What this program actually is
OrientationSystemic family therapy with a strong biopsychosocial / medical family therapy emphasis
USD runs one of the small number of COAMFTE-accredited master's programs in California — its own catalog claims it is "one of only seven master's degree-granting programs in California accredited by the COAMFTE" — and it has held that accreditation since August 1, 1992. It is a two-year, full-time, year-round, on-campus-only program (the FAQ answers "Can I complete this program online?" with a flat "No"), taking about 30 new students a year into classes of 15–20. The most concrete thing that distinguishes the 60-unit course list is its shape: rather than twenty interchangeable 3-unit courses, USD chops clinical content into small named modules — Recovery-oriented Case Management (1), Collaborative Care (1), Family Violence (1), Aging Issues in Family Therapy (1), Psychopharmacology and Systems (2), Systemic Treatment of Substance Abuse (2), Individual, Family and Community Trauma (2) — and then spends a full quarter of the degree, 15 of 60 units, on a single 12-month practicum sequence (MFTS 595P/596P/597P, five units each). Theory is taught in two sequenced courses rather than one survey: Theories I covers structural, strategic, Bowen and behavioral models; Theories II covers experiential, narrative, solution-focused and Internal Family Systems, plus "the process of theory integration."
Two commitments show up in the course list and the requirements that you will not find at most California MFT programs. The first is the SOLES international requirement: every master's student in the school must complete a program-approved international experience before graduating, and the MFT handbook is refreshingly concrete about what that can mean — a study-abroad course, "travel to Tijuana to observe professional practice in social service agencies," or "volunteer experience in San Diego with refugee communities." A study-abroad course auto-satisfies it; anything else is documented on a form with your advisor. The second is medical family therapy and integrated behavioral health. It is visible in the required courses (Collaborative Care, Recovery-oriented Case Management, Psychopharmacology and Systems, Treatment of Severe Mental Illness, and the elective Social Neuroscience for Family Therapists) and in the practicum roster, which includes UCSD Integrated Behavioral Health, UCSD Reproductive Medicine, UCSD Eating Disorders Clinic, Rady Children's Hospital Medical Behavioral Unit and Hospice of the North Coast alongside conventional community mental health sites.
One caution a prospective student should know before they compare hour counts across schools: USD's own published numbers currently disagree with each other. The program's website and its 2023–24 program handbook both say 500 direct client contact hours with 200 relational hours and "over 200 hours of supervision." The 2026–27 graduate catalog says 400 client contact hours (minimum 200 relational) and 100 supervision hours (minimum 50 with raw data) — and the catalog record carries an internal edit note stating the entry was being updated for "the required practicum hours voted that was decided at a program level before the 2024-2025 academic year." Read that as: the requirement appears to have been lowered from 500 to 400 and the marketing pages have not caught up. Ask admissions which number applies to your cohort.
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.
Collaborative Care
"This course examines various models of collaborative care and the clinical competencies and skills MFT's need to work successfully on collaborative care teams... how MFT's can assess and manage common mental health, psychosocial, and health behavior issues in primary care settings."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingVery few California MFT programs require any coursework in working inside a primary-care team. Paired with Recovery-oriented Case Management and practicum slots at UCSD Internal Medicine and Rady Children's, this is the clearest signal that USD is training people for integrated behavioral health, not only for private practice.
Recovery-oriented Case Management
"This course will focus on the components and principles of Recovery Oriented Case Management... the strength based, client centered advocacy and resiliency models... how diversity, socio-economic status, and poverty may affect, and be affected by, the implementation of Recovery Oriented Case Management."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA required (not elective) unit on public-system case management. It tells you the program expects graduates to work in county-funded, recovery-model settings for serious mental illness, which pairs with the required 3-unit Treatment of Severe Mental Illness.
Social Neuroscience for Family Therapists
"How does the brain support our social relationships and how do our social experiences affect the brain, body and physical health? Family life is a primary incubator for brain development... attachment, stress and coping, empathy, emotional regulation, family emotional environment and aging."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThis is the course behind the program's advertised 'interpersonal neurobiology' clinical interest. It is an elective, which is worth knowing: the neurobiology emphasis USD markets is a one-unit option, not a required strand.
