What this program actually is
OrientationCACREP generalist clinical mental health counseling with a strong multicultural / social-justice frame; systemic family work and attachment-based couples work exist only inside the MFCC emphasis
The single most important thing an MFT-bound applicant should understand about Palo Alto University is that this is not an MFT degree with a counseling flavor — it is a CACREP-accredited Clinical Mental Health Counseling degree, i.e. an LPCC degree, onto which California MFT eligibility is bolted as an emphasis. PAU says so itself: "As part of that program students may complete an emphasis in Marriages, Family, and Child Counseling. Content in the emphasis area does not fall under the scope of CACREP-accreditation and is not reviewed by CACREP." Mechanically, choosing the MFCC emphasis means taking CLIN618 Family Systems Theory and CLIN619 Couples Counseling instead of two advanced electives — that is the difference. The upside is real and is the reason people pick PAU: CACREP portability across state lines, plus the option of dual LMFT/LPCC licensure in California from one 94.5-quarter-unit degree. The downside is that your systemic training is nine quarter units inside a 94.5-unit generalist counseling curriculum, and everything else — theories, skills, diagnosis, career development, appraisal — is CACREP core.
About Stanford: PAU's relationship with Stanford is real but has nothing to do with this degree. The PAU–Stanford Consortium was formed in 2002 with the Stanford University School of Medicine and is a PsyD program; consortium students are full-time PAU students who "attend a 50% Stanford affiliated PsyD program," with roughly half the PsyD courses taught in Stanford's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. The M.A. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling has no Stanford component. The same pattern holds for the university's clinics: The Clinics @ PAU (the Gronowski Community Clinic, founded 1988 and moved to the Mountain View campus in 2022, plus the Sexual and Gender Identities Clinic, Clínica Latina and the online eClinic@PAU) describe the Community Clinic and Clínica Latina as staffed "by doctoral-level students" and "supervised doctoral students," while the master's program's own fieldwork page directs students to "an on-site practicum in a community organization." PAU was Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, founded 1975 and re-incorporated as Palo Alto University in 2009; the MA Counseling program began that same year, and CACREP granted it the maximum eight years of accreditation in January 2017.
Format is where the two tracks genuinely diverge, and it is worth being precise. Both are nine quarters and both are cohort-based. Hybrid (fall start only) meets Monday–Thursday evenings, either 6:00–8:00pm online or 6:00–8:50pm in person on the Mountain View campus. Online (fall or spring start) is all live Zoom — not asynchronous — plus two week-long in-person residencies in the Bay Area at the student's own expense for travel and lodging: RESD600 taken alongside Counseling Skills, and RESD601 alongside Crisis & Trauma, with RESD601 a hard prerequisite for enrolling in practicum. This is a large operation: the program reported 269 graduates in 2024–25, a 93.2% degree completion rate, an 86% LMFT licensure exam pass rate and 77% on the LMFT law and ethics exam. Recent public reviews are more mixed than those numbers suggest, clustering on advising, practicum support and cost.
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.
Residency I
"Residency I is an in-person clinical intensive taken in the same quarter as CLIN 615-Counseling Skills. This 1.5-credit course includes face to face opportunities for students, working in small cohort groups, to practice basic counseling skills and techniques. Residency I is a required experience and must be successfully completed before students can take Residency II."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThis is the mechanism that makes PAU's online track structurally different from an asynchronous online MFT degree: skills are gated behind a physically co-present week, and you cannot progress without it. Budget for airfare and a week off work — PAU states students bear all residency costs.
Residency II
"Residency II is taken in the same quarter as COUN 630-Crisis and Trauma… includes face to face opportunities for students, working in small cohort groups, to practice Group Counseling Skills, Crisis Intervention Skills, and more Advanced Counseling Skills and theory integration. Students will have the opportunity to participate in a group; both as a group member and co-leader." Prerequisite to PRAC 615.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingBeing a member of a real group before co-leading one is experiential training most distance programs cannot offer at all, and it is the checkpoint the program uses to decide you are safe to see clients. Note that RESD600 and RESD601 appear on the hybrid degree plan as well as the online one.
Family Systems Theory
"This course explores the field of family counseling and general systems theory, providing students with a holistic perspective on the interconnected nature of individuals, families, and larger societal systems. Students will explore a historical overview of the evolution of therapeutic models while completing the practical application of the theories through skills practice and case conceptualizations from a family systems perspective."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThis is one of the two courses that constitute the MFCC emphasis — the reason this degree qualifies you for California LMFT licensure at all. If you take the advanced-elective route instead, you do not take it. That makes this the highest-stakes course choice in the whole program for an MFT-bound student.
Couples Counseling
"This course focuses on systemic attachment-based approaches to counseling couples. The course reviews theories, assessment methods, treatment interventions, and counseling skills used in couple therapy. Knowledge and skill will be developed through a combination of lectures, reading, videos, podcasts, and experiential exercises including roleplay."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThe second MFCC emphasis course, and the catalog commits to a lane — systemic attachment-based, which in practice means EFT-shaped work rather than a survey of Gottman, Imago and behavioral approaches. Ask what percentage of the quarter is spent on non-attachment models if that matters to you.
Crisis & Trauma Counseling
"Students will learn about models that clarify the process of assessing and assisting people in crisis (with a focus on Psychological First Aid) and those who have experienced trauma (with a focus on Herman's Triphasic Model of Trauma Resolution)… This course provides a minimum of 6 hours of training on assessment and intervention for suicide, and 12 hours on assessment and referral for intervention on domestic violence."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingCatalogs rarely name the specific frameworks a course teaches. Naming Psychological First Aid and Herman's triphasic model tells you exactly what your trauma vocabulary will be on day one of practicum, and the 12 hours on domestic violence is double the statutory California minimum in most comparable courses.
