The California LMFT Clinical Exam: What It Covers, When You Take It, Pass Rates, and How to Prepare
A Guide to the California LMFT Clinical Exam
The LMFT Clinical Examination is the second of the two examinations California requires for the marriage and family therapist license, and the one candidates take after their supervised hours are complete. The Law and Ethics Exam comes first, during the associate years. The Clinical Exam comes at the end: 150 multiple-choice questions in four hours, written by California licensees under the direction of the state's Office of Professional Examination Services and delivered at Pearson VUE test centers. This guide covers what the exam tests, when you become eligible and how long you have, how it is scored, what the pass rates look like, what happens after a fail, where the Board stands on adopting the national AMFTRB exam, and how to prepare. The 3,000-hour guide covers the experience you need before you can apply, and the career trajectory guide covers the full path from associate to licensee, including pass-rate history by program.
What Is the LMFT Clinical Exam, and How Does It Differ From the Law and Ethics Exam?
Section 4980.397 of the Business and Professions Code sets the two examinations: "(1) A California law and ethics examination. (2) A clinical examination administered by the board or by a public or private organization, as specified by the board in regulations" (California Legislature, 2026a). The Law and Ethics Exam is taken during the first year of associate registration and repeated each renewal year until passed; it has 50 scored questions, 25 pretest questions, and a 90-minute limit (Pearson, 2026). The Clinical Exam is taken once the hours and the degree are complete, and it is the exam that leads directly to the license.
The Board's regulation describes what each exam measures. Both "shall test for minimum acceptable competency to practice marriage and family therapy without causing harm to the public health, safety or welfare." The Law and Ethics Exam assesses "the applicant's knowledge of and ability to apply legal and ethical standards relating to the practice of marriage and family therapy." The Clinical Exam is "designed to assess an applicant's knowledge of psychotherapeutic principles and methods in treatment and their application, and the ability to make judgments about appropriate techniques, methods and objectives as applicable to the marriage and family therapist scope of practice" (16 CCR section 1829.1; California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026a).
The exam is a California product. The Department of Consumer Affairs' Office of Professional Examination Services (OPES) develops and maintains it, and "the development process involves Board-licensed practitioners who hold a current license and serve as subject matter experts (SMEs) specific to each license type. SMEs are trained by OPES staff in established examination development processes and measurement methodologies" (Pearson, 2026, p. 2). Between April and June 2026 alone, OPES ran three LMFT Clinical Exam construction workshops (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026b). Licensees who write questions must "sign agreement to not engage in related exam coaching/preparation activities" (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026c), which is why no exam preparation company can truthfully claim that its instructors write the test.
When Are You Eligible, and What Deadlines Apply?
Eligibility has three statutory conditions. A registrant or applicant "may take the clinical examination only upon meeting all of the following requirements: (1) Completion of all required supervised work experience. (2) Completion of all education requirements. (3) Passage of the California law and ethics examination" (California Legislature, 2026a). In practice, the trigger is the Board's approval of your Application for Licensure, the application that documents the 3,000 hours, the degree, the fingerprint clearance, and the other post-degree requirements. The Board's maximum time to tell you whether that application is complete or deficient is 60 business days from receipt (16 CCR section 1805.1; California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026a). Most candidates therefore file the licensure application soon after the last supervised hour is logged and use the review period to study.
Candidates who hold or held an AMFT registration do not file a separate exam application. The Board's exam page states: "If you had or have an AMFT Registration, your Application for Licensure has been approved, AND you have passed the LMFT California Law and Ethics Exam, you will be notified via email by Pearson Vue when you are eligible to take the LMFT Clinical Exam. You DO NOT need to submit the Initial LMFT Clinical Exam application, as you have already paid the fee with the Application for Licensure" (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026d). The separate Initial Clinical Exam application exists only for out-of-state applicants who never held a California registration and did not pay the exam fee with their licensure application (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026e).