Self of the Therapist
"This experiential learning course focuses on the student's own family experiences and the impact of these experiences on the student's work as a family therapist."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingUSD's version of person-of-the-therapist work is a one-unit elective, not a required semester-long process group — a genuine contrast with programs that build the whole degree around personal-growth work. The program's stated learning outcomes do, however, expect graduates to "identify when self of the therapist issues arise in therapy."
Family Therapy Theories II
"Family Theories II covers Experiential family therapies, Narrative Therapy, Solution-focused Therapy, Internal Family Systems Therapy, and the process of theory integration." Theories I covers structural, strategic, Bowen and behavioral family therapy.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingTwo full 3-unit theory courses instead of one survey, with the specific models named. If you want to learn systemic models properly rather than a single chapter on 'family systems,' this is the structural difference that matters.
Psychopharmacology and Systems
"An introduction to medication and its use in treating mental disorders... A psychoeducational perspective is used to integrate the family systems perspective with biological considerations." Requires MFTS 528 Psychopathology in the Family as prerequisite or co-requisite.catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThe 'and Systems' is not decoration — the course is explicitly framed as integrating medication knowledge with a family-systems lens, and it is taught by a psychiatrist on the adjunct roster. It is a required course, not an elective.
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.
There is no published term-by-term grid. USD runs a fall-entry, year-round, two-year full-time cohort; the catalog lists a fixed required-course block plus two 1-unit electives, and most required courses are offered at least twice a year so students build each semester with an advisor. The handbook does fix two things: MFTS 523, 524, 528, 529 and 543 are taken in year one, and a student must have completed 27 units before starting practicum, which runs across the final three consecutive semesters. Part-time students must take at least six units per semester. course sequence ↗
60units in total
- MFTS 500 Evidence-Based Practice in Family Therapy (3)
- MFTS 523 Family Therapy Theories I (3)
- MFTS 524 Family Therapy Theories II (3)
- MFTS 528 Psychopathology in the Family (3)
- MFTS 529 Ethical & Legal Issues in Family Therapy (3)
- MFTS 532 Human Diversity in Family Therapy (3)
- MFTS 533 Family Development (3)
- MFTS 541 Systemic Treatment of Children (3)
- MFTS 543 Developmental Psychopathology (3)
- MFTS 544 Psychopharmacology and Systems (2)
- MFTS 546 Couples and Sex Therapy (3)
- MFTS 562 Recovery-oriented Case Management (1)
- MFTS 563 Collaborative Care (1)
- MFTS 567 Individual, Family, and Community Trauma (2)
- MFTS 570 Systemic Treatment of Substance Abuse (2)
- MFTS 571 Family Violence (1)
- MFTS 574 Aging Issues in Family Therapy (1)
- MFTS 577 Treatment of Severe Mental Illness (3)
- MFTS 595P Practicum in MFT 1 (5)
- MFTS 596P Practicum in MFT 2 (5)
- MFTS 597P Practicum in MFT 3 (5)
- MFTS 542 Families of Children with Special Needs (1)
- MFTS 572 Gender Issues in Family Therapy (1)
- MFTS 573 Group Therapy (1)
- MFTS 575 Social Neuroscience for Family Therapists (1)
- MFTS 576 Self of the Therapist (1)
- MFTS 578 Spiritual Issues in Family Therapy (1)
- Written comprehensive examination, taken in the second year (typically the first Friday in February), covering Theory & Application, Assessment, and Law & Ethics — two hours per section
- SOLES international experience (study abroad, or an approved alternative such as observing social-service agencies in Tijuana or volunteering with San Diego refugee communities)
- Three prerequisite courses — Human Development, Research Methods, and either Counseling Theories or Theories of Personality — completed before enrolling or by the start of the second semester
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 choose where to complete their clinical work from a list of pre-approved agencies and practicum sites that best matches their interests and needs. the school’s own page →
