% | 100% |
| 2022-202366 in the cohort | 57.58% | 83.33% | 80% |
| 2023-202444 in the cohort | 59.09% | 80.77% | 100% |
| 2024-202539 in the cohort | 35.90% | — | — |
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 MFT student/faculty demographics PDF that HIU links from its program page (mft_student_faculty_demographics_summer_2025.pdf) is a scanned image with no extractable text layer, so its numbers could not be read or reported.
- No application deadline is published for the MA. Fall starts are implied by the two-year sequence but never stated as a requirement.
- The program handbook available on the site is the 2025-2026 edition; the catalog is 2026-2027. Where the two differ on tuition or fees, the 2026-27 catalog and program packet were used.
- Faculty listings are department-wide rather than MFT-specific — the College of Psychology and Counseling faculty page does not say which of its ~17 adjuncts teach in the MFT program versus the M.S. in Counseling. Joy Kang, PsyD (Clinical Training Director) and Jacqueline Mack-Harris, PsyD (Clinical Training Coordinator) appear in the handbook's contact list but not on the public faculty page.
- The catalog's course-description section prints the Comprehensive Case Presentation course code as 'PY6920'; every other source (handbook, program packet, degree tables) uses PSY6920. Treated here as a typo.
- No Reddit, Student Doctor Network or GradCafe discussion of this program was reachable — Reddit's search endpoints and every general web search engine returned bot blocks from this environment. The independent reviews quoted are from GradReports and are 2013–2015; the only recent student voice found was university-published marketing copy.
- Job placement and licensure figures in the Graduate Achievement Data table are self-reported by the program to COAMFTE and were not independently verified.
Sources for this page (8)
- MFT Program Handbook 2025–2026 — curriculum structure, program format, clinical training hours, Advance to Practicum, CCP, MA and DMFT course lists
- HIU Academic Catalog 2026–2027 — PSY course descriptions, DMFT degree requirements, Hope Counseling Center
- M.A. in Marriage and Family Therapy program page — COAMFTE accreditation, delivery format, clinical hours summary
- M.A. MFT 2026–27 program packet — 13:1 ratio, $775/unit and full fee breakdown, application steps, curriculum sheet
- COAMFTE Graduate Achievement Data table, Summer 2026 — cohort sizes, graduation, job placement and licensure rates 2016–2026
- Doctor of Marriage & Family Therapy program page — DMFT/MA relationship, Hope Counseling Center
- College of Psychology and Counseling faculty listing
- GradReports — 17 student reviews of Hope International University