Last updated: November 3, 2026
Licensing Exam Results for California MFT Programs
Each year the California Board of Behavioral Sciences (BBS) publishes its Exam Results by School report, which counts how many graduates of each school took the LMFT Clinical Exam and the California Law and Ethics Exam and how many of them passed. The table below brings the reports for 2024 and 2025 together for the 70 programs in our California MFT program directory that the Board reports results for, and it can add every other school the Board lists. Choose an exam and a group of test takers, search for a school, and sort by any year; each program name opens our review of that program. Readers new to the field can start with what an LMFT is and the Sentio MFT program overview.
Showing 67 schools in our directory. LMFT Clinical Exam, first-time test takers.
| All California test takers | 87%2,552 of 2,943 | 83%2,667 of 3,216 | 85%5,219 of 6,159 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alliant International University | 93%99 of 107 | 86%104 of 121 | 89%203 of 228 |
| Antioch University, Los Angeles | 94%190 of 203 | 88%184 of 208 | 91%374 of 411 |
| Antioch University, Santa Barbara | 82%27 of 33 | 86%30 of 35 | 84%57 of 68 |
| Azusa Pacific University | 86%72 of 84 | 87%97 of 111 | 87%169 of 195 |
| Biola University | not listed | 1 of 1 | 1 of 1 |
| Cal Poly Humboldt | 7 of 7 | 6 of 6 | 100%13 of 13 |
| Cal Poly Pomona | 7 of 8 | 91%10 of 11 | 89%17 of 19 |
| Cal Poly San Luis Obispo | 94%15 of 16 | 96%26 of 27 | 95%41 of 43 |
| Cal State Fullerton | 96%44 of 46 | 91%60 of 66 | 93%104 of 112 |
| Cal State LA | 96%23 of 24 | 71%12 of 17 | 85%35 of 41 |
| California Baptist University | 75%77 of 102 | 79%95 of 120 | 77%172 of 222 |
| California Institute of Integral Studies | 98%100 of 102 | 92%117 of 127 | 95%217 of 229 |
| California Lutheran University | 89%24 of 27 | 95%35 of 37 | 92%59 of 64 |
| California Southern University | 84%16 of 19 | 88%15 of 17 | 86%31 of 36 |
| Chapman University | 97%28 of 29 | 86%19 of 22 | 92%47 of 51 |
| The Chicago School | 85%35 of 41 | 69%38 of 55 | 76%73 of 96 |
| CSU Bakersfield | 89%17 of 19 | 85%11 of 13 | 88%28 of 32 |
| CSU Chico | 93%14 of 15 | 100%13 of 13 | 96%27 of 28 |
| CSU Dominguez Hills | 83%24 of 29 | 65%24 of 37 | 73%48 of 66 |
| CSU East Bay | 97%28 of 29 | 91%30 of 33 | 94%58 of 62 |
| CSU Fresno | 87%45 of 52 | 73%37 of 51 | 80%82 of 103 |
| CSU Long Beach | 93%28 of 30 | 92%22 of 24 | 93%50 of 54 |
| CSU Northridge | 87%34 of 39 | 89%50 of 56 | 88%84 of 95 |
| CSU Sacramento | 94%15 of 16 | 89%17 of 19 | 91%32 of 35 |
| CSU San Bernardino | 92%11 of 12 | 9 of 9 | 95%20 of 21 |
| CSU Stanislaus | 6 of 6 | 7 of 8 | 93%13 of 14 |
| Dominican University of California | 95%20 of 21 | 88%15 of 17 | 92%35 of 38 |
| Fresno Pacific University | 100%18 of 18 | 100%12 of 12 | 100%30 of 30 |
| Fuller Theological Seminary | 93%26 of 28 | 100%29 of 29 | 96%55 of 57 |
| Golden Gate University | 55%6 of 11 | 43%6 of 14 | 48%12 of 25 |
| HIS University | 2 of 3 | no first-time takers | 2 of 3 |
| Hope International University | 79%31 of 39 | 79%42 of 53 | 79%73 of 92 |
| Kaiser Permanente School of Allied Health Sciences | not listed | 1 of 1 | 1 of 1 |
| La Sierra University | 3 of 3 | 5 of 5 | 8 of 8 |
| Loma Linda University | 78%14 of 18 | 90%18 of 20 | 84%32 of 38 |
| Loyola Marymount University | 88%15 of 17 | 96%24 of 25 | 93%39 of 42 |
| Meridian University | 2 of 2 | 6 of 6 | 8 of 8 |
| Mount Saint Mary's University | 80%36 of 45 | 72%26 of 36 | 77%62 of 81 |
| National University | 76%96 of 126 | 70%110 of 157 | 73%206 of 283 |
| Notre Dame de Namur University | 77%30 of 39 | 84%21 of 25 | 80%51 of 64 |
| Pacific Oaks College | 73%33 of 45 | 72%48 of 67 | 72%81 of 112 |
| Pacifica Graduate Institute | 96%54 of 56 | 94%51 of 54 | 95%105 of 110 |
| Palo Alto University | 94%80 of 85 | 83%67 of 81 | 89%147 of 166 |