The exam fee is set in regulation at $250, and a temporary reduction cuts it to $125 for exams paid for between July 1, 2026, and June 30, 2030; the Application for Licensure fee, ordinarily $250, is $125 for the same period (16 CCR sections 1816.2 and 1816.4 as amended; California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026f). The Board adopted the four-year reduction because its reserve fund had grown past the limit state law allows. Fees are paid to the Board with the application, never at the test center (Pearson, 2026).
Two one-year clocks govern the first attempt. "If you passed the LMFT California Law and Ethics Exam AFTER your Application for Licensure was approved, you MUST take the LMFT Clinical Exam within one year from the date you passed the LMFT California Law and Ethics Exam to maintain approval of your licensing file. If you passed the LMFT California Law and Ethics Exam BEFORE your Application for Licensure was approved, you MUST take the LMFT Clinical Exam within one year from the date your Application for Licensure was approved" (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026d). The underlying rule is the Board's abandonment regulation: an applicant keeps an "active licensure application" by "participating in a required examination ... at least once every 365 days," and an abandoned application "shall be treated as a new application, requiring the applicant to pay any fees required, and to meet current requirements" (16 CCR section 1806; California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026a). The Board's page adds the practical consequence: "This may also result in a loss of some previously approved experience hours" (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026d).
Once Pearson emails the Authorization to Test, you schedule online or by phone. Reservations must be made at least 24 hours ahead, walk-in testing is not available, and Pearson recommends scheduling "four to six weeks ahead of your desired exam date" for the best choice of location and time. Cancelling or rescheduling without penalty requires at least 48 hours' notice; a missed appointment is recorded as a no-show, the fee is forfeited, and a new re-examination application is required, although the waiting period is waived because the candidate never saw the exam (Pearson, 2026). Candidates who need accommodations for a disability, a medical condition, or English as a second language apply in advance; the Board recommends applying with the Application for Licensure, and ESL requests take up to 90 days to process (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026g). An approved ESL accommodation is time-and-a-half (16 CCR section 1805.2; California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026a).
What Does the Clinical Exam Cover?
The exam follows a published outline, the Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Written Clinical Examination Outline, effective January 1, 2021 (Pearson VUE, 2021). It organizes the exam into six content areas, each with a percentage of the scored questions, and lists 129 task statements, each paired with the knowledge statements a candidate needs to perform the task. There are more than 350 knowledge statements in all. The six areas and their weights:
- Clinical Evaluation (27 percent). "This area assesses the candidate's ability to evaluate information about the systems in which clients function, and how these systems relate to the mental health and well-being of individuals, couples, and families across the lifespan." Six sections: establishing a therapeutic relationship and exploring the reason for therapy (4 percent); evaluating physical and psychological factors (6 percent); evaluating developmental, psychosocial, and diversity factors (6 percent); evaluating interpersonal and family relationships (5 percent); assessing experiences with trauma, abuse, and violence (3 percent); and consultations and further evaluations (3 percent).
- Developing a Diagnostic Impression (11 percent). "This area assesses the candidate's ability to evaluate mental health disorders and emotional problems that impact the interpersonal and relationship functioning of individuals, couples, and families." Two sections: disorders involving mood, anxiety, and thought (6 percent) and other disorders of clinical significance (5 percent).
- Managing Crisis Situations (11 percent). "This area assesses the candidate's ability to evaluate and manage situations that require immediate or intensive intervention to address high risk or safety issues." Two sections: managing imminent danger (5 percent) and managing the effects of crisis exposure or situations (6 percent).
- Case Conceptualization and Planning (12 percent). Three sections: planning therapeutic goals and defining the course of treatment (4 percent); implementing theory in treatment planning (5 percent); and planning for termination (3 percent).
- Treatment (29 percent). "This area assesses the candidate's ability to implement interventions that improve interpersonal functioning or build more effective relationships with individuals, couples, and families across the lifespan." Six sections: addressing interpersonal, couple, and family relationships (5 percent); addressing the impact of grief, trauma, and violence (3 percent); addressing the impact of physical and psychological issues (6 percent); addressing developmental or psychosocial issues (5 percent); applying theory in practice (7 percent); and use of groups, referrals, and collaborations in therapy (3 percent).