Practicum is the whole final year and it is worth 15 of the 60 units — five units per semester across three consecutive semesters, all of it in outside community agencies; USD does not run an in-house training clinic. Placement is a formal, competitive matching process rather than a job hunt: in early December the faculty formally reviews every student for readiness (3.0 GPA, prerequisites done, interpersonal readiness in class), students attend a practicum orientation, then interview with agencies the faculty has already approved. Students submit a ranked preference list, sites submit theirs, and on a designated 'Match Day' in February or March the faculty matches students to sites — so the school controls the pool and the algorithm, but you still have to interview and can be ranked out of your first choice. The approved-site list is broad and unusually medical for an MFT program: UCSD Integrated Behavioral Health, UCSD Reproductive Medicine, UCSD Eating Disorders Clinic, Rady Children's outpatient psychiatry and its Medical Behavioral Unit, Sharp Mesa Vista, Hospice of the North Coast, San Diego Unified School District, the Narrative Institute of San Diego and YMCA Youth & Family Services, among others; placements are typically unpaid. Supervision is doubled up — a USD faculty supervisor provides individual live and videotape supervision plus a weekly group in the practicum class (which meets Mondays 1:00–4:00 p.m.), on top of individual and group supervision at the site — at a minimum ratio of one supervision hour per five clinical hours, and every supervisor is an AAMFT Approved Supervisor or equivalent. The handoff to post-degree work is explicit: the program advertises that practicum yields "1,000 hours toward the 3,000 hours required for MFT licensure in California," and students who fall short of the hour minimum by the end of MFTS 597P must enroll in MFTS 598P Practicum Extension (1 unit) and keep going. 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
Dept. of Counseling & Marital and Family Therapy; COAMFTE-accredited since 1992 (per third-party source, unverified on USD's own site)
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.
$105,060 total 2026-27 — source
What a month costs to live on while you study →
Getting in
The MA in Marital and Family Therapy program does not require the GRE. source →
How its graduates did on the Board’s exam
Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 94% across 186 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, 92% of this school’s 189 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.
Recorded by the Board as University of San Diego, San Diego. 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
About this disclosure
USD’s own “Learning and Career Outcomes” page carries no rates. The required disclosure is on a Google Drive share link instead, which is public but will not survive a broken share setting.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-202136 in the cohort | 89 | 86 | 86 |
| 2021-202233 in the cohort | 91 | 91 | 91 |
| 2022-202332 in the cohort | 94 | 94 | 94 |
| 2023-202439 in the cohort | 85 | 97 | 97 |
| 2024-202532 in the cohort | 84 | — | — |
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
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.
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.
- USD publishes two different practicum hour requirements. The 2026–27 graduate catalog says 400 direct client hours / 100 supervision hours; the program website and the 2023–24 program handbook say 500 / 200+. The catalog's own edit note says the hours were being updated after a program-level vote before 2024–25, but no page states the change plainly.
- No term-by-term plan of study is published anywhere — the university's 'Curriculum and Pathway' page simply embeds the catalog's requirement list. The handbook gives sequencing rules but not a grid.
- Course descriptions had to be taken from an archived September 2023 capture of the 2023–2024 CourseLeaf catalog; USD's current Coursedog catalog publishes the required-course list but does not expose MFTS course descriptions at a public URL.
- The program handbook available on the program page is the 2023–2024 edition; no newer handbook is publicly posted.
- No credible student discussion could be found. Reddit, Student Doctor Network and comparable forums were not reachable during this research (Reddit blocks automated access, and site-scoped web search was unavailable); GradReports has 146 reviews of USD overall but none tagged to the MFT program.
- Tuition per unit for the MFT program was not captured; the SOLES tuition page was not fetched.
- USD does not appear to operate an in-house training clinic for MFT students — all listed placements are outside community agencies — but no page states that in so many words.
Sources for this page (11)
- USD Graduate Catalog 2026–27 — M.A. in Marital and Family Therapy (requirements, degree requirements, admissions)
- MA in Marital and Family Therapy — program page (SOLES)
- MFT Practicum page (hours, supervision, full site list)
- MFT Admissions Requirements page
- MFT FAQ page (cohort size, class size, schedule, on-campus only)
- MFT Learning and Career Outcomes page
- SOLES International Student Experience page
- USD MFT Program Handbook 2023–2024 (PDF)
- USD MFT COAMFTE Graduate Achievement Data disclosure (PDF)
- Archived USD 2023–2024 catalog — Marital & Family Therapy (MFTS) course descriptions
- MFT Curriculum and Pathway page