| Pepperdine University | 90%205 of 228 | 82%234 of 287 | 85%439 of 515 |
| Point Loma Nazarene University | 96%27 of 28 | 94%30 of 32 | 95%57 of 60 |
| Saint Mary's College of California | 88%22 of 25 | 87%26 of 30 | 87%48 of 55 |
| San Diego State University | 100%36 of 36 | 89%31 of 35 | 94%67 of 71 |
| San Francisco State University | 100%22 of 22 | 96%22 of 23 | 98%44 of 45 |
| San Jose State University | 7 of 7 | 100%13 of 13 | 100%20 of 20 |
| Santa Clara University | 96%78 of 81 | 95%54 of 57 | 96%132 of 138 |
| Simpson University | 90%9 of 10 | 100%10 of 10 | 95%19 of 20 |
| Sofia University | 5 of 5 | 1 of 1 | 6 of 6 |
| Sonoma State University | 100%15 of 15 | 100%11 of 11 | 100%26 of 26 |
| Southern California Seminary | 3 of 4 | 1 of 5 | 4 of 9 |
| Touro University Worldwide | 83%48 of 58 | 80%86 of 107 | 81%134 of 165 |
| UMass Global | 77%102 of 132 | 76%109 of 143 | 77%211 of 275 |
| University of La Verne | 100%11 of 11 | 77%10 of 13 | 88%21 of 24 |
| University of Phoenix | 56%62 of 110 | 52%48 of 92 | 54%110 of 202 |
| University of San Diego | 97%34 of 35 | 97%32 of 33 | 97%66 of 68 |
| University of San Francisco | 88%76 of 86 | 90%90 of 100 | 89%166 of 186 |
| University of Southern California | 97%34 of 35 | 90%43 of 48 | 93%77 of 83 |
| University of the West | 3 of 6 | 3 of 3 | 6 of 9 |
| Vanguard University | 91%21 of 23 | 100%15 of 15 | 95%36 of 38 |
| Western Institute for Social Research | 0 of 1 | 5 of 6 | 5 of 7 |
| Western Seminary | 95%20 of 21 | 91%10 of 11 | 94%30 of 32 |
| William Jessup University | 100%21 of 21 | 82%14 of 17 | 92%35 of 38 |
| The Wright Institute | 92%57 of 62 | 94%61 of 65 | 93%118 of 127 |
Source: California Board of Behavioral Sciences, Exam Results by School, 2024 and 2025. With fewer than 10 test takers a cell gives the counts only. Repeat takers are all takers minus first-time takers. Program names link to our program reviews.
How to Read the Table
Each cell gives the pass rate, followed by the number who passed out of the number who took the exam that year. First-time takers are people sitting that exam for the first time, and repeat takers are everyone else who sat it that year. The Board reports all takers and first-time takers, so the repeat figures are the difference between the two. The last column adds the years together, which gives a more stable figure for a program that has only a handful of takers in any one year.
Where fewer than 10 people took the exam, the cell shows the counts without a percentage, and when you sort by a pass rate those schools fall below every school with a rate, so a single taker who passed never tops the list. A cell reading "not listed" means the school has no row for that exam in that year's report. Choose "Include schools outside our directory" to add the remaining schools in the reports, among them schools that have since closed or merged and the Board's two groups for graduates of programs outside California and outside the United States.
The two exams measure graduates at different points. In the years the table covers, associates became eligible for the Law and Ethics Exam as soon as they received their registration number and had to take it during their first year of registration, so its results describe recent graduates. Starting January 1, 2027, associates no longer have to take it in their first year, so results for later years may include associates who waited longer. The Clinical Exam comes last: the Board approves a candidate for it only after 3,000 hours of supervised experience, at least 1,700 of them after the degree, and a passing score on the Law and Ethics Exam, so each year's Clinical Exam results mostly describe earlier graduating classes. The Road to LMFT Licensure lays out every step in order, and our guides to the LMFT Clinical Exam and the Law and Ethics Exam cover what each test asks and how to prepare.