- Managing Legal and Ethical Obligations within the Therapeutic Relationship (10 percent). "This area assesses the candidate's ability to address the effects of legal and ethical obligations within the Therapeutic Relationship. This area also assesses the candidate's ability to act in a professional manner that prevents gross harm or negligence." Its eight tasks cover consent and clients' capacity to make decisions, the duty to protect, professional boundaries, countertransference, the use of technology in therapy, confidentiality and the release of information, and work with third parties.
The outline reads like a job description because it is one: OPES builds each exam from an occupational analysis of what California LMFTs actually do, then writes questions to the task and knowledge statements. The first task on the list is "Determine the unit of treatment and address the presenting problem"; a knowledge statement under physical and psychological factors is "Knowledge of psychotropic medications commonly prescribed for mental health disorders"; and the theory sections expect working knowledge of the major models, from strategic and structural family therapy to cognitive behavioral and gestalt approaches (Pearson VUE, 2021). The outline closes with five sample questions, one each on clinical evaluation, crisis management, diagnosis, treatment, and ethics, in the vignette-and-four-options format used on the exam.
How Long Is the Exam, How Is It Scored, and What Changed in September 2024?
The current exam has 125 scored questions and 25 pretest questions, with 240 minutes allotted (Pearson, 2026, p. 6). The seat time on the scheduling notice is longer because it includes the nondisclosure agreement, the tutorial, and a survey. Pretest questions are new items being validated for future forms: "Pretest questions are dispersed throughout the exam and are not identified separately from scored questions. This ensures that you answer pretest questions in the same manner as scored questions and allows the pretest questions to be validated as accurate and appropriate before they are included in future exams" (Pearson, 2026, p. 10).
The length changed in 2024. The Board's examination report for September 2024 states: "OPES has reviewed the LMFT clinical examination and with conversations with the Board, the LMFT clinical examination will be reduced from 170 questions to 150 questions. The current examination consists of 150 scored questions and 20 pretest questions. Effective with the September 1, 2024, examination, there will be 125 scored questions and 25 pretest questions. The examination time allotted will remain at 240 minutes" (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2024a). A candidate today therefore has about 1.6 minutes per question, against about 1.4 minutes before the change. Pearson introduced a new exam review screen on the same date, and in 2026 corrected an error in an earlier handbook that had misstated the scored and pretest counts (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026b).
Scoring is by number correct, with no penalty for guessing: "Your exam score is based on the number of questions answered correctly. Since it is to your advantage to respond to each question, it is recommended to answer questions that are known first and then, if time permits, return to any more difficult questions that may have been left unanswered initially" (Pearson, 2026, p. 10). The passing standard is set in OPES passing-score workshops rather than as a fixed percentage, and because several forms of the exam are in use, "a statistical procedure known as equating is used to correct for differences in form difficulty" (Pearson, 2026, p. 15). Results are immediate: "When you complete the examination, you will receive a score report marked 'pass' or 'fail' before leaving the test center. If you failed the exam, you will receive a score report that includes a numeric score and diagnostic information for the exam as well information about reexamination. If you passed the exam, you will not receive a numeric score or diagnostic information on your score report" (Pearson, 2026, p. 15). Passing candidates then request the initial license from the Board; the passing score "shall be accepted by the board for a period of seven years from the date the examination was taken" (California Legislature, 2026b).
What Are the Pass Rates?
