What this program actually is
OrientationRelational/systemic and social constructionist, with an explicit social-justice and multicultural frame
This is the one program of the three that is an MFT degree all the way down, and it is unusually explicit about the theory it is teaching. The program's own Essential Guide states its frame as "relational/systemic and social constructionist," on the premise that "all descriptions of human interactions are subjective, contextual, and emerging from social interaction" (p. 4). That commitment shows up in course titles you will not find at most CA programs: CSP 618 is not "Psychopathology and the DSM," it is "Mental Health Recovery and the DSM: A Social Justice Perspective"; the law-and-ethics course (CSP 606A) is described in the catalog as covering the "cultural underpinnings and clinical implications of legal and ethical codes"; the second theories course (CSP 626) is explicitly postmodern — narrative therapy, collaborative language systems, coaching and mediation. COAMFTE-accredited since 2006.
The center of gravity is a real clinic in a real neighborhood. The Center for Community Counseling & Engagement sits in the Dede Alpert Center at 4283 El Cajon Blvd, Suite 215, in City Heights — not on the campus in the College Area — and sees over 300 clients a year in ten languages. First-year students do two semesters of practicum there in weekly four-hour blocks, under live supervision behind one-way mirrors, before moving to community traineeship placements at 15–25 hours/week. The program also requires each student to complete their own personal therapy (individual, couple, family or group) before graduating, and to join AAMFT or CAMFT and carry liability insurance before practicum starts.
The trade-off for all this is that it is hard to get into and inflexible once you're in. SDSU's own FAQ says "Approximately 6-10% of applicants are accepted" into a cohort of about 30, there is no part-time option, and the program starts in early June and runs 2.5 years through three summers. What it does not ask for is a psychology background: "There is no specific coursework or degree required to apply," no GRE (submitted scores "will not be reviewed"), and a 2.85 minimum GPA. At the Fall 2026 CSU rate of $5,745/semester full-time for California residents, this is among the cheapest COAMFTE-accredited routes in the state.
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.
Mental Health Recovery and the DSM: A Social Justice Perspective
Descriptions of mental health disorders within biological, individual, familial, and larger social contexts. Focus on Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classification system and relationship to family functioning.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingEvery California program teaches diagnosis. Very few frame the required DSM course as a recovery-model and social-justice course in the title itself, or make the relationship between a diagnostic label and family functioning the organizing question rather than a footnote.
Cross-Cultural Counseling Prepracticum
Development of self-understanding. Cross-cultural communication skills needed for becoming an effective counselor. May be repeated with new content.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThis 1-unit lab runs concurrently with CSP 600 in the very first summer, before any theory course, and a credit grade in it is the gate to starting practicum. The program's first move is to make you look at yourself, not at a model.
Marriage and Family Therapy Theories and Best Practices II
Contemporary marriage and family therapy theories including: post-modern ideas, such as narrative therapy and collaborative language systems, integrative and evidence-based approaches; alternative approaches to family therapy, such as coaching and mediation.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThe second half of the theory sequence is entirely postmodern — narrative and collaborative-language-systems work, which most generalist CA programs cover in a single week. Paired with CSP 625 (classic structural/strategic models), it means a full year of family-systems theory rather than one survey course.
Seminar: Couples Therapy and Evidence-Based Relational Practices
Explores and applies theory and practice of therapy with couples in premarital, marital, non-marital, divorce, recoupling, and remarriage situations. Intra and intercultural issues and gender factors in coupling. Discussion of specific problems such as infidelity or depression.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA required stand-alone semester on couples work, sequenced after both family-life-cycle and theory courses. It is the course that most directly explains why the program requires 100 of your 300 clinical hours to be relational — they intend you to leave able to hold a couple in the room.
Family Counseling in the Schools
Roles and approaches of family counselor in working with schools for children's school-based problems. Family systems theory and practice applied to family-school interface, cultural interaction, specific symptomology, and professional and ethical issues.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA required 1-unit course on the family–school interface is a strong tell about the population the program expects you to serve: children referred through schools in a working-class urban district. It exists because the department also houses school counseling and school psychology.
Marriage and Family Therapy Traineeship
Community-based clinical marriage and family therapy experience, with AAMFT approved supervisor or equivalent. Individual and group supervision at site and on campus. Clinical hours may be counted toward 500 clinical hours and marriage and family therapy licensure eligibility requirement.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThe catalog specifies an AAMFT Approved Supervisor "or equivalent" at the community site — a COAMFTE-driven standard that most non-accredited California programs cannot enforce, and the practical reason SDSU graduates tend to arrive at their associate years already supervised in a systemic frame.
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.