What Do the Statewide Results Show?
Across California, first-time takers pass both exams far more often than repeat takers, and the gap is widest on the Clinical Exam. In 2025, 4,374 people took the Clinical Exam and 70 percent passed; the 3,216 first-time takers passed at 83 percent, while the 1,158 repeat takers passed at 35 percent. The Law and Ethics Exam drew 6,009 takers, of whom 75 percent passed, with first-time takers at 81 percent and repeat takers at 56 percent (California Board of Behavioral Sciences, 2026a).
| Year | Clinical Exam, first-time | Clinical Exam, repeat | Law and Ethics, first-time | Law and Ethics, repeat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 87% (2,552 of 2,943) | 40% (470 of 1,184) | 81% (3,465 of 4,294) | 58% (747 of 1,295) |
| 2025 | 83% (2,667 of 3,216) | 35% (404 of 1,158) | 81% (3,715 of 4,608) | 56% (784 of 1,401) |
The first-time rate on the Clinical Exam was 87 percent in 2024 and 83 percent in 2025, and on the Law and Ethics Exam it was 81 percent in each year. For a candidate, the practical reading is that the first attempt is the one to prepare for, because repeat takers pass at well under the first-time rate on both exams.
Why Do Pass Rates Differ Between Programs?
The Board's reports count results by school and say nothing about causes, so they cannot show why one program's graduates pass more often than another's. Several things move a program's rate at once: what its graduates learned, how they were supervised as associates after graduation, whom the program admitted, and how many graduates it has. Size alone changes how much a rate can be trusted. In a program with 200 first-time takers, two results barely move the rate, but in a program with 15, two results move it by more than 13 points.
A program's rate also trails its present. Because the Clinical Exam comes after the supervised hours, a change in a program's curriculum, faculty or admissions is unlikely to show in its Clinical Exam results for several years, while the Law and Ethics Exam, which associates can take as soon as they register, would show it sooner. The Board reports results by school, with separate rows for a few campuses, and not by online or in-person format, so a school that offers several formats has one combined figure. The MFT career trajectory guide describes what happens between graduation and the license, and How to Evaluate a Therapy Graduate Program in California covers the questions that show what a program teaches now.
How Should You Use Pass Rates When Choosing a Program?
Use the table to check claims and to decide what to ask. If a program publishes its own pass rate, the Board's figures show whether the claim matches the Board's count and which year it describes. A rate well below the statewide figure for several years running, with a large number of takers, is a reason to ask the program what it has changed; a single low year with 12 takers says very little. Results for both exams together say more than either one alone.
Pass rates leave out most of what you will live with for the next several years: what the program costs, how you find a practicum, whether you can keep working while you study, and whether the license fits the work you want to do. Becoming a Therapist in California: An Honest Guide walks through the whole path, Why People Say Don't Become a Therapist sets out the hard parts plainly, and Which Therapy Credential Is Right for You in California? compares the LMFT with the LCSW and LPCC. For the money, MFT program tuition in California, what therapists actually earn before licensure and what a therapy career actually pays give the figures. To weigh cost, format and pass rate together, the program picks by region and by need in our directory rank programs on each.
How We Built the Table
The figures come from the Board's Exam Results by School reports for calendar years 2024 and 2025, the reports listed on its exam statistics page. For each school code, each report gives the number who took the LMFT Clinical Exam and the LMFT California Law and Ethics Exam, the number who passed and failed, and the same counts for first-time takers. Results for the LPCC and LCSW exams are not included.
The 2024 and 2025 reports are scanned page images, so their numbers were read by optical character recognition, with several independent readings of each row. Each row passed two arithmetic checks, for all takers and for first-time takers: passed plus failed equals the number who took the exam, and each printed percentage equals the rounded quotient. Each row was also compared with the page image or with a second report from the Board, and for each exam and year the rows add up exactly to the statewide totals the Board prints. The Board's two half-year reports for 2024 give the same counts as its annual report for 169 of the 191 school rows for these two exams; where the counts differ by a few takers, the table uses the annual report.