The Board publishes exam results by school each year. For the calendar year 2025, 4,374 candidates took the LMFT Clinical Exam and 3,071 passed, a pass rate of 70 percent; 3,216 were first-time candidates, of whom 2,667 passed, or 83 percent (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026h). Subtracting the first-time figures from the totals gives 1,158 repeat candidates, of whom 404 passed, about 35 percent. The pattern holds across recent years. Overall pass rates were 66 percent in 2022, 66 percent in 2023, and 73 percent in 2024, with first-time rates of 81, 83, and 87 percent (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2025a, 2025b, 2025c). In the quarter from April through June 2026, 1,123 candidates sat the exam and 72 percent passed, 85 percent among the 840 first-time candidates; the Law and Ethics Exam in the same quarter had 1,370 candidates and a 78 percent pass rate (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026b).
Two readings of these numbers matter for a candidate. First, the exam is passable for most well-prepared people on the first attempt, and the first attempt is the one to invest in: repeat candidates pass at less than half the first-time rate. Second, the same reports break results out by graduate program, and the spread between programs is wide. That history, and what it says about training quality, is covered in the career trajectory guide.
What Happens If You Fail?
The score report tells you where you stand. Failing candidates receive their numeric score and diagnostic information by content area, which is the only individualized feedback the process provides, so it is worth keeping (Pearson, 2026). The re-examination application can be filed in BreEZe at any time, but eligibility is not sent to Pearson until a waiting period has passed. The Board's exam page and Pearson's handbook both state a 90-day wait for the Clinical Exam (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026d; Pearson, 2026). The regulation itself sets 120 days for a clinical examination and gives the Board's executive officer authority to "allow for a lesser waiting period, as long as the integrity of the examination or examination security is not compromised" (16 CCR section 1805.05; California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026a). The published operating rule is 90 days; the regulation is the ceiling.
The retake window is one year. Under section 4984.72, an applicant who fails "may, within one year from the notification date of that failure, retake the examination as regularly scheduled without further application upon payment of the fee for the examination. Thereafter, the applicant shall not be eligible for further examination until he or she files a new application, meets all requirements in effect on the date of application, and pays all required fees" (California Legislature, 2026c). Each attempt costs the exam fee again. The Board's page restates the consequence of missing the window: the licensing file is closed, a new application and fee are required, current requirements apply, and previously approved hours may be lost (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026d).
There is also a seven-year limit. Section 4980.50(g) provides that an applicant "shall not be eligible to participate in the clinical examination if the applicant fails to obtain a passing score on the clinical examination within seven years from their initial attempt, unless the applicant takes and obtains a passing score on the current version of the California law and ethics examination" (California Legislature, 2026b). A candidate who reaches the seven-year mark must pass the Law and Ethics Exam again before continuing.
Will California Replace the Clinical Exam With the National AMFTRB Exam?
California is the outlier among the states. A Board staff memorandum from August 2024 put it plainly: "To become a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) in California, passing the Board-administered LMFT clinical exam is mandatory. This exam is developed by the Board with the assistance of Department of Consumer Affairs' (DCA's) Office of Professional Examination Services (OPES). In contrast, all other states require passing the Association of Marital and Family Therapy Regulatory Board's (AMFTRB) Marital and Family Therapy National Examination (AMFTRB National Exam)" (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2024b). The Board already accepts national clinical exams for LCSW and LPCC licensure. In May 2024 it voted to pursue accepting the AMFTRB exam, subject to conditions on content and measurement scope, candidate access, and an automated transfer of eligibilities and scores. The memo noted a cost difference: the Board charged $250 for its exam while AMFTRB charged $370 for its own (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2024b).
The statutory step has been taken. Senate Bill 775 (Statutes of 2025, chapter 787), effective January 1, 2026, rewrote section 4980.397 so that the clinical examination may be "administered by the board or by a public or private organization, as specified by the board in regulations" (California Legislature, 2026a). The regulatory step has not. As of the Board's January 2026 compilation, 16 CCR section 1829.1(b) still reads: "The clinical examination as described in subsection (a)(2) shall be a board administered examination" (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026a). On August 13, 2026, the Board met in closed session for "a Presentation by the Office of Professional Examination Services Regarding the Evaluation of the Association of Marital and Family Therapy Regulatory Boards' (AMFTRB) Marital and Family Therapy National Examination" (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026i). Any switch would require a regulation adopted with public notice and comment, so candidates will see it coming on the Board's meeting agendas months before it takes effect. For anyone testing in 2026 or 2027, the exam is the California exam described here.