Career Development Theories and Techniques
"This course provides an overview of the theories and techniques in helping individuals on the journey of exploration in finding and developing careers that are congruent with their personality, interests, abilities and skills. It explores models of career exploration, decision-making, mentorship and coaching."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA full 4.5-unit required career-counseling course is a CACREP fingerprint and is largely absent from California MFT-first programs. It is also a straightforward tell about what this degree is: a counseling degree that also qualifies you as an MFT, not the reverse.
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.
Nine quarters (fall start shown), cohort-based and lockstep — "You will be assigned to a group of students who will have the same schedule and sequence of courses for their entire program." The sequence below is the MFCC-emphasis degree plan; the hybrid and online fall-start plans are identical in content and order except that the summer of year one swaps two courses, and the hybrid plan marks certain classes as on-campus. Students who take advanced electives instead of the MFCC emphasis do not qualify for California MFT licensure. course sequence ↗
94.5 quarter unitsunits in total
- COUN601 Professional Orientation (3)
- COUN600 Counseling Theory (4.5)
- CLIN615 Counseling Skills (3)
- RESD600 Residency I (1.5)
- CLIN610 Legal and Ethical Foundations (4.5)
- CLIN601 Multicultural Counseling Theories and Techniques (4.5)
- CLIN621 Group Counseling (4.5)
- COUN634 Diagnosis (4.5)
- COUN630 Crisis & Trauma Counseling (4.5)
- RESD601 Residency II (1.5)
- COUN612 Life Span Development (4.5)
- CLIN605 Child and Adolescent Counseling (4.5)
- CLIN618 Family Systems Theory (4.5) — MFCC emphasis
- CLIN651 Community Mental Health (4.5)
- CLIN604 Addiction Counseling (4.5)
- PRAC615N Practicum (3)
- CLIN619 Couples Counseling (4.5) — MFCC emphasis
- INTR600N Internship I (3)
- CLIN634 Sexual Issues in Counseling (4.5)
- INTR602N Internship II (3)
- COUN641 Research and Program Evaluation (4.5)
- COUN603 Appraisal & Assessment in Counseling (4.5)
- CLIN680 Psychopharmacology (4.5)
- COUN661 Career Development Theories and Techniques (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 →
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.
Finding Your Fieldwork Site. PAU's Clinical Training Team will help you as you secure an ideal practicum or field placement in your community that matches your specific interests – and support you throughout your field experience. We work closely with mental health agencies throughout the San Francisco Bay area and beyond. the school’s own page →
The school runs its own training clinics. Community Clinic · Sexual & Gender Identities Clinic · Clínica Latina · eClinic Owning a clinic and holding a seat in it are different things, so this sits beside the model above rather than replacing it.
PAU's Clinical Training Team "will help you as you secure an ideal practicum or field placement in your community that matches your specific interests," working with agencies across the Bay Area, and will work with students who live elsewhere to find sites near home — but the student is the one securing it. Site supervision happens at the agency; PAU faculty supervision happens online, and the program states that "All students will meet online on Tuesday evenings." Published placement types include school districts, teen counseling centers, adult psychological service agencies, senior counseling centers, community mental health agencies, hospitals, and non-profit and faith-based organizations such as the Salvation Army and YMCA. The university runs four of its own training clinics, but the Community Clinic and Clínica Latina are described as delivering services through doctoral-level students, so master's students should not assume in-house placement is available to them. Timing warning from PAU itself: "During the second year students should be aware that evening and weekend practicum placements are extremely hard to find. Most students will need to adjust their schedules in order to spend two days during the normal workweek to complete their practicum experience." 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
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
GRE scores are not required for admissions to PAU master's degree programs. GRE scores will not be considered in the review of applications, even if students provide them. source →
How its graduates did on the Board’s exam
Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 79% across 375 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, 85% of this school’s 455 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.
Recorded by the Board as Palo Alto 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 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 the Allen Calvin Campus (1791 Arastradero Road) or the Mountain View campus exists on Wikimedia Commons — only logo files, which are not campus photographs and are not verifiably free-licensed. No image included.
- No per-cohort enrollment or admit rate is published; 269 graduates a year is the only scale figure available, and PAU's marketing language about 'small cohorts' is not backed by a published number.
- The hybrid degree plan lists RESD600 and RESD601 alongside the online plan, even though the website presents the two residencies as an online-student requirement. It is unclear from published material whether hybrid students attend the same week-long residencies or a shorter on-campus equivalent. Worth asking admissions directly.
- Cost is not covered here — PAU publishes tuition on a separate page and the residency travel/lodging costs are borne by the student and unquantified.
- Reddit could not be searched or fetched from this environment (403). One relevant 2023 r/therapists thread on PAU for MFT licensure is known to exist but its contents could not be retrieved; the voices above come from Niche and GradReports instead.
- PAU does not publish which specific agencies its MA counseling students are currently placed at, only categories of setting.
Sources for this page (12)
- MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling program page (format, fieldwork, admissions, deadlines)
- 2025–2026 PAU University Catalog — MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling
- 2025–2026 Catalog — course descriptions (RESD, CLIN, COUN, PRAC, INTR)
- Hybrid Residential Degree Plan, 9 Quarters, Fall Start, MA in CMHC with MFCC Emphasis (PDF)
- Online Degree Plan, 9 Quarters, Fall Start, MA in CMHC with MFCC Emphasis (PDF)
- CACREP Accreditation and 2024–25 outcomes data
- 2024–25 CMHC Outcomes Report (PDF)
- Consortium with Stanford University (PsyD only)
- The Clinics @ PAU
- History of PAU (PGSP 1975, renamed 2009, MA Counseling begins 2009)
- Niche — Palo Alto University graduate student reviews
- GradReports — Palo Alto University reviews