The Board lists results by school code. Each program in our directory takes the code the Board uses for it, and where the Board lists one program under more than one code, the table adds the codes together: Alliant International University (codes 112 and 139), Azusa Pacific University (103 and 20), Fresno Pacific University (153 and 127, the university and its biblical seminary), Palo Alto University (258 and 149, the second under its former name, Pacific Graduate School of Psychology), UMass Global (272 and 253, the second under its former name, Brandman University) and University of Phoenix (236 and 238). Antioch University's Los Angeles and Santa Barbara campuses have separate codes and separate rows. The Board's row for Touro University appears here as Touro University Worldwide. The downloadable CSV file gives the Board's school name and code behind every row.
Repeat takers are all takers minus first-time takers, and the 2024 to 2025 column adds the counts for every year shown. Percentages are rounded to whole numbers the way the Board rounds them, with halves going to the even number. Programs in our directory that have no row in these reports, the Sentio MFT program among them, do not appear in the table.
Making Your Decision
Pass rates are among the few numbers about a program that the program does not write itself, which makes them worth checking, though the Clinical Exam figures describe graduates who finished years ago. Read them next to everything else that shapes your training: cost, practicum, schedule, the license you want, and how the program builds clinical skill. 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, and if you are still deciding whether this career suits you, Are You Built to Be a Therapist? and Changing Careers to Become a Therapist are good places to start.
More Free Guides for Future Therapists
- Becoming a Therapist in California: An Honest Guide
- Why People Say Don't Become a Therapist, and What's True
- Are You Built to Be a Therapist?
- Changing Careers to Become a Therapist
- Which Therapy Credential Is Right for You in California?
- How Therapist Licensure Actually Works in California
- Road to LMFT Licensure: The BBS Cheat Sheet
- How to Evaluate a Therapy Graduate Program in California
- How to Get Into a Therapy Graduate Program
- MFT Program Tuition in California
- What Therapists Actually Earn Before Licensure in California
- What a Therapy Career Actually Pays in California
- AI and the Future of Therapy Careers
- All free career guides, directories and tools
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the pass rate for the California LMFT Clinical Exam?
In 2025, 70 percent of the 4,374 people who took the LMFT Clinical Exam passed. First-time takers passed at 83 percent and repeat takers at 35 percent. The first-time rate was 87 percent in 2024.
What is the pass rate for the California Law and Ethics Exam?
In 2025, 75 percent of the 6,009 people who took the California Law and Ethics Exam passed, with first-time takers at 81 percent and repeat takers at 56 percent. The first-time rate was 81 percent in 2024.
Which California MFT programs have the highest exam pass rates?
It depends on the exam and the year, and small programs move the most. Among programs in our directory with at least 30 first-time Clinical Exam takers from 2024 to 2025, the highest combined first-time rates were at Fresno Pacific University (100 percent, 30 of 30), San Francisco State University (98 percent, 44 of 45) and University of San Diego (97 percent, 66 of 68). Sort the table by the 2024 to 2025 column to compare every program, and switch to the Law and Ethics Exam to see the other test.
Where do these pass rates come from?
From the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, which publishes an Exam Results by School report for each calendar year. The table combines the 2024 and 2025 reports and adds two figures the reports do not give: the repeat-taker results and the totals across years.
Why does the table show counts instead of a percentage for some schools?
When fewer than 10 people took an exam, a single result moves the rate by 10 points or more, so the table gives the number who passed and the number who took the exam instead. Those schools sort below the schools with rates.
What is the difference between first-time and repeat pass rates?
The first-time rate counts only people taking that exam for the first time, and the repeat rate counts everyone who had taken it before. Repeat takers include people who did not pass in an earlier year, so a school's repeat figures can describe graduates from several classes. In California, repeat takers pass at well under the first-time rate on both exams.
Does a high pass rate mean a program is better?
Not by itself. Pass rates reflect supervision after graduation and whom a program admits as well as what it teaches, and Clinical Exam results describe classes that graduated years earlier. Read them alongside cost, practicum, schedule and how a program builds clinical skill, and ask any program with a low rate over several years what it has changed.
Why is a program missing from the table?
A program appears only if the Board's reports list results for it, so newer programs whose graduates have not yet taken the exams have no row. The Sentio MFT program's first class graduated in May 2026, so it has no results in these years.
References
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2024). Exam results by school: Exam dates January 1, 2024 through June 30, 2024. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/exam_stats/schlexamresults_2024_1.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2025a). 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. (2025b). Exam results by school: Exam dates July 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/exam_stats/schlexamresults_2024_2.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2026a). 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. (2026b). Exam statistics. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/exams/exam_stats.html