How Should You Prepare, and What Does the Research Say About Exam Preparation and Clinical Skill?
Start with the outline. The weights tell you where the questions are: more than half the scored items fall under Clinical Evaluation and Treatment, and a candidate who is strong in diagnosis but weak in treatment planning and theory application is studying the smaller half of the exam. The task statements tell you the form the questions take, which is a clinical vignette followed by a question about what the therapist should assess, prioritize, or do first. The knowledge statements are a checklist; the outline's five sample questions show the style (Pearson VUE, 2021). Pearson provides nothing else: "Study materials and practice examinations are not provided. Sample questions and examination content outlines are available at the end of this handbook" (Pearson, 2026, p. 10). Commercial preparation courses fill that gap, and their instructors are, by the Board's rule, not the people who write the exam.
The research on how people learn favors two methods over the ones most students use. Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, and Willingham (2013) reviewed ten study techniques and reported that "practice testing and distributed practice received high utility assessments because they benefit learners of different ages and abilities and have been shown to boost students' performance across many criterion tasks and even in educational contexts," while "summarization, highlighting, the keyword mnemonic, imagery use for text learning, and rereading" received low utility ratings. Roediger and Karpicke (2006) showed why: students who took free-recall tests on studied passages remembered substantially more a week later than students who restudied the same material, "even though repeated studying increased students' confidence in their ability to remember the material. Testing is a powerful means of improving learning, not just assessing it." For a 150-question exam taken months after the last graduate course, that argues for practice questions spread across weeks, answered before looking at the rationale, over rereading textbooks in the final fortnight.
What the exam predicts is a separate question. Licensing exams of this kind are knowledge and judgment tests, and the Board describes theirs as a test of "minimum acceptable competency" (16 CCR section 1829.1). The best evidence on whether such scores track later practice comes from medicine. Tamblyn and colleagues (2002) followed 912 Quebec family physicians and their 3.4 million patients for four to seven years and found that "scores achieved on certification examinations and licensure examinations taken at the end of medical school show a sustained relationship, over 4 to 7 years, with indices of preventive care and acute and chronic disease management in primary care practice." A second cohort study of 3,424 physicians found that lower scores on the communication and clinical decision-making components of a national licensing exam predicted more retained patient complaints in the first 2 to 12 years of practice (Tamblyn et al., 2007). Exam scores, in other words, are not noise; they carry information about later practice.
They are not the same thing as clinical skill, and neither is time in the field. Goldberg and colleagues (2016) examined 6,591 patients treated by 170 therapists over an average of nearly five years each and found that "a very small but statistically significant change in outcome was detected indicating that on the whole, therapists' patient prepost d tended to diminish as experience (time or cases) increases," even as therapists varied widely from one another and some improved. Passing the exam certifies that a therapist knows what to assess and what the standard interventions are. Getting better with clients depends on something the exam cannot measure: repeated, feedback-driven rehearsal of the skills themselves. The practical conclusion for a candidate is to treat exam preparation as a defined project with its own methods, practice testing and spaced review, and to keep it separate from the longer project of becoming an effective clinician.
A Closer Look at One Program: Sentio University's MFT Track
The following description of one specific MFT program is offered as a concrete example of how a program can prepare students for the clinical examination, not as a recommendation against evaluating other programs. Students should research multiple options and ask each one direct questions about how clinical skill is built and measured.
