University of La Verne

What this program actually is

OrientationRecovery Model within a generalist systems framework

The first thing to settle is the unit count, because La Verne's own website contradicts itself: the program page headline says "62-credit program" while its At-A-Glance box says 61. The 2026–2027 academic catalog resolves it — Degree Requirements: 62 semester hours, and the listed course table adds to exactly 62. The MFT Program Policies and Procedures Handbook explains why both numbers are floating around: "a total of 62 semester hours for students admitted 2025 and later, and 61 semester hours for students admitted prior to 2025," with two live course prefixes (PSY for pre-fall-2025 matriculants, MFT for fall 2025 and after). So 62 is right for anyone applying now; 61 is a stale number from the retired curriculum. The same staleness affects the fieldwork figure — the program page still advertises "a minimum of 225 hours of fieldwork," while the catalog and handbook both require 280 direct client contact hours for 2025-and-later admits.

On the substance: this is a conventional, licensure-shaped MFT curriculum with no distinctive theoretical commitment, and the program says so more or less openly. The catalog names the Recovery Model as the organizing frame — "emphasizing the best practices of the Recovery Model. In addition to the Recovery Model, students receive exposure to a range of theoretical orientations that reflect a systems perspective" — and MFT 500 is the only course that explicitly foregrounds it. Otherwise the 62 units read as a one-to-one map of the California BBS content checklist: the catalog descriptions literally say things like "Course meets California BBS licensure requirement for training in child abuse assessment and reporting" (MFT 512) and "This course meets the California BBS licensure requirement related to suicide risk assessment and intervention" (MFT 517). There is no COAMFTE accreditation and none is claimed; the catalog notes the program has separately submitted its curriculum to the BBS for LPCC review. There are no electives — all 23 courses are required — and one course, MFT 523 Career Development Theories (3 units), is a counseling-degree staple that most standalone MFT programs do not carry, which is consistent with that LPCC ambition.

What is genuinely unusual here is structural rather than theoretical, and it is the schedule. This is a three-year program in which years one and two are pure classroom work — two courses a night, Mondays and Wednesdays, 4:00–6:25 p.m. or 6:50–9:15 p.m. — and the entire third year is half-time practicum (five units in fall, six in spring). Two gates matter: you cannot enroll in practicum without formal "Advanced Standing," which requires 43 completed-or-in-progress semester hours and a 3.0 graduate GPA, and every student must complete a minimum of 10 hours of personal psychotherapy during the practicum year — five hours in each of Practicum I and II — at their own expense, with the program stating it "will not request any information about the content of the personal psychotherapy process." Requiring your own therapy is not rare in the field but it is far from universal, and it is a real cost line most programs do not have.

The program’s own page →

See it and hear it

Students and alumni

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.

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.

A fixed three-year, lockstep, cohort sequence with no electives — all 23 courses are required and the order is published. Years one and two are classroom-only at 12 semester hours per fall and spring plus a single summer course; year three is half-time and is the practicum year. Classes meet Mondays and Wednesdays, late afternoon (4:00–6:25 p.m.) or evening (6:50–9:15 p.m.), on the La Verne campus. Up to 12 semester hours of prior graduate work may transfer, but practicum units are non-transferable and transfer credit does not shorten the three years. Sequence below is the published curriculum for students admitted fall 2025 or later. course sequence ↗

62units in total

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 →

Practicum is the entire third year and it is on you to find the site: the handbook states plainly that "securing a site is the responsibility of the student," while "the program advises, guides, and supports MFT students through the process." The search runs roughly January to May of the second year and you must have a placement locked by July 1 or your practicum start is delayed a year. You can only train at sites the program has approved, and private practices are excluded outright under BBS rules — so the realistic pool is community agencies, nonprofits, schools and clinics. You also cannot enroll at all without Advanced Standing, a formal application filed with your academic advisor once you have completed or are enrolled in 43 semester hours with a 3.0 graduate GPA. Supervision happens at the site rather than in a school-run clinic (La Verne does not operate an in-house training clinic for MFT students): you need at least one hour of individual or triadic supervision, or two hours of group supervision (group capped at eight), in any week you gain hours, plus an additional hour if you provide more than five hours of direct counseling in a single week; supervisors must be an LMFT, LCSW, LPCC, licensed psychologist or psychiatrist who has held the license in good standing for at least two years. Two additional obligations sit on the student's own budget — professional liability insurance, which must be in force before you see any client, and the required 10 hours of personal psychotherapy, five per practicum semester. The handoff to post-degree work is spelled out: graduates apply to the BBS for Associate Marriage and Family Therapist (AMFT) registration, cannot accrue post-degree hours until the AMFT number arrives, and can back-date to the degree-conferral date only by applying within 90 days. source ↗

Will this degree travel

What the Board requires of any qualifying degree →

What it is, on paper

Program established 1973; fall-only admission, Feb 15 deadline; 225-hour minimum fieldwork

The program’s own page →

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.

$990 a unit — source

What a month costs to live on while you study →

Getting in

A minimum overall undergraduate GPA of 3.0 is required. source →

admissions page ↗

How its graduates did on the Board’s exam

Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 66% across 184 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, 91% of this school’s 96 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.

Recorded by the Board as University of La Verne, La Verne. 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.

July 2018 - December 2024, pooled (13 semiannual BBS reports) · the Board’s published exam results by school →

What people say about it

Nothing credible was found. Searched by every name variant across Reddit, Student Doctor Network and The GradCafe. Silence is not a verdict — small programs generate little discussion — but a missing section should not read as an endorsement, so it says so.

Threads about the decision itself, rather than about one school →

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.

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.

• Cohort size is not published anywhere — not on the program page, the admission page, the catalog or the 2026 program handbook. There is no COAMFTE accreditation and therefore no COAMFTE student-achievement disclosure to fall back on, so no completion, job-placement or licensure rates are available either.
• No relational (couple/family) direct-hour minimum is specified. The 280-hour requirement is defined only as face-to-face contact with "individuals, couples, families, or groups," which is a meaningful contrast with COAMFTE-accredited programs that require a set number of relational hours.
• The program's own website is internally inconsistent and stale in at least two places: the At-A-Glance box says 61 units where the header and catalog say 62, and the page still advertises 225 fieldwork hours where the catalog and handbook require 280.
• The catalog's MFT course-description page does not include a description for MFT 523 Career Development Theories, even though it appears in the required course list.
• No on-campus MFT training clinic is mentioned in the program page, catalog or handbook; all clinical training appears to happen at outside approved sites, but no page states this explicitly.
• No credible student discussion could be found. Reddit and comparable forums were not reachable during this research (Reddit blocks automated access and site-scoped web search was unavailable); GradReports carries 111 reviews of La Verne overall but none tagged to the MFT program.
• The COAMFTE question is never addressed on the program's pages one way or the other — the program simply does not claim it. Prospective students who care about COAMFTE should treat its absence as confirmed by omission, not by statement.