One cohort per year, lockstep, no part-time option. It starts in early June and runs 2.5 years across three summers; some students carry a final summer of traineeship. Course descriptions below are as published in the 2023/2024 SDSU catalog — the 2026-2027 catalog lists these same CSP course titles but does not display descriptions. course sequence ↗
60units in total
- CSP 600 Cross-Cultural Counseling Communication Skills (2)
- CSP 600L Cross-Cultural Counseling Pre-Practicum (1)
- CSP 606A Professional Issues in Mental Health Practice: California Law and Ethics for Marriage and Family Therapy (3)
- CSP 609 Family Life Cycle Development (3)
- CSP 625 Marriage and Family Therapy Theories and Best Practices I (3)
- CSP 615 Seminar in Multicultural Dimensions in Counseling (3)
- CSP 626 Marriage and Family Therapy Theories and Best Practices II (3)
- CSP 687 Family and Systemic Treatment of Substance Abuse (1-3)
- CSP 662A Counseling Interventions with Children and Adolescents: Marriage and Family Therapy (3)
- CSP 755 Practicum I: Marriage and Family Therapy (3)
- CSP 618 Mental Health Recovery and the DSM: A Social Justice Perspective (3)
- CSP 765 Practicum II: Marriage and Family Therapy (3)
- CSP 650 Trauma and Crisis Counseling in Multicultural Community Context (1-3)
- CSP 670 Group Process and Counseling (2-3)
- CSP 689 Family Counseling in the Schools (1)
- ED 690 Methods of Inquiry (3)
- CSP 785 Marriage and Family Therapy Traineeship (2)
- CSP 710A Professional Seminar: Master's Research Project (3)
- CSP 785 Marriage and Family Therapy Traineeship (3)
- CSP 692 Couples Therapy (3)
- CSP 635 Sexuality & Intimacy (1-3)
- CSP 694 Psychopharmacology (2-3)
- CSP 710B Professional Seminar: Presentation of Clinical Practice (3)
- CSP 785 Marriage and Family Therapy Traineeship (3)
- CSP 785 Marriage and Family Therapy Traineeship (2)
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 practicum is where students begin to work with clients and this is conducted at the Center for Community Counseling & Engagement during the first fall and spring semester. the school’s own page →
The school runs its own training clinic. Dede Alpert Center for Community Counseling and Engagement (CCCE) Owning a clinic and holding a seat in it are different things, so this sits beside the model above rather than replacing it.
Practicum is in-house and program-placed: two semesters at the CCCE in weekly four-hour blocks, seeing clients behind one-way mirrors under live faculty supervision. The clinic serves over 300 clients a year and in fall 2025 was offering free telehealth group therapy in ten languages including Spanish, Arabic, Korean, Mandarin, Somali, Hindi, Marathi and Tamil. Traineeship (CSP 785) then moves you out to community placements for a minimum of three semesters at 15–25 hours per week on-site, with an AAMFT Approved Supervisor or equivalent at the site plus a weekly university supervision group. Before practicum you must earn a credit grade in CSP 600L, join AAMFT or CAMFT, and carry liability insurance. 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
Culturally-infused curriculum, social justice emphasis; systemic/social-constructionist orientation; Center for Community Counseling and Engagement
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. Please note, submitted GRE scores will not be reviewed. source →
How its graduates did on the Board’s exam
Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 69% across 248 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, 89% of this school’s 193 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.
Recorded by the Board as San Diego State 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: “based on an associate title that leads to an LMFT in the State of California” — which is worth reading before the numbers, because it is rarely what the column heading suggests.
FT
| Cohort | Graduated | Reached licensure | In the field |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-202031 in the cohort | 93.55 | 100 | 84 |
| 2020-202130 in the cohort | 96.6 | 96.6 | 100 |
| 2021-202226 in the cohort | 96.1 | 92.3 | 100 |
| 2022-202331 in the cohort | 100 | 87.10 | 100 |
| 2023-202431 in the cohort | 93.55 | — | — |
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.
- SDSU's 2026-2027 online catalog lists CSP course titles but does not display course descriptions; all descriptions quoted here come from the archived 2023/2024 catalog at the same course IDs.
- No applicant-count figure is published. The 6–10% acceptance rate is the program's own FAQ language, not a reported applicants-to-seats number.
- The COAMFTE achievement page reports cohort size, graduation, job-placement and licensure rates but no admissions data.
- No per-unit tuition figure exists for CSU graduate programs — CSU charges a flat per-semester rate by unit band ($5,745/semester full-time, $3,951 part-time for CA residents, Fall 2026, tuition plus mandatory campus fees), so total cost depends on how many semesters you enroll.
- Almost no independent first-person student commentary could be found. Reddit search was unavailable through both search and direct fetch during this research; The GradCafe yielded only a single one-line mention. The two substantive student/faculty quotes here are university-published and should be read as such.
- The program page describes '60 units' but the published term-by-term grid includes several variable-unit courses (CSP 650, 670, 687, 635, 694), so the exact total for an individual student is not determinable from public pages.
Sources for this page (10)
- M.S. in Marriage and Family Therapy — program overview
- Courses & Learning Outcomes (term-by-term sequence)
- Program Details (practicum and traineeship units and hours)
- MFT Frequently Asked Questions (cohort, acceptance rate, GRE, GPA, clinic address)
- MFT Essential Guide: Class of 2025 (PDF student handbook)
- COAMFTE Graduate Achievement Data
- Application requirements and deadline
- SDSU catalog, CSP course descriptions (2023/2024 archived catalog)
- SDSU Bursar — Tuition and Fees, Fall 2026
- SDSU News, Oct 2025 — 'Future therapy professionals offer wellness support'