Sentio University, a nonprofit graduate school based in Los Angeles with a hybrid delivery model that serves students throughout California, offers a Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy that meets the Board of Behavioral Sciences educational requirements for the LMFT. The program runs 20 months across 60 units, with weekly online classes and one intensive in-person residency at the start of each semester, in cohorts capped at 24 students at a 4:1 student-to-faculty ratio. It is designed around deliberate practice methodology and is described in peer-reviewed work as the first graduate psychotherapy program to thoroughly integrate deliberate practice, with roughly half of nearly every class session dedicated to active skills training rather than lecture (Rousmaniere and Vaz, 2025, p. 2).
The curriculum maps onto the exam's six content areas course by course: MFT541 Assessment and Diagnosis and MFT652 Psychopharmacology for clinical evaluation and diagnostic impression; MFT545 Trauma and Crisis Intervention for crisis management; MFT544 Case Conceptualization and Treatment Planning for the planning area; the six Theories and Models courses for treatment and the application of theory; and MFT542 Ethical and Legal Issues for the legal and ethical area. The final semester includes MFT564 Therapist Career Development, which the 2026-2027 Academic Catalog describes as a course that "prepares students to start their careers in the field of marriage and family therapy, gain employment, and pursue career-long professional development, including preparation for the California Law and Ethics Exam and LMFT Clinical Exam" (Sentio University, 2026a). Sentio also integrates AI literacy training through its AI certification program for therapists.
Sentio is a small, newer institution, admits only applicants who are California residents or willing to relocate to California and who intend to license in California, and its alumni network is still developing. Prospective students weighing Sentio alongside larger or older programs should factor that into their decision. Learn more at the Sentio MFT program overview, the tuition and fees page, and the Sentio FAQ page.
Making Your Decision
The Clinical Exam is a defined, passable test with a published outline, a fixed format, and a first-time pass rate above 80 percent. Plan for it the way the rules are written: file the Application for Licensure as soon as the hours are complete, start studying while the Board reviews it, schedule the exam early inside the one-year window, request any accommodation with the application, and prepare with practice questions spread over weeks rather than rereading in the final days. If you are still choosing a graduate program, ask how the curriculum covers the exam's six content areas and whether exam preparation is built into the final semester or left to you. Program websites describe clinical training in similar language regardless of what is actually happening in classrooms and supervision rooms. Ask every program you are seriously considering whether you can attend a live or online class session before enrolling, and ask to speak with current students and recent graduates about how supervision and skill development function in practice. Reputable programs should welcome the request. Hesitation or refusal is informative on its own. Trust what you see in a classroom over what you read in promotional copy.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many questions are on the California LMFT Clinical Exam, and how long is it?
The exam has 150 multiple-choice questions, 125 scored and 25 unscored pretest questions mixed in without identification, and a 240-minute time limit. The length dropped from 170 questions to 150 effective September 1, 2024; the time did not change.
When can I take the LMFT Clinical Exam?
After the Board approves your Application for Licensure, which requires all 3,000 supervised hours, all education requirements, and a passing score on the California Law and Ethics Exam. Pearson VUE emails your eligibility, and you must take the exam within one year of the later of your licensure approval or your Law and Ethics pass.
What is the pass rate for the LMFT Clinical Exam?
In 2025, 70 percent of 4,374 candidates passed. First-time candidates passed at 83 percent, and repeat candidates at about 35 percent. Overall pass rates were 66 percent in 2022, 66 percent in 2023, and 73 percent in 2024.
What happens if I fail the LMFT Clinical Exam?
You receive a numeric score with diagnostic information by content area, wait 90 days, pay the exam fee again, and retake the exam within one year of the failure. Missing the one-year window closes your licensing file and requires a new application under current requirements.
How much does the LMFT Clinical Exam cost?
The fee in regulation is $250, reduced to $125 for the period from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2030. Associates pay it to the Board with the Application for Licensure, which itself costs $250, or $125 during the same reduction period. Each retake costs the exam fee again.
Does California accept the national AMFTRB exam instead?
Not yet. A 2025 statute lets the Board adopt a national clinical exam by regulation, and the Board received an evaluation of the AMFTRB exam in closed session in August 2026, but the regulation still requires the Board-administered exam. Any change would go through public rulemaking first.
What does the LMFT Clinical Exam cover?
Six content areas from the outline effective January 1, 2021: Clinical Evaluation (27 percent), Developing a Diagnostic Impression (11 percent), Managing Crisis Situations (11 percent), Case Conceptualization and Planning (12 percent), Treatment (29 percent), and Managing Legal and Ethical Obligations within the Therapeutic Relationship (10 percent).
Can I get extra time on the exam?
Yes, with prior approval. Candidates with a disability or medical condition request accommodations through Pearson VUE, and candidates whose second language is English can request time-and-a-half from the Board; ESL requests take up to 90 days to process, so apply with your Application for Licensure.
References
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2024a). Executive officer report: Examination report (Agenda item 8, Board meeting of September 19-20, 2024). https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/agen_notice/2024/20240919-20_item_8.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2024b). Acceptance of Association of Marital and Family Therapist Regulatory Board's national examination: Required statutory and regulatory amendments (Agenda item 17, Board meeting of September 19-20, 2024). https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/agen_notice/2024/20240919-20_item_17.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2025a). Exam results by school: Exam dates January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2022. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/exam_stats/exam_stats_2022.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2025b). Exam results by school: Exam dates January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2023. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/exam_stats/exam_stats_2023.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2025c). Exam results by school: Exam dates January 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/exam_stats/exam_stats_2024.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2026a). Statutes and regulations relating to the practice of professional clinical counseling, marriage and family therapy, educational psychology, clinical social work (January 2026). https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/publications/lawsregs.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2026b). Examination report (Memorandum of July 20, 2026; Agenda item 18, Board meeting of August 13-14, 2026). https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/agen_notice/2026/20260813-14_agenda_item18.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2026c). Exam news: Exam development. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/exams/news.html
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2026d). LMFT Clinical Examination. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/exams/lmft.html
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2026e). Application for initial LMFT California clinical examination (Revised July 2026). https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/forms/mft/lmft_clinical_exam_app.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2026f). Fee reductions: Notice of approval and order of adoption, California Code of Regulations, title 16, sections 1816, 1816.1, 1816.2, and 1816.4 (effective July 1, 2026). https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/regulation/pending/fee_reduc_noa.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2026g). Testing accommodations. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/exams/exams_accomodations.html
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2026h). Exam results by school: Exam dates January 1, 2025 through December 31, 2025. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/exam_stats/exam_stats_2025.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2026i). Board meeting notice and agenda, August 13-14, 2026. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/agen_notice/2026/20260813-14_agenda.pdf
California Legislature. (2026a). Business and Professions Code section 4980.397. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC§ionNum=4980.397.
California Legislature. (2026b). Business and Professions Code section 4980.50. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC§ionNum=4980.50.
California Legislature. (2026c). Business and Professions Code section 4984.72. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC§ionNum=4984.72.
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Goldberg, S. B., Rousmaniere, T., Miller, S. D., Whipple, J., Nielsen, S. L., Hoyt, W. T., and Wampold, B. E. (2016). Do psychotherapists improve with time and experience? A longitudinal analysis of outcomes in a clinical setting. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 63(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000131
Pearson. (2026). California Board of Behavioral Sciences candidate handbook (July 2026, No. 580500). https://www.pearsonvue.com/content/dam/VUE/vue/en/documents/publications/580500.pdf
Pearson VUE. (2021). Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist written clinical examination outline (Effective January 1, 2021; Stock No. 5805-04). https://www.pearsonvue.com/content/dam/VUE/vue/en/documents/publications/580504.pdf
Roediger, H. L., and Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249-255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
Rousmaniere, T., and Vaz, A. (2025, March). Sentio's clinic-to-classroom method: Bridging deliberate practice and clinical training. Psychotherapy Bulletin, Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. https://societyforpsychotherapy.org/sentios-clinic-to-classroom-methodbridging-deliberate-practice-and-clinical-training/
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